The White House is pitching President Joe Biden’s west coast trip as a platform to push his spending packages rather than a last-ditch effort to save California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom from being recalled.
Biden’s Long Beach campaign rally for Newsom on Monday before the gubernatorial recall election on Tuesday was only one stop on his busy itinerary, according to White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre.
“I’ll leave, you know, all of the speculation about our visit with Gov. Newsom, and so I’m not going to go into speculation about anything further than that,” she told reporters Monday afternoon. “We endorsed the governor, the vice president and the president, and I’ll leave it there.”
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Biden can manage competing priorities “at the same time,” Jean-Pierre reiterated when needled on the trip’s timing. Vice President Kamala Harris’s earlier trip to support Newsom was canceled after terrorists in Afghanistan attacked the Kabul airport amid the U.S. withdrawal. More than half a dozen U.S. troops were killed in the ISIS-K explosion, as were almost 200 Afghans.
“I’m not going to go into any reasoning why he’s going now, instead of two, three weeks ago,” she said.
Jean-Pierre similarly declined to preview Biden’s Newsom remarks, alluding to the Hatch Act. That law prohibits executive branch employees from promoting political interests during their normal course of work.
“Our focus is really making sure that we’re doing the work of the people,” she said. “The president says himself he’s a president for all, for everyone, for people who have voted for him and didn’t vote for him. So that is the most important thing.”
California will decide on Tuesday whether Newsom will remain governor until January 2023. The Republican-led recall effort was spurred by Newsom’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including flouting his own administration’s physical distancing guidelines.
But polling averages suggest Newsom will keep his job. More than 57% of Californians prefer him as governor, though almost 41% do not, according to FiveThirtyEight.
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Biden is on a two-day west coast trip and will stop in Idaho and California on Monday. In California, the president will also be briefed by local, state, and federal emergency response personnel in Sacramento about this season’s wildfires before surveying El Dorado County’s Caldor fire damage and talking about his $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal and congressional Democrats’ $3.5 trillion social welfare reconciliation proposal.
