California Gov. Gavin Newsom may have survived a recall challenge, but President Joe Biden and Democrats should not assume their aggressive coronavirus pandemic mitigation strategies will win the midterm elections next year, according to politicos.
Instead, California consultants and observers are advising Democrats to be grateful they avoided an embarrassing defeat in a state where they have a 2-1 registered voter advantage.
California Democrats and their counterparts in the country celebrated Newsom’s resounding victory as a referendum on their COVID-19 approach.
Former California Democratic Party adviser Bob Mulholland encouraged liberal candidates in competitive states and districts to borrow from Newsom’s playbook, particularly against Republican opponents parroting former President Donald Trump’s “bleach policy.”
“Every week, as infections and deaths continue and schools close because of outbreaks, more and more Americans, especially women, realize that their babies received oral polio vaccines, and we don’t see iron lung machines anymore,” he told the Washington Examiner. “A Democrat in a swing district can run on saving lives.”
Biden made the same case, promoting his and Newsom’s “strong vaccine requirements, strong steps to reopen schools safely, and strong plans to distribute real medicines — not fake treatments — to help those who get sick.”
“The fact that voters in both traditionally Democratic and traditionally Republican parts of the state rejected the recall shows that Americans are unifying behind taking these steps to get the pandemic behind us,” Biden said.
Yet the Democratic National Committee was more candid about the other factor that complicated the recall: Trump and the similarities between him and top Republican contender, conservative radio host Larry Elder.
“In a landslide, voters rejected the Republican Party’s anti-science denial of the pandemic sweeping the country and their subsequent refusal to address it, rejected Republicans’ disproved conspiracy theories about our elections, and rejected Republicans’ unwavering loyalty to the man who caused it all — Donald Trump,” the DNC wrote in a post-recall memo.
For Republican strategist Duf Sundheim, his party lost the recall when it declined to spend more money on a candidate other than Elder, despite having existing grassroots support.
“This really was a complete failure of Republicans, plain and simple,” he said. “It was clear that the alternative that was given to them by Republicans was totally unacceptable to a majority of Californians. “
Democrats dodged a disaster akin to Republicans losing the 2017 Alabama Senate special election, according to Thad Kousser, a University of California San Diego politics professor. If Newsom had been dumped, it would have demoralized liberals and handed Republicans more momentum before 2022, a cycle in which they are already historically poised to perform well.
When asked whether the recall meant Democrats would hold on to their congressional majorities next year, Kousser joked it would be only if California was hosting every contest.
Republicans had hoped to make the recall about Newsom’s COVID-19 response, specifically after he flouted his own masking and physical distancing guidelines last summer at a Michelin-starred French restaurant, as well as homelessness, crime, housing, and energy. But Newsom recovered in the polls following a summer slump by doubling down on those same tactics amid the delta variant surge and Elder’s emergence as his greatest threat.
Yet Democrats are only likely to repeat Newsom’s success if they face a Trumpian opponent and stringent COVID-19 measures appear to be working in their state or district, according to Kousser.
“If you’re in the Dallas suburbs, the Atlanta suburbs, all the places that we think will be battlegrounds, do you worry that a restrictive approach won’t keep your state open for business, for schools? Then it may not be the same equation,” he said.
Biden’s federal COVID-19 mandates, for instance, provoke divisive reactions in polls. A Quinnipiac University Poll published in mid-September found 48% approved of the president’s proposal to make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory for millions of public and private sector employees, while 51% disapproved. Moreover, his pitch was disproportionately unpopular with young and minority voters, important members of his base.
The recall was also instructive for Democrats searching for their party’s most effective spokespeople as exit polls suggest it is still struggling to appeal to Latino voters.
Kousser did not believe Biden, who sputtered through a recall eve speech for Newsom, was the Democrats’ best messenger. But the professor predicted the president’s domestic agenda, including the child tax credit, may buoy his party in 2022, even if the botched Afghanistan withdrawal undermined his foreign policy credentials.
“Everything domestically will be a winner in a way that Obamacare was not. That was a drag on the ticket,” he said.
