The Recall Newsom Campaign Needs to Be Taken Seriously
Politician hunting season is on, and this year’s trophy for Republicans would be California Governor Gavin Newsom.
The deadline for collecting signatures on a recall the Governor effort was this week, and backers expect they’ll force a special election likely to take place late next fall. In a year where the GOP has little to cheer about, this endeavor is attracting national attention and funding.
After all, if a political party’s nonviolent organizing agenda amounts to ‘stick it to the libs,’ taking down the leader of the People’s Republic of California seems like a worthwhile effort.
The recall effort had its origins in the grifter/nutcase/talkradio wing of the GOP; now the big guns are rolling in as the Republican Governors Association has launched Recall Newsom! RGA Action, an entity that is allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts of cash.
As Sacramento’s Scott Lay observed, the recall is like a stimulus act for campaign consultants.
Gov. Newsom’s backers are taking the recall effort seriously, and assembled an all-star team of verteran operatives who’ve worked on the campaigns of Vice President Kamala Harris, U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, Attorney General Xavier Becerra and former Gov. Jerry Brown.
The anti-recall campaign has attracted the support of Senators Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Bernie Sanders hoping to galvanize the more activist wing of the Democratic Party--and discourage any would be challengers from the left.
Their strategy is clear: tie the recall effort to extreme elements in the GOP and remind voters of the unpopularity of the Trump administration.
This morning’s mailing from the California Democratic party starts out with the headline “They block vaccines,” includes photos of an attempted blockade of a Los Angeles vaccination site, and points out that “The recall campaign is being funded by some of Donald Trump's biggest supporters and we need your help to fight back.”
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According to Ballotpedia, 2021 has already seen sixty recall efforts nationwide. Rightwing political agendas are behind many of them, with public health actions related to the pandemic being the most common reason.
These efforts are an extension of the “government actions are tyranny” school of thought made popular by advocates for an extreme view of the Second Amendment.
Portraying themselves as advocates for “victims” is about as grass roots as Republicans get, and they have capitalized on doubts about combating COVID-19, starting with blaming it on China, continuing through contrarian takes on preventative measures, along with giving a wink and a nod to vaccine conspiracy theorists.
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Union-Tribune political columnist Michael Smolens posted a column today remarking on the potential for a limited shelf life of a campaign based on coronavirus resentment.
To varying degrees, happy days will be here again for most residents of the Golden State. No doubt, Gov. Gavin Newsom hopes he’s one of them.
Voters are expected to go to the polls late in the year to decide whether Newsom should be recalled from office. Their lives at that point seem destined to be far different from the ones they’ve been leading through the past year of stay-at-home orders, business shutdowns and online learning — surrounded by sickness and death.
Will the outrage fueling the Newsom recall subside along with the pandemic?
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In California, recall campaigns consist of two questions:
Whether or not the public official should be recalled, and
If so, who should replace that official.
The first question is resolved by whichever side can get 50%+1 of the votes. Question #2 is irrelevant if the recall fails.
For dedicated committees on either side of question #1 (that do not express a successor's name) there are no limits on fundraising.
On question #2, the $32,400 limit for the office of governor for this cycle applies for successor candidate committees. So-called independent expenditure committees can get around that limitation and candidates can contribute unlimited amounts of personal money.
The public official facing a recall cannot run for reelection via question #2, and whichever candidate gets the most votes (regardless of whether or not they have a majority) is declared the winner.
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Although signatures on the recall petitions have yet to be tallied, auditors hired by backers have claimed that verifiable signatures are running at over 80% of those collected. There seems to be little doubt (on either side) about the likelihood of a special election.
Beyond that claim, the bullshit starts to pile up. Recall supporters have a vested interest in portraying their effort as bipartisan. The California Globe, a right leaning outfit, publicized a tweet containing a month old breakdown of Los Angeles County voters with a majority of signatories having a Democratic voter registration.
Republican recall strategist Dave Gilliard tweeted that petition signatories were “64.10% GOP; 25.30% NPP (No Party Preference); 9.00% Dem; and 1.60% Other.
The reality is that the recall effort is a gamble. If the effort loses badly, as George Skelton writes in the Los Angeles Times, Gov Newsom could end up in a position of strength:
And a stronger Newsom could mean an even weaker California Republican Party, which will have tried to topple the Democratic governor and failed, squandering energy, money and what’s left of its influence.
“The danger for Republicans is that they should be careful what they wish for. They might get it,” veteran GOP political strategist Marty Wilson told me recently before the recall effort looked like a cinch to qualify for a special election ballot.
“It’s a very fraught situation for the California Republican Party.”
On the other hand, should the effort succeed, it opens up an otherwise unattainable path to the governorship for Republicans.
Four Republicans are considered serious candidates, and given that Democrats are unlikely to put up a big name stand in, one of them could win the election.
Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer is the highest profile GOP candidate for the post. He’s considered by pundits to be politically moderate, meaning he won’t campaign on hating brown people or saving Dr. Seuss books.
