Three years ago, little known businessman John Cox sought to keep California‘s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom out of political office.
Cox, the Republican challenger to Newsom in the state’s 2018 gubernatorial race, was defeated by a landslide, taking roughly 38% of votes compared to Newsom, who won 62%.
Now as Newsom, 53, faces the pressure of a potential recall largely over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, Cox is leading the charge — and mulling a rematch next year.
In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Cox said his advantage in a second run would not only be increased controversy surrounding Newsom’s leadership, but a head start in campaigning.
“This time, I’m starting two years early, and people are going to know who I am,” Cox said.
Cox, 65, ran his first campaign on his private sector experience and expressed an open animosity toward career politicians. His 40-year career in real estate made him a self-made millionaire, but government policies in his home state led him to pursue projects outside of California.
The Illinois-born businessman has been a vocal critic of Newsom’s strict lockdown policies, and he believes the economic damage done to the state in addition to the governor’s high-profile flub of breaking his own rules at a private dinner party are enough to give what was once considered a long-shot recall effort a fighting chance.
“Frankly, I saw an effort that was finally starting to get done and had a potential to be successful,” Cox said. “Most Californians believe this is a crisis, and we have to get this guy out.”
In recent weeks, the campaign to recall Newsom has welcomed big donors, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. An Orange County consulting firm donated $500,000 toward the effort, while a Silicon Valley couple gave almost $100,000. Cox put up $50,000.
Organizers around the movement have so far collected over 900,000 signatures on recall petitions around the state, and they hope to get the roughly 1.5 million signatures needed from registered voters by March 17 to force a recall election. To offset invalid signatures, the needed signatures will probably near closer to 2 million.
David Broockman, a political science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said Newsom’s approval from voters would likely fall largely on his handling of the pandemic, especially as California deals with a slower-than-average rollout of vaccines in other states.
“If the Newsom administration manages to really mess up the vaccination drive, then it’s totally plausible to me that a lot of voters would say, ‘Look, we want to put someone else in charge,'” Broockman told the Washington Examiner. “If a lot of people are walking into the voting booth, and they say more than anything, ‘I think this guy failed, and I want to get him out,’ anything could happen.”
Negative headlines put spotlight on Newsom
Two years ago, Newsom’s popularity and name recognition floated him as a potential contender for a future White House bid. He built his political reputation first in local government, becoming nationally known as the ambitious, young mayor of San Francisco who granted marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004 despite the federal and state law at the time.
He was first elected to a statewide office in 2010, serving as lieutenant governor before taking over the governorship from Jerry Brown in 2019.
But now, as California has been thrust into the national spotlight for strict lockdowns that have pushed some small business owners into open rebellion, surging coronavirus cases that are still rising from holiday travel, and a large benefits fraud scandal that sent unemployment aid to death row inmates and nonresidents, Newsom’s star status may be dimming. Perhaps most damning was the PR debacle that the governor faced after he was caught breaking his own rules as he dined maskless with multiple people at an upscale restaurant in Napa Valley.
Despite negative stories reflecting on state leadership, Broockman said the average voter likely isn’t paying close enough attention to every development to mobilize their frustration at the polls.
“The average person is not going to be reading those headlines, but the average person who is more persuadable, doesn’t care about politics, isn’t so loyal to Newsom or anything, they are going to experience it if vaccination is really slow,” Broockman said. “They’re going to get really angry about that because it’s going to influence their lives, and they’re going to see their state doing worse than others.”
Three days into the new year, California had a surge of over 45,000 new coronavirus cases brought on by increased travel throughout the holiday season. Overall, California has had over 2.4 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 26,000 deaths.
The state has received 1.29 million doses of both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, but only 450,000 doses have been administered. But the governor has also threatened to sue providers if they give out vaccines to groups not designated to receive it yet.
“If you skip the line or you intend to skip the line, you will be sanctioned. You will lose your license,” Newsom said. “You will not only lose your license. We will be very aggressive in terms of highlighting the reputational impacts as well.”
Broockman said this kind of approach will likely further slow the vaccine rollout and could potentially be the push needed to make a recall election happen.
“It might be the big story no one was talking about at the time about why Newsom ended up getting recalled,” Broockman said.
Republican hopefuls mobilize around lockdowns and Newsom recall
San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, a centrist Republican who is also eyeing a potential bid for the governorship in 2022, recently expressed his support for the petition to recall Newsom.
“I’m signing the petition to recall Gavin Newsom,” Faulconer said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “Jobs are leaving, homelessness is skyrocketing, and the state can’t even do the basics like issue unemployment checks to people struggling to get by. Every Californian fed up with Gavin Newsom’s hypocrisy and failures should sign the recall petition. Either through a recall or a regular election, it’s time to start holding Gavin Newsom accountable.”
While Faulconer has begun touting his experience managing the pandemic and leading at the local level, Cox says he believes the next election will be one where voters demand someone outside of the political realm.
“I think that’s the fundamental difference between Mr. Faulconer and I,” Cox said. “He looks at everything through a political lens. … I think [voters] are sick of politicians.”
Despite many saying it would be a long shot for any Republican to take back the governor’s office, Broockman said if certain elements are in play, including GOP mobilization at the national scale with a Democrat in the White House, the chances of it happening may increase.
“The ingredients are you have a moderate nominee, you have a Newsom administration that’s failed on vaccination, and a national tide against Democrats if Biden is in office. All three of those things are somewhat question marks,” Broockman said. “[But] as of right now, all of the signs point to those ingredients likely being there.”
