California

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Newsom Beat the Recall, Now Comes the Hard Part: Governing California

      by

      Gov. Gavin Newsom is facing multiple crises. Ninety percent of California is in extreme drought. The median home price has eclipsed $800,000. Some 100,000 people are sleeping outside or in their cars.SACRAMENTO — For nearly a year — while a pandemic raged, while wildfires roared, while smoke smothered the once-pristine blue skies over Lake Tahoe — Gov. Gavin Newsom has had to simultaneously govern the nation’s most populous state and beat back an attempted recall.On Wednesday, he emerged victorious — but still had multiple crises to confront. Ninety percent of the state was in extreme drought. The median home price had eclipsed $800,000. Some 100,000 people were sleeping outside or in their cars nightly. And more than 6 million public school children were struggling to make up the learning they had missed because of the coronavirus pandemic.Hundreds of bills on his desk waited to be signed, including one to allow duplexes in single-family neighborhoods across California and another enshrining the vote-by-mail rules that helped keep him in office.The election’s resounding rejection of the long-shot, Republican-led attempt to oust Mr. Newsom appeared not only to strengthen him for re-election next year, but also to bestow a mandate. As the vote count continued on Wednesday, the recall was being rejected by roughly 2-1. The margin echoes the state’s Democrat-Republican split and the scale of Mr. Newsom’s 2018 election, which was a landslide.Voters cast their ballots at Salazar Park in Los Angeles on Tuesday.Allison Zaucha for The New York TimesBut what the governor can do with that mandate is unclear. The recall campaign was long and divisive, political experts say, and the state’s problems increasingly resist simple solutions. Many more straightforward challenges were met last year with a massive state surplus and a flood of pandemic aid from the Biden administration.Now — although Mr. Newsom has the advantage of a unified base, a Democratic supermajority in the Legislature and the state’s attention — what remains are issues that require far more than money.“These are problems that take time,” said Jerry Brown, who governed the state for two eight-year stints in the 1970s and again from 2010 to 2018. “Reducing carbon emissions. Reversing the gross inequalities. Being able to keep the crime rate down. Dealing with so many people who have so little that their lives and families are disintegrating.”The recall, Mr. Brown said, was “sound and fury signifying very little” — an “expensive blip” that in a couple of weeks “will be not much more than a footnote.” But, he said, “it’s down now to the bread and butter issues. And they’re the same old issues that have been around for a long time in modern California.”Mr. Newsom offered few details during his campaign on how he would tackle these challenges, in part because of the tenor of the recall. The Republican candidates seeking to replace him framed the campaign as a referendum on him, from his handling of homelessness to the rise of urban crime rates and his decision to party at a luxe wine country restaurant after he had asked Californians to stay home during the pandemic. Larry Elder, who lost a bid to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, thanks supporters who attended his election night party in Costa Mesa after polls closed Tuesday night.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesBut except for his coronavirus policies, which have been pointed to as a potential national model, the governor largely avoided making his agenda part of the recall discussion. Aiming to animate the state’s Democratic base in an off-year special election, he portrayed the recall as a battle to rescue the nation’s biggest blue state from hard right extremists, and as part of a larger, national war on the divisiveness of former President Donald J. Trump and the Republicans who admire him.Outside a victory party afterward, he acknowledged the challenges that await him, but resisted much elaboration.“Let the dust settle,” he said.At least part of the calculus will include next year’s regularly scheduled gubernatorial election. Although the governor is unlikely to face much meaningful opposition, 2022 is a regular election year — a time when controversial legislation tends to be set aside.“It will be interesting to see what he wants to focus on,” said Toni Atkins, the president pro tempore of the California Senate, noting that much of the Legislature also will be campaigning. The dominance of Democrats in the State Senate and Assembly masks an often unwieldy range of views — Bay Area progressives, Central Valley moderates, coastal environmentalists, jobs-first pragmatists.Voting at Central Baptist Church in El Centro. Californians rejected the recall by about 2-1 as of Wednesday morning.John Francis Peters for The New York TimesThe challenge was apparent even within the county-by-county recall tallies, with huge majorities for the governor in Democratic strongholds such as Los Angeles and the Bay Area, thinner margins in San Diego and Orange County and much of the far rural north voting to replace him.Legislation of remarkable sweep quietly passed this year, even as the recall consumed the public’s attention, Ms. Atkins said: preschool for all of the state’s 4-year-olds, stimulus checks for low- and middle-income people, health insurance for undocumented immigrants 50 and older.But climate bills stalled, casualties in many cases of the split between parts of the state that prioritize jobs and parts that prioritize action on climate change.She predicted the governor would resume work on priorities he had held from the start of his administration, including affordable housing and early childhood education. But, she added, his victory has whetted legislative ambitions, too.The fifth-largest economy in the world and home to some 40 million people, California is known both for its bounty and for its epic flaws. It leads the nation in billionaires; when housing is factored in, it also has America’s highest poverty level.Its coastline is renowned, but towering wildfires, burning over as much as a million acres, have become a terrifying annual occurrence. A mega-drought has sent the price of agricultural water soaring and tens of thousands of farms are on reduced water rations.One hurdle in carrying out ambitious policy objectives, experts said, was a political lesson that emerged from the recall: Polarization pays. Governor Gavin Newsom delivers remarks on the state’s wildfires in Sacramento on Monday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesPartisan rhetoric mobilized voters on both sides, handing Mr. Newsom his win and raising the profile of an otherwise withering Republican Party. Any group that, in the past, might have been daunted by the challenge of launching a statewide recall learned that even a lost cause can disrupt an opponent for months, Mark Baldassare, president of the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, said.But that isn’t necessarily conducive to governance, he added.“This recall election has just really stirred the pot,” said Mr. Baldassare. “Will people find common ground? It’s going to be hard.”Fernando Guerra, a professor and the director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, said the governor has every tool at his disposal to take bold action if he wants to — a supportive White House, a legislative supermajority, a state surplus and billions of federal dollars in pandemic aid. Leveraging those advantages could leave a legacy to rival the state’s most iconic governors, he said, including Jerry Brown and his father, who governed in the 1960s, Edmund G. “Pat” Brown.“California will be positioned to have the most extraordinary two or three years of government and state-led innovation since the Pat Brown era — or California could be mired in political paralysis and doomed to incremental decline. And it will all depend on Gavin Newsom,” he said.“If crises are opportunities, then this is the greatest opportunity any sitting governor in America will ever have.”Thomas Fuller contributed reporting from Sacramento. More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Democrats Continue to Struggle With Men of Color

