The California Recall’s Biggest Losers: Stay Classy, San Diego

That thud you heard last Tuesday was the sound of Kevin [Faulconer’s] dreams of grandeur unceremoniously crashing to the ground.

By Jim Miller

It wasn’t even close.  Last week, Governor Gavin Newsome easily prevailed in the Recall, delivering a serious thumping to the reactionary forces and opportunists who forced this expensive waste of an election.  While much ink has already been spilled about the significance of this development over the past week, some things have gotten clearer as the dust has settled.  

Topping the list of the biggest losers is San Diego’s own Kevin Falconer. 

While some in the San Diego media opined that the recall has given K-Falc more name recognition and a chance at a second act in 2022, less affectionate but more clear-eyed commentators elsewhere in the state have rightly observed that this was an utterly humiliating defeat for our former mayor who couldn’t even finish first on the second question in his own city.  Yes, San Diego’s two term mayor got destroyed by Larry Elder on his home turf where the Recall itself was also soundly defeated.  

That thud you heard last Tuesday was the sound of Kevin’s dreams of grandeur unceremoniously crashing to the ground.  It appears that the mayor who would be governor didn’t have much juice when he wasn’t able to take advantage of the complete implosion of local Democrats in the wake of the Filner debacle.  In sum, when Kevin doesn’t get it handed to him, he’s got zero game.  

No Kevin, you didn’t “come in to stop the circus,” as you said in your concession speech, you were a bit player in the pathetic sideshow.  

Toss in Rancho Santa Fe’s biggest blowhard, John Cox, who tossed in a boatload of his own money to get single digits and our own evil rightwing troll and chief Recall booster, Carl DeMaio, and it’s evident that the wannabe lords of America’s Finest Tourist Plantation have proven, yet again, that they are not ready for prime time.  

Stay classy, San Diego.  

Also worthy of mention are the hordes of anti-mask, anti-vaccine, science-hating, vitriol spewing wingnuts who helped gather signatures for Newsom’s ouster while comparing him to Hitler for supporting sound public health policy.  They’ll still have local school board, city council, and county supervisors’ meetings at which to unleash their demented word-hoards, but they just might have done a fantastic job of helping motivate the quiet, vaccinated, and sane majority to vote against their Trumpist bullshit. 

As others have noted across the national media landscape, campaigning against the wacky, Trump-loving death cult might be an excellent way for Democrats to hold serve in the midterm elections, push forward with mask rules and vaccine mandates, and ultimately help get us out the backside of the pandemic, even if it means dragging the Q set kicking and screaming.  

Sadly, it’s also worthy of notice that another big loser in this Recall is the citizenry of California who knew it was a colossal waste of what might end up being $300 million and months of our lives when all of that treasured time and effort could have been better spent trying to move the state and the country forward by getting more people vaccinated, students safely back to school, and the business of our state on track amidst multiple crises.  

One can only hope that Newsom will learn to check the enormous hubris that led to the French Laundry disaster, without which we may not have had to endure this clown circus.  What would be redemptive for California would be to press forward with broader vaccine mandates and safety protocols that finally might deliver us from this nightmare come next spring.  

There is too much at stake to endure anymore of this foolishness.