There are problems with that moderate label, namely the flirtations Faulconer had with Dear Leader, including saying he’d voted for the Former Guy because of the economy. That’s a weak sauce argument if, as some are predicting, the economy roars back later this year. People vote on what’s currently in their wallet, not claims about what the stock market did on any given day.
Part of Faulconer’s effort is inclusion of the ‘California Comeback’ line of thinking that assumes voter buy-in on portraying the state as an economic disaster zone.
Any close examination of the former San Diego Mayor’s record in office reveals his repeated failures at initiatives (the Convention Center + football stadium) and poor property management (the former parachuting building unusable as a homeless center and the lawsuit laden attempt at acquiring 1010 Ash Street).
What he is good at is public relations. No significant segment of the local population had strong feelings about Faulconer. He was the king of ‘meh’ when it came to San Diego politics.
Businessman John Cox, whose attempts at winning elective office in Illinois and California have been busts, has enough personal money to buy ads in the nation’s most expensive media markets.
His campaign thus far has centered in attacking Faulconer’s credibility. Unfortunately, there are now questions about Cox’s credibility as a candidate, with Politico reporting earlier this week on three key aides had left the campaign.
Tim Rosales, a longtime GOP strategist who has served as campaign spokesperson, confirmed he left the campaign as of this week. Also leaving are Chris Faulkner of Majority Strategies and strategist James Farwell, a former Newt Gingrich insider, sources said. A website listing political job openings shows that Cox is looking for a campaign press secretary.
Cox has dropped $2 million so far on his campaign and positioned himself as a Republican outsider compared to former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, a more moderate Republican.
In an interview with POLITICO Monday, Cox brushed aside the staff changes — and said that his campaign is adding legendary GOP admaker Fred Davis.
Davis produced ads for President George W. Bush's presidential campaign, as well as the late Sen. John McCain. But some of his most unforgettable work has been in California campaigns — including an ad for GOP then-U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, which portrayed Democrat Barbara Boxer as a giant blimp. Another spot that year slammed moderate Republican Tom Campbell, a Senate challenger, as a "demon sheep."
The defections from the Cox campaign may be related to other developments, namely interest by former Congressman Doug Ose and former Trump appointee Richard Grenell. Both wannabe candidates need the enthusiasm of hard-core Trump supporters to be viable.
While Ose cultivated an image as a moderate during his career, he reinvented himself in 2016 as an ardent Trump ally. That new profile didn’t do him much good, though, when Ose decided to run for governor in the 2018 cycle: The former congressman failed to bring in much money and dropped out in a move that was so abrupt, his spokesperson said she had to quickly cancel 50 campaign events.
Grenell’s claims to fame starts with his stint as a State Department spokesperson to the United Nations during the Bush administration. He went on to become a regular contributor for Fox News and formed Capitol Media Partners, a political consultancy.
His work with the Romney campaign in 2012 made him the first openly gay person to work as a spokesperson for a Republican presidential candidate.
What endeared him to the Trump clan was his stint as U.S. Ambassador to Germany.
Der Spiegel published a profile of Grenell on January 11, 2019, using interviews with 30 “American and German diplomats, cabinet members, lawmakers, high-ranking officials, lobbyists and think tank experts".
The magazine wrote that "almost all of these sources paint an unflattering portrait of the ambassador, one remarkably similar to Donald Trump, the man who sent him to Berlin. A majority of them describe Grenell as a vain, narcissistic person who dishes out aggressively, but can barely handle criticism."
The profile claimed that Grenell was politically isolated in Berlin because of his alleged association with the far-right Alternative for Germany Party, causing the leaders of the mainstream German parties—including the Chancellor herself—to avoid contact with him; while Grenell had pressed German parliamentarians to invite him to their districts, most had declined.
Although Grenell had little experience in working in the intelligence business, he served as Trump’s Acting Director of National Intelligence and played a role in politicizing that office.
Following Trump’s defeat in November, Grenell appeared as a speaker at a press conference in Las Vegas, announcing a local effort to overturn the presidential election via a federal lawsuit against "illegal" votes.
He made allegations of fraud, claiming that non-residents and dead people voted in Nevada, saying the state was covering up those incidents. Needless to say, all the post-election lawsuits related to Nevada were later either dropped or dismissed.
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The sleeper issue of the recall campaign concerns control of the United State Senate.
Although Senator Diane Feinstein has said she has no intention of retiring, reports in POLITICO and The New Yorker about her age-related missteps have prompted speculation. One scenario has her stepping down next fall should the effort to recall Newsom appear on a path to victory.
Another concern is that an unexpected health crisis forcing her to step down while a Republican holds California’s top job could put Sen. Mitch McConnell back in charge again.
A side note here… Feinstein is one of the few remaining Democrats in the Senate who has refused to commit on doing something about the filibuster. Ugh.
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Finally, the only way Republicans win with this recall campaign is for Democrats to not take it seriously. Every registered voter in the state will receive a ballot by mail.
You know what you need to do...
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