Democrats shouldn’t walk away from Gavin Newsom’s survival without changing the undemocratic structure of direct democracy in the state.
Today, Gavin Newsom will beat back a recall election and remain governor of California, and it doesn’t look like it will be particularly close. For the sake of the state and as a signal to national Democrats, though, that cannot be the end of the story. American democracy has become polluted with circumstances where one party can win control of the executive branch without a majority of voters, or use our system’s multiple veto points and idiosyncrasies to block majorities in Congress from setting policy. In a country with a high barrier for constitutional amendments, or a state with unified Republican control and the wherewithal to draw gerrymandered maps that maintain it, this becomes a frustrating and intractable problem. But California isn’t like that. Democrats have massive registration advantages and a supermajority in the legislature. They don’t have to settle for an absurdity like the recall rules we’ve become so familiar with over the past couple of months. Therefore, when this recall ends, state Democrats should not move on without enacting fundamental changes to how direct democracy works in the nation’s most populous state. They were fortunate to survive this round. Initially, it looked like the trajectory of the pandemic and the schedule of the recall would put the question of Newsom’s governorship before voters several months into a lifted public-health crisis, reopened schools and businesses, and a robust economic boom, aided by a flood of COVID relief directed by Newsom and the Democratic legislature. But the delta variant laid waste to those plans, dispelling Californians’ mistaken beliefs that the pandemic was behind them. At that point, Newsom was in trouble, however briefly. But one event changed the trajectory of the election: a state judge ruled that Larry Elder could remain on the recall ballot, after Secretary of State Shirley Weber had disqualified him for submitting incomplete tax forms. Without Elder, the race might have continued to be a sleepy affair, with apathetic or unaware voters sleepwalking through the threat, and low turnout leading to a shock result. Tools like the recall are loaded guns, waiting to be pulled out to create a result unwanted by a majority of the people. Instead, Elder provided a focal point to a Newsom campaign that was flailing a bit. Its first recall ad, back in April, featured pictures of Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich (!) to depict the recall as a project of the Republican establishment. The messaging made no real sense. But once Elder, with his deep well of controversial comments and hard-right ideology, entered the fray, it made it very easy for Newsom’s handlers to essentially put Trump back on the ballot, and frame the election entirely around the consequences of an Elder victory. Negative partisanship works, and the combination of scare headlines and relentless messaging on Elder proved to be the effective end of the recall threat.
