RECALL ROUNDUP: Elder on Inside Track, Dems Canvas Like Crazy
There are three weeks --mas o menos-- left until we begin to have a sense of what all this nonsense about the conservative crusade to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom means for the future of politics statewide and nationally.
The mainstream news media already seems to have made up their minds about what voter turnout will be, namely favoring the recall with low turnout unless Democrats can pull off a miraculous comeback.
Voter apathy/turnout is the crisis du jour at The Guardian, New York Times, MSNBC, Politico, NPR, and SFist, which gets my award for best scatalogical headline of the day, “Team Newsom Soiling Themselves Over Low Turnout Fears in Recall Election.”
Psst-- Dirty little secret time. (Pun intended): Turnout for the CA recall election is currently outpacing turnout in the 2020 general election, a strong sign for Democrats.
Psst, Psst-- “It ain’t over ‘til it's over.” --New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra
According to Paul Mitchell at Political Data, 5% of the mailed out ballots have been returned, and while we don’t know what the vote count is, 56.2% of those ballots came from registered Democrats, NPP/Other and Republicans each have a 21.9% return rate.
I have to say that the email/texting Get Out The Vote traffic by local Democrats is as good as I’ve seen in any past election. Vote No: That’s all you have to do.
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Republican donors have made up their minds about candidate Larry Elder. As of yesterday, his campaign committee passed $7 million in receipts. There’s another $1.4 million raised by his recall ballot measure committee available.
If anything, last week’s scandals seem to have consolidated GOP support for Elder. Keven Faulconer and John Cox are left with splitting the “we disapprove of Black men waving guns at white women” vote. (h/t Greg Diamond/Orange Juice Blog)
The New York Times, Tucker Calson at Fox News, the Orange County Register, and the Chicago Tribune (among others) all have published features about Elder.
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Keep your freedumb: Politico really likes Newsom's campaign’s focus on comparing California to Florida, as they should.
Again and again, Newsom has warned that a successful recall vote would mean dissolved mask mandates — and in his words, plunge the state off the “Covid cliff.” California has registered lower per capita coronavirus death and infection rates than Florida, and the Sunshine State’s current 7-day average of new cases is nearly twice that of the Golden State. Newsom has emphasized those distinctions, bolstered by health experts, as he makes the case for California’s more stringent rules — while making sure to talk up California’s economic rebound.
Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis hasn’t exactly been knocking it out of the park when it comes to the state’s residents. Ten local school boards, overseeing more than half the students in the state, have defied his order by mandating mask wearing.
The word this morning is that the Governor will be taking action to remove members of those boards, which should go over like a lead balloon. A Quinnipiac poll shows 60% support for requiring students, teachers and staff to wear masks in schools, with 36% opposed.
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Other Republicans do stuff: Former Congressman Doug Ose, who dropped out of the race last week after having a heart attack, has endorsed Assemblyman Kevin Kiley. While Kiley doesn’t have much of a chance in the recall race, he has garnered the loyalty of the rural country activists who started the recall campaign back in the days before the Big Boys took over.
Richard Grenell, the former U.S. ambassador to Germany whom Trump appointed in early 2020 to become the acting director of national intelligence called for Kevin Faulconer to leave the race to unseat Newsom so more votes can go to a "solid conservative.
Grenell, who at one time was mentioned as a possible recall candidate, told the (right leaning) California Globe that Faulconer’s "vision" for the state "is not a conservative one" and suggested the former mayor may be "unable to embrace the broad type of change we need."
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Stop the Steal, Chapter 10,567: Suggestions of voter fraud are now firmly embedded as part of the GOP playbook for campaigns, and the recall election is no exception.
In what Republicans considered a win-win, a passed out man was found in a car in Torrance with more than 300 unopened mail-in recall ballots.
The evidence, as disclosed through official police sources, indicates the man’s criminal activity consisted of ransacking mail boxes. In addition to the ballots, drugs, a loaded firearm, thousands of pieces of mail, a scale and multiple California driver licenses and credit cards in other people’s names were found.
Sgt. Mark Ponegalek told KABC-TV that the ballots were unopened and had not been tampered with.
Replacement ballots will be sent out, police said.
An officer with the LA Sheriff’s Department had a different viewpoint:
And Carl DeMaio used his pulpit at KUSI to have it both ways. He said if there wasn’t voter fraud going on with this arrest, then it was evidence of California’s out-of-control crime wave.
Two other incidents have sent Republicans, and Larry Elder’s team scurrying to media mics to whine about voting.
Apparently they didn’t realize that lists of candidates names on ballots are randomly sorted by counties and cried foul up not seeing their guy at the head of the list. Never mind…
Finally, I’ve always wondered what those little holes on ballot return envelopes were used for.
Trumpster Richard Grenell went public with a suggestion that Gov. Newsom had the ballots designed so “yes” votes on the recall could be seen without opening the envelope. In fact, there was a way, if a voter inserted the ballot where the Yes could be seen.
Also, it wasn’t a conspiracy, as a local Fox News station discovered by --gasp-- picking up the phone.
"The intent and purpose of the holes are two-fold, to assist with accessibility for low vision voters to locate where to sign the envelope and to ensure no ballots were missed and left in envelopes once our office has received and processed them," the Registrar's office wrote in the statement.
Officials with the Registrar's office noted that voters have control of how they place their ballot in the envelope and have multiple options for returning their ballots to ensure secure and appropriate handling, including by mail, ballot drop box or at an official vote center.
They also recommended that voters track the status of their returned ballot through Ballot Trax – a free tracking application operated by the Secretary of State that will notify the voter when our office received the ballot and that it will be counted.
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