      by

      The big headline is that the California recall failed. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom gets to keep his job. He handily fought off the Republican challenge.But there is a worrisome detail in the data, one that keeps showing up, one that Democrats would do well to deal with: Black and Latino men are not hewing as close to the party line as Black and Latina women.There are, of course, issues with exit polls, and results often change as more votes are counted. But that said, the California exit polls do seem to reflect what polls have shown for some time now.In CNN’s exit poll, nearly half of the Hispanic men surveyed and nearly a quarter of the Black men voted to support the recall. The largest difference between men and women of any racial group was between Black men and Black women.Even if these numbers are later adjusted, the warning must still be registered.For many of these men, saying Republicans are racist or attract racists or abide racists isn’t enough.For one thing, never underestimate the communion among men, regardless of race. Men have privileges in society, and some are drawn to policies that elevate their privileges.For instance, many Black and Hispanic men oppose abortion.Some men liked the bravado of Donald Trump and chafed at the rise of the #MeToo movement. Some simply see trans women as men in dresses and want to carry guns wherever they want.The question for Democrats is how do they lure some of these men back without catering to the patriarchy. From a position of principle, the party can’t really appeal to them; it must seek to change them.Add to the patriarchal issues a sense of disillusionment with the Democratic Party and its inability to make meaningful changes on the issues that many of these men care most about, such as criminal justice reform and workplace competition. Democrats often resort to emotional appeals in election season, telling minorities that they must vote for liberal candidates as a defense, to prevent the worst. But many of these men believe that the Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans.The idea of always playing defense and never offense is, well, offensive.Instead, Democrats have to craft a message of empowerment and change. They have to say to these men that they don’t have to operate from a position of weakness and pleading, holding back the forces that would otherwise overwhelm them.To be honest, a robust, offensive messaging campaign would resonate with all people who tend to vote Democratic — men and women.The truth is that in a two-party system, voters have only two choices, so protest votes are self-defeating, as is sitting out elections or supporting the opposition to scare your favored side into better behavior.In a two-party system, if you don’t want the Trump Republicans to win, you must vote Democratic. You are trapped in that way, and no one likes the feeling of being trapped.But “trapped” is not an inspiring campaign message, particularly to people who spent a lifetime feeling trapped and have tired of it, as these men have.Yelling at them isn’t going to work, neither is shaming them or thinking that you are “educating” them.My fear is that these men will continue to drift away from the Democratic Party, not because the Republican Party is the most welcoming of spaces, but because Democrats cannot or will not do more to appeal to Black and Latino men.To my mind, the Democratic Party must do a few things:Admit that it makes many promises to Black people in election seasons that it not only doesn’t accomplish, but sometimes doesn’t even take up.Acknowledge that many of these men feel that the system itself has failed them, that the status quo has failed them.Give the plight of Black and brown men the same prominence that both parties have given the plight of working-class white men.Black and brown men need to feel that they are being seen as more than victims of a predatory justice system or part of the so-called immigrant crisis. They need to be rendered in full and seen as whole.When they are not, it leaves an opening for Republicans to exploit, and conservatives have done a clever job of doing just that in recent elections.If you are like me, you are thinking: These men should know better. They are voting in ways that invite injury or not voting at all. They shouldn’t be coddled. The world is sick of coddling selfish men.But we, too, are stuck in this two-party system, and as such, we must do whatever it takes to prevent calamity and eek out progress.In that world, when men of color vote against the interests of people of color and out of the male ego, we must gingerly talk them down rather than aggressively chant them down.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      What Exit Polling Tells Us About Voters in the Recall

