It's the Ryan Laira show on WNYC.

Good morning, everyone.

Last day of the membership drive, get those last minute pledges in.

That's all I'm going to say about it now, I promise.

I'm sure you've had enough of political analysts analysis of the Super Tuesday Biden and Trump

and Nikki Haley results, right? And as important as those were, because it's the presidential race,

there were some other very interesting down-ballot races that have national implications as well,

that haven't gotten as much coverage. One of them is that Congressman Adam Schiff came in

first in the primary for U.S. Senate in California. That's the race to succeed, the late Senator

Diane Feinstein. But apparently Schiff helped his own cause by helping to raise money for the Republican

he will now run against in November.

What?

Christian Paz, senior politics reporter at Vox, wrote up some of the interesting

non-presidential Super Tuesday primaries, including the California one. And he joins us now.

Hi, Kristen. Thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC. Thanks so much. It's great to be with you.

So the California Senate primary is different from many other primaries in that it's nonpartisan.

Is that the right term? Democrats, Republicans, anyone else, run in one unified primary. Is that

right? They run in one unified primary. It's been called, similar to a jungle primary and in other

states, but the California, I'm a Californian. We call it, we call it a top two system where it doesn't

matter what party you're from. If you come in the top two slots, you'll be and don't win an outright majority, then you'll be a shoe in for the general election show up.

Do you know why they do it that way? What's supposed to be better for democracy by having a unified primary rather than each party holding its own?

Right. The idea is, and it's a very recent thing also, the idea, there's both the, you know,

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