Petitions to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom are pouring in as voters in deep-blue California revolt against the Democrat’s handling of the coronavirus.
As of Monday, nearly 10% of petitions had been submitted by registered Democrats, with almost one-quarter presented by voters unaffiliated with any political party and 66.5% coming from Republicans. Recall organizers said that petitions are netting a healthy 85% validation rate, putting them on track to turn in, as early as March 1, plenty more than the 1.5 million signatures needed to force Newsom to fight for his job in a special election this year.
“We’re seeing signatures coming in from independents and Democrats that we weren’t seeing months earlier,” said Dave Gilliard, who is among Republican strategists running the petition drive. This is not Gilliard’s first California recall. In 2003, he managed signature-gathering that triggered the special election that cut short Gov. Gray Davis’s second term. Voters replaced the Democrat with Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, a popular Hollywood star who went on to serve more than seven years as governor.
In 2003, Davis was bedeviled by an electricity crisis that caused rolling blackouts and left California’s major power suppliers bankrupt or teetering on insolvency. Eighteen years later, Newsom, 53, is in danger of being undone in his first term by an array of problems stemming from a raging, year-old pandemic.
Californians were already chafing under health regulations Newsom implemented by executive fiat that have periodically closed businesses, restricted in-person gatherings, and shuttered public schools. That frustration was exacerbated by the state’s gross mismanagement of the distribution of the coronavirus vaccine. Now, Newsom is reeling from the discovery that the state’s unemployment program has been beset by massive fraud, with billions earmarked for pandemic relief pilfered. Then, there was the French Laundry controversy.
Last November, Newsom attended a birthday dinner for a close friend at the upscale Napa Valley restaurant French Laundry, defying his own restrictions. That might be the “sexy story” that caused initial trouble for Newsom, said Tom Ross, a Republican operative in Sacramento. However, Ross added, “I think there’s a management issue that’s going on” that could prove more nettlesome long-term. A Democratic strategist who advises Newsom declined to comment for this story.
Democratic insiders in California said the governor is in political hot water. But they point to factors working in Newsom’s favor, arguing there are few parallels between the fledgling recall of 2021 and a 2003 gubernatorial recall that riveted the nation and was the first of 55 attempts to succeed in California over 90 years. To begin with, the state is both more blue and more hostile to Republicans today than 18 years ago.
At the outset of the Davis recall, California Democrats enjoyed a voter-registration edge over Republicans of more than 8 percentage points. In the most recent presidential election, Democrat Al Gore had defeated Republican George W. Bush by 11.8 points. This year, on the heels of a 2020 election that saw Joe Biden thump President Donald Trump by 29.2 points, the Democrats boast a voter registration advantage of 22%.
Democrats are skeptical that another “Arnold,” a prominent political outsider with cross-partisan appeal, will materialize for the Republicans. And even if such a candidate emerges, party insiders contend that the notion of the celebrity savior has been discredited by Trump, a reality television star before running for president, and undermined by Schwarzenegger, who left office in 2010 with poor job approval ratings.
“This model that worked well for Schwarzenegger and the Republicans in ‘03 is unlikely to be replicated in ’21, even if the recall qualifies,” said Democratic strategist Garry South, who had a front-row seat to the last recall as Davis’s top political adviser. Rules changes implemented since the last recall, plus Democrats’ tightened grip on power, could enable Newsom partisans to push any special election into 2022, if not derail it, caution operatives in both parties.
California’s recall provision, championed by liberal Republican Gov. Hiram Johnson early in the 20th century, is quirky. The ballot poses two questions to voters: a referendum on whether the governor should be recalled and who should replace the incumbent. There is no limit to the number of challengers who can run nor any primary to regulate ballot placement. In 2003, 135 candidates qualified, including former child actor Gary Coleman and porn star Mary Carey.
With social media, which did not exist 18 years ago, a campaign to recall Newsom could devolve into an even bigger circus. “This will make 2003 look like an eighth-grade dance. It will turn into Burning Man — TikTok influencers, porn stars, anti-vaxxers. I bet we could have 200-plus candidates,” said Andrew Acosta, a Democratic strategist in California. “The zoolike atmosphere will just help Gavin Newsom push the message that we have an election next year.”
Republicans emphasize that however bizarre the atmosphere surrounding the first recall, the election attracted a few sober (by comparison) candidates and that that proved enough for voters to treat it seriously. In addition to Schwarzenegger: now-Rep. Tom McClintock, then a state senator; Arianna Huffington; Peter Camejo, the Green Party nominee for governor in 2002; and Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, who ran on the slogan, “Vote no on recall but yes on Bustamante.”
The same could easily happen this time, Republicans say. So far, Republicans Kevin Faulconer, the former San Diego mayor, and John Cox, who lost to Newsom for governor in 2018 and who is something of a gadfly, have already announced their candidacies.
But should the recall qualify for the ballot, the political rumor mill in California is overflowing with names of potential Democratic contenders who could pose a legitimate threat to Newsom and might explore a campaign. Among them: Disney executive chairman Bob Iger, businessman and former Los Angeles Lakers point guard Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Rep. Ro Khanna, 2020 presidential candidate Tom Steyer, and previous gubernatorial candidate and former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Keeping Democratic challengers at bay will require Newsom to unify his left flank and paint the recall effort as an underhanded attempt by Republicans to short-circuit the political process. But Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist in Sacramento who was a senior spokesman for Schwarzenegger’s 2003 campaign, predicts that will be difficult for the governor to pull off.
“Right now, we’re in the ‘rally around Newsom’ phase,” he said. “But once the recall qualifies, I think, more likely than not, we see the field expand. I remind people that at this point in ’03, the leading candidate was [Republican Rep. Darrell] Issa, who, of course, never ended up on the ballot.”