      by

      The only exit poll from California’s recall election showed Mr. Newsom winning with an unusual coalition. In a departure from nearly every recent election, longstanding racial and ethnic divides between white voters and voters of color seemed to vanish.According to the exits, 63 percent of people of color and 60 percent of Latino voters chose “No” on the question of whether to remove the governor, compared to 59 percent of white voters. Typically, Democrats fare somewhat worse among white voters in California, but much better among other voters. The 63 percent and 60 percent showings of people of color and Latinos would be the weakest for a California Democrat in memory.If true, the exit poll result would mark a seminal moment in California’s political evolution. It would suggest that growing Democratic strength among college graduates — and weakness among those without degrees — has begun to significantly reduce the gap between white voters and others, and nearly eliminate it altogether in the state.But the actual results of the recall election tell a different story. They don’t show much of anything unusual at all. The results suggest that Mr. Newsom won with a fairly typical coalition for a California Democrat in recent years, one not too dissimilar from the one that elected him in 2018 and elected President Biden in 2020.The governor may have fared somewhat worse among nonwhite voters than Democrats did a decade ago, but in the end, California voted for the Democrat — and it seems to have done so in about the same way it has in recent cycles, including among Asian and Latino voters.Millions of votes remain to be counted, and a clearer picture may emerge in the coming days as more votes are tallied. But so far, the county-by-county results are nearly identical to those from 2018 or 2020. There’s only one county — Riverside County — that flipped from 2018 so far, and it flipped to Mr. Newsom.On average in the recall election, the “No” vote in a typical county was only about 2 percentage points different than Mr. Newsom’s vote share in 2018. It’s hard to reconcile the stability of the results so far with the huge shift in Mr. Newsom’s coalition indicated by the exit poll. The results don’t show evidence of a stark drop-off in Democratic support among Latino voters, either.Mr. Newsom performed about as well as he did four years ago in relatively diverse Southern California, including in heavily Latino stretches of the rural Central Valley and the Imperial Valley, where Democrats only compete on the strength of Latino voters.Still, Mr. Newsom’s support there was already relatively weak for a Democrat: He often fared about as poorly as Mr. Biden, and worse than Gov. Jerry Brown did in 2014. The 2018 exit poll showed Mr. Newsom winning 64 percent of Latino voters, down from the 73 percent share won by Mr. Brown in 2014.The exit poll on Tuesday was conducted by Edison Research and sponsored by major television news networks. Unlike traditional in-person exit polls, most California exit poll interviews are typically conducted by telephone to reach early and mail-in voters. This year, the recall exit poll added an online and text message component.It is possible the additional online and text interviews may have contributed to some of the unusual shifts that were apparent in the poll. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Larry Elder Looks to a Future in Conservative Politics

