A Democratic governor in California shouldn’t be this close to defeat.
W e did not meet at the French Laundry. Gavin Newsom, the California governor who faces a recall election on September 14, hasn’t been back to the extravagantly expensive Napa Valley restaurant since he dined there with lobbyists last year in violation of his own COVID-19 restrictions. We met instead at a café in a nonprofit bookstore in the Mission District—much more on message. Newsom had just made the first stop on his Delta-constrained campaign to persuade Californians to vote no on the recall. He’d spoken with volunteers who had been helpfully positioned for the media at five tables along the sidewalk. He’d scolded reporters at a press conference, reminding them that the recall effort was funded by right-wing Republicans who—according to Newsom—completely misunderstood what makes California great. He’d tried for Jed Bartlet–style lines in his aging Sam Seaborn body. At the café, he quickly ate a banana and slurped the top of his coffee. He’d dropped his breakfast on the floor before I arrived. More bad luck, he said. “I was always that lucky one, too,” he said, shaking his head. “Just the whole damn thing flipped on me.” How did things go sideways for a governor who three years ago won his first term by the biggest margin in California history? The recall vote shouldn’t be close. It shouldn’t even feel close. Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one in California, and the state is home to nearly as many Democratic-leaning independents as Republicans. Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by almost as many votes here last November as there are people in Wisconsin. But aside from a few scattered campaign events and an Elizabeth Warren TV ad for Newsom in heavy rotation on local news, there’s almost no sign that a recall election is coming. But with less than a month to go before September’s extra Election Day, Newsom told me he feels as though he’s fighting not only for his own political existence, but for California’s future and for the entire Democratic agenda. He’s been obsessing over right-wing TV, wondering about the future of democracy, and he says he’s staying up late agonizing over COVID-19 deaths. He has watched Fox News pounce on his 10-year-old son for not wearing a mask. He overheard his 11-year-old daughter tell her brother, “You’re going to lose the recall for Daddy.” “You did nothing wrong,” Newsom said he told his son later. He has since pulled his children from the not-always-masking camp they were attending, wary of another COVID-hypocrisy scandal. The recall effort started as a protest against Newsom’s positions on immigration and the death penalty, and was propelled by Trump-inspired amateur stunt politics (a radio call-in show, hosted by recall organizers, called “Friday Night at the French Laundry,” for example). And it exploded because of wider frustration with Newsom’s handling of the pandemic. How this ends depends on how many of California’s 22 million registered voters fill out recall ballots mailed to them earlier this month. In theory, recalls are supposed to be distilled democracy, a way for voters to change their minds and hold their leaders accountable in the long periods between regularly scheduled elections. Many don’t realize, though, that the ballot contains two separate questions: first, yes or no on the recall, and then, in case a majority votes to recall Newsom, a ballot that does not include the governor’s name but does include 46 others. Newsom noted, he could receive 49.9 percent of the vote, lose the recall, and be replaced by a governor elected with 14 percent of the vote. This is the way democracy could play out in the largest state in the Union—home to 40 million people—and the fifth-largest economy in the world. Newsom’s aides worked hard in the spring to dissuade other well-known Democrats from entering the recall race, in the hopes of delegitimizing the process. He’s telling voters to vote no on the recall and skip voting on the second question altogether. If Newsom is recalled, his potential replacements include the radio host Larry Elder, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, the 2018 GOP gubernatorial nominee John Cox, and the assembly member Kevin Kiley, all Republicans who have embraced Trumpism to varying degrees. Newsom, meanwhile, has the support of pretty much every Democratic official and group in the state. Big-name donors have gotten involved on Newsom’s behalf too: The Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has donated so much money to the anti-recall effort that his name appears at the bottom of the governor’s commercials. (Laurene Powell Jobs, the chair of the board of The Atlantic, has donated $400,000 to a committee called Stop the Republican Recall of Governor Newsom.) A poll released at the end of July showed that Newsom was on the edge, and that set off a round of concern. Critics point out that the poll included a relatively small number of Democrats, in an attempt to simulate what appears to be their still-lower enthusiasm for voting in the recall. This may have made the race look closer than it is. When I met with Newsom, he was taking the polls seriously. “I’m now feeling the weight of this decision, and a weight of responsibility to defeat this, and also the responsibility that if we fall short, I’m going to own that,” he said. He mentioned to me some of his recent initiatives, including the injection of billions of dollars of federal relief money into the state budget and signing a bill to expand health care to undocumented workers. “If I do fall short, I’ll regret every damn one of those decisions. And I don’t want to have any regrets for putting everything out there and doing… what I think is right and what I think is in the best interest of California.” Newsom has reason to be anxious. Recalls can deliver immediate emotional satisfaction to dissatisfied voters, and there are many dissatisfied voters in California. You can be mad at Newsom because you never liked him in the first place. You can be mad about his ego, his peevishness, and his sense of entitlement. You can be mad because Donald Trump is your model of what a leader should be; you can be mad because of the way Newsom’s handled wildfires and drought; you can be mad at him because you’re tired of pandemic shutdowns. You can be mad about anything. All those angry Californians’ votes will go on the recall pile. And if that pile is big enough, Newsom will be out before Halloween. His replacement would probably be someone who opposes strict anti-coronavirus measures; the end of California’s mask mandates and COVID-19 lockdowns would quickly follow.
