One function of political parties is to nominate candidates for political office. The Utah Republican party recently nominated its candidate for governor in the 2020 election after a narrow primary race. The field was split between four candidates: former governor and ambassador Jon Huntsman Jr., current lieutenant governor Spencer Cox, former speaker of the Utah House Greg Hughes, and businessman Thomas Wright. This was a significant race, being the first open governor’s race in Utah since 1992. It was also significant because of the unprecedented swelling of members in the Utah Republican Party in the weeks just before the primary. At the deadline for switching parties near the end of June, more than 100,000 voters had joined the party, with 44,000 of those joining in June alone. The reason of this increase is fairly clear. Like some state political parties, the Utah GOP has a closed primary system—only registered party members can participate in the election of the candidate. With the Republican party controlling the Utah governorship since the 1980’s, Independents and Democrats joined the party in order to have some say in who is almost inevitably going to win in the general election this November. This sentiment is perhaps best expressed by former state lawmaker Jim Dabakis, a liberal Democrat who switched his party affiliation and urged his fellow Democrats to do the same: “It is time for EVERYONE in Utah to have a say about who the candidates will be for the November election for Governor.” Many of these newly minted Republicans were especially against the more conservative Hughes, and many had warmer feelings to the more centrist Huntsman. On the flip side, Hughes expressed sentiments towards Dabakis and insincere new party members most likely felt by many loyal Republicans: “The Republican party in Utah is under attack… He’s leading a concerted effort of Democrats dishonestly invading our party in an attempt to defeat me - not my opponents - because they fear my conservative vision.” In the end, Spencer Cox narrowly defeated Huntsman to clinch the candidacy. Hughes came in a distant third.
We recently learned from Rahat and Hazan that the way political parties choose their candidates both reflects the system and affects the system. When the selectorate (those that select the candidates to run) is larger, candidates feel a proportionally greater sense of loyalty to all those that participated in the selection. When the selectorate is smaller, such as in a closed primary, candidates can feel less bound by duty to those individuals they represent but that did not vote for them. Thus, the increase of Independents and Democrats joining the ranks of the Republican party in Utah in order to sway the election could be interpreted in at least two different ways. On one side, it is a positive thing because Spencer Cox, the presumptive governor, knows that he won the primary with participation from across the entire political spectrum in Utah (in other words, the selectorate was larger than it might have been). This could instill in him a greater sense of duty to all of Utah, instead of just the Republicans.
On the other side, the more conservative Republican side, this can be interpreted as an attempt to infiltrate the party insincerely in order to break its election-won dominance of the governorship. The Republican party is motivated to limit the selectorate to loyal party members in order to nominate candidates that will accomplish their goals. In Utah the Republican party currently has little to worry from the relatively small number of Democrats and Independents that jumped on board to vote in the primary, but in some States with more even party distributions this behavior could diminish the independence of political parties and undermine the candidate selection process. You can imagine the consequence if huge efforts were made by political parties to have their members switch for primary elections in order to support someone that would be an easy target in the general election. If this party-switching behavior continues and becomes more widespread, it could lead parties to adopt more exclusive candidate selection processes such as caucuses. As with many things in politics, breaking the “rules” to gain an advantage could ultimately backfire.
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