      by

      If there was a breakout star of California’s recall election, it was Larry Elder, a conservative talk radio host who, over the course of the spring and summer, turned himself into a bona fide Trump-era political celebrity.Mr. Elder was the leading Republican vote-getter in all 58 California counties. Statewide, he was first on the question of who should replace Gov. Gavin Newsom if he were removed from office, with the only exception being in San Francisco, where a little-known Democrat had 21 percent of the vote early Wednesday.Mr. Elder has appeared on Fox News 52 times this year and won a platform that he is unlikely to relinquish. Last month, he told a local television reporter in Sacramento that is he is “very likely” to run for governor in 2022, when Mr. Newsom will be facing re-election. His 47 percent vote total on the replace Newsom question makes him a formidable foe against any other Republican candidate.Yet as Mr. Elder has captured the heart of California’s Trumpian base, his candidacy demonstrated the limitations of that strategy. Mr. Newsom coasted to a recall victory with a margin nearly identical to President Biden’s 2020 victory in California; Mr. Elder did not bring any new voters to the Republican Party in a state where Democrats hold a nearly two-to-one voter registration advantage.Winning office may not be the goal.Conservative figures can make a good living on Fox News appearances, and Mr. Elder is skilled at communicating with a right-wing audience from his years on the radio. There is a list of candidates who have lost high-profile races only to transform themselves into political celebrities with large platforms as they seek office again: Democrats Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Beto O’Rourke in Texas and Republicans John James in Michigan and Sean Parnell in Pennsylvania among them.Mr. Elder’s spokeswoman, Stephanie Marshall, on Wednesday morning declined to comment about his future plans. She wouldn’t say if his vow to run again remained operative. During a concession speech on Tuesday night, Mr. Elder didn’t address 2022 but told his supporters to “stay tuned.”“We may have lost the battle,” he said, “but we are going to win the war.” More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Newsom sobrevive a la revocatoria en California

