The bill as it finally passed the Senate was a defective bill, the defects of which could be corrected in the Assembly only by amendment. In the end the fate of the measure was made to hinge on these clerical and typographical defects.
The Assembly Committee on Election Laws had been stacked against the passage of a Direct Primary bill, precisely as the Senate Committee had been. At the first meeting held by the Committee to consider the measure, it became evident that the majority of the Committee would, if it could, put the McCartney amendments, which had been defeated in the Senate, into the bill.
Leeds, Chairman of the Committee, moved that the primary vote for United States Senator be made advisory and by districts only, while Grove L. Johnson, in spite of the fact that such a provision is impracticable and unconstitutional, stated that he wished a provision in the bill requiring a 40 per cent plurality to nominate, instead of a mere plurality.
Leeds and Johnson, taken together, stood for precisely what the machine had stood for in the Senate, namely, an advisory, district vote for United States Senators and a 40 per cent plurality vote to nominate.
Speaker Stanton, although not a member of the Committee, was present at the meeting, and although he had introduced the bill in the Assembly, announced that he was for so amending the measure that the vote for United States Senator should be made merely advisory and by districts. This was pretty strong intimation that there was trouble ahead for the Direct Primary bill. Stanton was in effect throwing down his own bill.
After several meetings, the Committee adopted amendments providing for the Leeds - suggested advisory district vote for United States Senators, providing for correction of the clerical and typographical errors, and providing an oath from primary candidates that they would abide by the platform of their party to be adopted after their nomination. This last amendment was defeated in the Assembly.
The only real opposition in the Committee to the machine's plan to make the primary vote for United States Senators advisory only and by district, came from Assemblymen Hinkle of San Diego and Drew of Fresno. Drew was ill most of the time and could not attend the meetings. The brunt of the fight for a State-wide vote for United States Senators, therefore, fell on Hinkle.
He fought well.
Every effort was made to pull him down. He was told that his bills would be "killed."
He was deliberately misrepresented in papers which were endeavoring to force into the bill the advisory district vote amendment, which, as introduced in the Senate by McCartney, had been rejected by the anti-machine Senators. Leavitt and Wolfe and Warren Porter were for the amendment, but the anti-machine Senators continued against it as they had on February 18th, the day of their "glorious victory" over the machine in the Direct Primary fight.