A recall candidate hired a bear to draw attention to his campaign to oust Gov. Gavin Newsom, but the bear ended up drawing attention to the bear.SACRAMENTO — He was new to politics but a working actor who has shared the screen with Kevin Costner. He posed. He swaggered. He did not obviously beg for the rotisserie chicken. He publicly refrained from his two favorite offstage habits, flatulence and belching, although at one point he did wash himself with his tongue as the cameras rolled.Under a broiling Sacramento sun, Tag — a half-ton bear hired as a stunt by one of the Republicans hoping to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom of California in a likely fall recall election — hit all his marks in front of a campaign bus on Tuesday before heading home to Kern County in time for a dip and a nap.By Thursday, editorial boards were fretting, a state senator was fuming, animal rights groups were calling for formal investigations and the Republican candidate who hired the bear, John Cox, was fending off questions about whether his rented mascot had been exploited.“I kissed the bear, actually,” Mr. Cox said. “It’s a very tame bear.”As California’s nationally watched recall effort cleared yet another threshold this week, with a final count of some 200,000 signatures beyond the required 1.5 million or so, the bear’s appearance marked a new phase in the proceedings. Call it the circus phase.When Californians recalled their governor in 2003, 135 candidates were on the ballot, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, whom 48.6 percent of voters selected as the replacement for Gray Davis. Aspirants included the former child actor Gary Coleman, the online publisher Arianna Huffington and the Hustler magazine mogul Larry Flynt. The campaign became so antic and bizarre that one of the debates was hosted by the Game Show Network.Tag, a half-ton Kodiak bear, ate chicken and creme sandwich cookies.Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesWill the list be long and bizarre again? Well, does a bear sleep in Kern County?Among those running again this time are Mary Ellen Cook, a former pornographic film actress who worked under the professional name Mary Carey, and Angelyne, a 70-year-old former Los Angeles billboard model. Many more have publicly flirted with the possibility, including the actor Randy Quaid, who tweeted last month that he was “seriously considering” a run despite pending criminal charges. Other announced candidates include Kevin Faulconer, the recent mayor of San Diego; Doug Ose, a former congressman from Sacramento; and Caitlyn Jenner, the Olympic gold medalist, reality show celebrity and transgender activist.The barriers to enter the race are low: State rules allow candidates to file any time up until 59 days before Election Day, as long as they can produce 7,000 signatures from supporters or pay a fee of about $4,000.Tag does not work as cheaply. Mr. Cox’s campaign paid about $6,000 to Steve Martin’s Working Wildlife, animal wranglers in Frazier Park, Calif., for the bear to make appearances at news conferences and in a commercial, according to Mr. Martin and Keith Bauer, Tag’s trainer.Mr. Cox’s campaign sought to rebrand him with a tougher image after the San Diego businessman was trounced by Mr. Newsom in the 2018 election. It changed his Twitter handle to @BeastJohnCox, and labeled Mr. Newsom a “pretty boy” whose looks had carried him into office. Tag’s job, apparently, was to drive home the “beast” theme and represent California.In that respect, he was technically miscast. He is a Kodiak bear, and the official state animal is the brown California grizzly. The bear on the state flag is a grizzly. So is “Bacteria Bear,” the famed 800-pound bronze statue outside the governor’s office, so nicknamed for all the small, sticky hands that have petted it during elementary school field trips.But the grizzly has been extinct for a century in California. Born nine years ago in a private zoo in Ohio, Tag, at least, is alive and “is brown,” Mr. Bauer explained.Tag has worked for the past seven years. He has appeared in “Yellowstone,” the Western television series starring Mr. Costner, with Tracy Morgan in an ad for Rocket Mortgage and in the Apple TV+ series “See” with Jason Momoa. In an upcoming plumbing company ad with a Goldilocks theme, Mr. Bauer added proudly, “he plays all three bears.”At the Sacramento news conference on Tuesday, the trainer cued Tag to nod as Mr. Cox spoke, and rewarded the bear with creme sandwich cookies and chicken from Walmart. An electrified cord — unplugged because Mr. Bauer said the bear had long since learned not to go near it — separated Tag from the press.Tag is part of a rebranding effort for Mr. Cox, a San Diego businessman who lost to Mr. Newsom in 2018.Renée C. Byer/The Sacramento Bee, via Associated PressMr. Bauer, who has trained Tag since he was a cub, said the bear had the personality of a golden retriever.“We wrestle and I tickle the inside of his thigh, which for a bear that’s like tickling the bottom of your foot,” the trainer said.Still, he expected trouble. Once, an Instagram influencer in Los Angeles hired Tag to pose with a crowd of bikini-clad women in a mansion, and animal rights groups complained, charging that the bear was insufficiently separated from the women. Mr. Bauer and Mr. Martin, the owner of the animal business, said state fish and wildlife inspectors interviewed them for several hours after the complaint.Records shared by animal rights groups show a handful of citations involving issues with the company’s care and housing of animals over the last decade, but none involving Tag. This week, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals immediately criticized the Cox campaign for hiring the bear, saying that the use was exploitative and that the handlers appeared to have violated the federal Animal Welfare Act by letting Mr. Cox stand too close to his mascot.California opinion writers charged that the use of the bear was ethically and politically tone-deaf.“Pro tip: Nobody cares what you say when there’s a half-ton omnivore lurking behind you,” the Sacramento Bee’s editorial page editor suggested.And at the Capitol, a Democratic state senator from San Diego, Ben Hueso, charged that Tag’s handlers had violated the spirit of a law California passed in 2019 to prevent animal cruelty in circuses.“An innocent wild animal shouldn’t have to suffer harassment, confinement and humiliation because Mr. Cox has a problem generating interest in his campaign,” Mr. Hueso said.“Humiliation?” countered Mr. Bauer. “That bear will walk away from you and fart in your face and it doesn’t mean a thing to him. He burps in my face all the time. Doesn’t mean a thing to him.”Meanwhile, on Twitter, it appeared that the bear’s message had been hijacked. “Why’s everybody gotta make a big deal about my weight?” tweeted a new account, @SadJohnCoxBear.Mr. Bauer said he had done little this week but defend himself to reporters. “They make it seem like I’m up here with a cattle prod and it’s not like that,” he said.In fact, during the shoot for that plumbing commercial, he said, he and Tag had played off camera with soap suds. It did not fit the beastly brand, but “he enjoyed the hell out of that.” More