      by

      Los votantes reafirmaron el abrumador respaldo que le dieron al gobernador Gavin Newsom en 2018.Gov. Gavin Newsom gave a victory speech after defeating California’s Republican-led recall vote in a landslide.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesEntra aquí para enterarte de lo último sobre la victoria del gobernador Gavin NewsomSACRAMENTO — Un intento liderado por los republicanos para destituir al gobernador Gavin Newsom de California terminó en derrota el martes, ya que los demócratas en el estado más poblado de Estados Unidos cerraron filas contra un pequeño movimiento de base que se aceleró con la propagación de la COVID-19.Los votantes reafirmaron su apoyo a Newsom, cuya ventaja se hizo insuperable a medida que el recuento continuaba en el condado de Los Ángeles y otros grandes bastiones demócratas una vez cerradas las urnas. Larry Elder, un presentador de radio conservador, encabezó a los 46 aspirantes a convertirse en el próximo gobernador.La votación puso de manifiesto el poder de los votantes liberales en California: ningún republicano ha ocupado un cargo estatal en más de una década.Pero también reflejó el reciente progreso del estado contra la pandemia de coronavirus, que ha cobrado más de 67.000 vidas en California. El estado tiene una de las tasas de vacunación más altas del país y una de las tasas más bajas de nuevos casos del virus, que el gobernador argumentó incansablemente a los votantes que eran los resultados de sus mandatos de vacunación y del uso de mascarillas.Aunque los críticos de Newsom habían iniciado la revocatoria porque se oponían a sus posturas sobre la pena de muerte y la inmigración, fue la politización de la pandemia lo que la impulsó la votación, ya que los californianos se impacientaron con el cierre de empresas y aulas. En las encuestas, los californianos dijeron que ningún asunto era más urgente que el virus.“Como trabajador de la salud, era importante para mí tener un gobernador que siga la ciencia”, dijo Marc Martino, de 26 años, quien lucía una bata quirúrgica azul mientras dejaba su boleta en Irvine.Associated Press proclamó vencedor a Newsom, quien había ganado con un 62 por ciento de diferencia en 2018, menos de una hora después del cierre de las urnas el martes. Alrededor del 66 por ciento de los ocho millones de boletas contabilizadas hasta las 10 p. m., hora del Pacífico, decían que el gobernador debía permanecer en el cargo.“Parece que estamos disfrutando de un voto abrumadoramente por el ‘no’ esta noche, aquí en el estado de California, pero el ‘no’ no es lo único que se expresó esta noche”, dijo Newsom a los periodistas bien entrada la noche del martes.“Hemos dicho sí a la ciencia. Hemos dicho sí a las vacunas. Dijimos sí a acabar con esta pandemia. Dijimos sí al derecho de la gente a votar sin miedo al falso fraude y a la supresión de votantes. Dijimos sí al derecho constitucional fundamental de las mujeres a decidir por sí mismas lo que hacen con su cuerpo, su destino, su futuro. Dijimos sí a la diversidad”.En el condado de Orange, Elder habló ante un salón de baile repleto de simpatizantes y admitió el resultado. “Seamos amables en la derrota”, dijo, y añadió: “puede que hayamos perdido la batalla, pero vamos a ganar la guerra”.El resultado de la revocación, considerado un barómetro de las elecciones intermedias de 2022, supuso un alivio para los demócratas de todo Estados Unidos. Aunque las encuestas mostraban que la revocatoria contaba con la oposición de alrededor del 60 por ciento de los californianos, los sondeos realizados durante el verano sugerían que los probables votantes no estaban entusiasmados con Newsom. Sin embargo, a medida que se acercaba el plazo de las elecciones, su base se movilizó.El presidente Joe Biden, la vicepresidenta Kamala Harris y las senadoras Elizabeth Warren, por Massachusetts, y Amy Klobuchar, por Minnesota, viajaron a California para hacer campaña por Newsom, mientras que el senador Bernie Sanders, por Vermont, y el expresidente Barack Obama aparecieron en sus anuncios. Unos 70 millones de dólares en contribuciones a su campaña fueron aportados por donantes demócratas, grupos tribales y empresariales y sindicatos.El gobernador acusó a los extremistas de extrema derecha y a los partidarios del expresidente Donald Trump de intentar una toma hostil en un estado en el que nunca podrían aspirar a conseguir un apoyo mayoritario en unas elecciones tradicionales. También contrastó las bajas tasas de infección por coronavirus de California con el gran número de muertes y hospitalizaciones en estados gobernados por los republicanos como Florida y Texas.Una marcha en contra de la revocatoria en Los Ángeles la semana pasadaAllison Zaucha para The New York TimesLas matemáticas electorales hicieron el resto: los demócratas superan en número a los republicanos dos a uno en California, y las normas de votación de la pandemia fomentaron una alta participación, permitiendo que las boletas se enviaran por correo a cada uno de los 22 millones de votantes activos registrados en el estado con los gastos de envío por correo ya pagados por anticipado. Más del 40 por ciento de esos californianos votaron anticipadamente.La revocatoria, iniciada por Orrin Heatlie —un republicano del norte de California y sargento jubilado de la oficina del alguacil—, fue una de las seis peticiones lideradas por los conservadores que comenzaron a circular a los pocos meses de la toma de posesión de Newsom.Los intentos de revocatoria son habituales en California, donde la democracia directa forma parte de la cultura política desde hace mucho tiempo. Sin embargo, solo otro intento de revocatoria de un gobernador ha llegado a las urnas: en 2003, cuando los californianos revocaron al gobernador Gray Davis tras los atentados del 11 de septiembre, la quiebra de las puntocoms y los continuos cortes de electricidad. Eligieron a Arnold Schwarzenegger para sustituir a