The Atlantic
How did things go sideways for a governor who three years ago won his first term by the biggest margin in California history? The recall vote shouldn’t be close. It shouldn’t even feel close. Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one in California, and the state is home to nearly as many Democratic-leaning independents as Republicans. Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by almost as many votes here last November as there are people in Wisconsin. But aside from a few scattered campaign events and an Elizabeth Warren TV ad for Newsom in heavy rotation on local news, there’s almost no sign that a recall election is coming.
But with less than a month to go before September’s extra Election Day, Newsom told me he feels as though he’s fighting not only for his own political existence, but for California’s future and for the entire Democratic agenda. He’s been obsessing over right-wing TV, wondering about the future of democracy, and he says he’s staying up late agonizing over COVID-19 deaths. He has watched Fox News pounce on his 10-year-old son for not wearing a mask. He overheard his 11-year-old daughter tell her brother, “You’re going to lose the recall for Daddy.” “You did nothing wrong,” Newsom said he told his son later. He has since pulled his children from the not-always-masking camp they were attending, wary of another COVID-hypocrisy scandal. The recall effort started as a protest against Newsom’s positions on immigration and the death penalty, and was propelled by Trump-inspired amateur stunt politics (a radio call-in show, hosted by recall organizers, called “Friday Night at the French Laundry,” for example). And it exploded because of wider frustration with Newsom’s handling of the pandemic. How this ends depends on how many of California’s 22 million registered voters fill out recall ballots mailed to them earlier this month. In theory, recalls are supposed to be distilled democracy, a way for voters to change their minds and hold their leaders accountable in the long periods between regularly scheduled elections. Many don’t realize, though, that the ballot contains two separate questions: first, yes or no on the recall, and then, in case a majority votes to recall Newsom, a ballot that does not include the governor’s name but does include 46 others. Newsom noted, he could receive 49.9 percent of the vote, lose the recall, and be replaced by a governor elected with 14 percent of the vote. This is the way democracy could play out in the largest state in the union—home to 40 million people—and the fifth-largest economy in the world.
Newsom’s aides worked hard in the spring to dissuade other well-known Democrats from entering the recall race, in the hopes of delegitimizing the process. He’s telling voters to vote no on the recall and skip voting on the second question altogether. If Newsom is recalled, his potential replacements include the radio host Larry Elder, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, the 2018 GOP gubernatorial nominee John Cox, and the assembly member Kevin Kiley, all Republicans who have embraced Trumpism to varying degrees. Newsom, meanwhile, has the support of pretty much every Democratic official and group in the state. Big-name donors have gotten involved on Newsom’s behalf too: The Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has donated so much money to the anti-recall effort that his name appears at the bottom of the governor’s commercials. (Laurene Powell Jobs, the chair of the board of The Atlantic, has donated $400,000 to a committee called Stop the Republican Recall of Governor Newsom.)
A poll released at the end of July showed that Newsom was on the edge, and that set off a round of concern. Critics point out that the poll included a relatively small number of Democrats, in an attempt to simulate what appears to be their still-lower enthusiasm for voting in the recall. This may have made the race look closer than it is.