Davis como gobernador, colocando a un republicano de centro en lugar de un demócrata de centro.Al principio, la petición de Heatlie tuvo dificultades para ganar terreno. Pero cobró fuerza a medida que la pandemia se extendía por California y Newsom tenía dificultades para contenerla. Los californianos, que al principio apoyaban las ordenanzas de salud del gobernador, se cansaron de los cierres de empresas y aulas, y el descontento público estalló en noviembre, cuando Newsom fue visto sin mascarilla en el French Laundry, un exclusivo restaurante de la región vinícola, tras instar al público a evitar las reuniones.Una orden judicial que prorrogaba el plazo de recogida de firmas debido a los confinamientos pandémicos permitió a los defensores de la destitución aprovechar la indignación y el malestar.A medida que el resultado de la elección revocatoria del martes se hacía evidente, Darry Sragow, estratega demócrata y editor de California Target Book, un almanaque político no partidista, dijo que el gobernador evitó “un asalto republicano” y “podría salir de esto más fuerte que nunca, dependiendo de su margen”.Los partidarios de la revocatoria también reclamaron parte de la gloria.“Éramos David contra Goliat, éramos el Álamo”, dijo Mike Netter, uno de los pocos activistas republicanos del Tea Party cuya ira por la oposición de Newsom a la pena de muerte, su apoyo a los trabajadores indocumentados y sus profundas raíces en la élite dominante ayudaron a inspirar el intento de destitución.El mero hecho de reunir los casi 1,5 millones de firmas necesarias para desencadenar la elección especial fue “un logro histórico”, dijo Heatlie.Mike Netter y Orrin Heatlie, quienes propusieron la revocatoria, dirigieron una reunión en Folsom en febrero.Max Whittaker para The New York TimesLa campaña por la revocatoria, dijeron los dos hombres, ha ampliado el pequeño grupo que comenzó el esfuerzo a una coalición estatal de 400.000 miembros que ya están ayudando a impulsar las propuestas de votación para financiar los bonos escolares, prohibir los mandatos de vacunación en las escuelas y abolir los sindicatos de empleados públicos, que han sido una fuerza demócrata de larga data en California.Otros republicanos, sin embargo, calificaron la revocatoria como un grave error de cálculo político. Alrededor de una cuarta parte de los votantes registrados en el estado son republicanos, y su número ha ido disminuyendo desde la década de 1990, una tendencia que los proponentes de la revocación creían que podría revertirse si de alguna manera podían cambiar el mando en el estado más grande del país.La derrota del martes —en unas elecciones especiales que costaron al estado unos 276 millones de dólares— supuso, en cambio, “otro clavo en el ataúd”, dijo Mike Madrid, un estratega republicano de California que ha sido muy crítico con el partido durante el mandato de Trump, acusando en particular al Partido Republicano de haber alejado a los votantes latinos.Madrid dijo que la revocatoria significaba que, incluso en California, el partido de Trump se había convertido en parte de “una base republicana cada vez más radical, ejercida y reducida, arremetiendo de diferentes maneras en diferentes partes del país”. Observó las acusaciones de fraude electoral que algunos en su partido empezaron a hacer mucho antes de que se cerraran las urnas, replicando a Trump, quien afirmó sin pruebas que los demócratas habían “amañado” las elecciones revocatorias.A pesar de la enorme diferencia de apoyos, por ejemplo, Elder exigió esta semana, antes de que terminara la votación, que se convocara una sesión legislativa especial “para investigar y mejorar los resultados torcidos”. Dijo que había habido “casos de boletas indocumentadas”, pero no dio ejemplos.Algunos observadores demócratas se mostraron circunspectos y advirtieron de que la perturbación causada por el intento de destitución apuntaba a problemas más profundos.“Esta revocatoria era un canario en la mina de carbón”, dijo Sragow, un veterano estratega demócrata que citó las disparidades de ingresos del estado, la escasez de vivienda y la crisis climática. “Y hasta que no se solucionen los problemas que lo crearon, la gente en el poder tiene problemas. Hay mucha rabia, miedo y frustración ahí fuera”.Trabajadores de un grupo de defensa de inmigrantes presentaron a Newsom a los votantes en Palmdale en agosto.Rozette Rago para The New York TimesLa votación del martes culminó un esfuerzo de casi un año del gobernador para persuadir a los votantes de que vean más allá de esa oscuridad. Desde principios de este año, cuando quedó claro que la revocatoria contaría con el dinero y el tiempo necesarios para ser sometida a votación, Newsom ha hecho campaña sin cesar.Aprovechando el enorme superávit del estado —resultado de un aumento más alto de lo esperado de los ingresos y de las cotizaciones bursátiles de los californianos más pudientes—, el gobernador se ha movido de forma agresiva para demostrar que el estado puede proteger su economía y frenar el virus. En los últimos meses, ha distribuido vacunas, ha limpiado la basura en los barrios abandonados por los californianos afectados por la pandemia, ha abierto habitaciones de motel a los californianos sin hogar, ha anunciado cheques de estímulo y ayudas al alquiler para los californianos pobres y de clase media y se ha puesto repetidamente delante de una cortina de lamé dorado para organizar una de las mayores loterías de vacunas del país.Los anteriores esfuerzos de destitución guiaron su estrategia política. A diferencia de Davis, cuyo vicegobernador se presentó como alternativa demócrata en la revocatoria de 2003, dando efectivamente permiso a los partidarios para destituir al gobernador, Newsom y su equipo despejaron rápidamente el campo de posibles alternativas demócratas.Al igual que Scott Walker, el exgobernador de Wisconsin y el único gobernador que había triunfado antes en una revocatoria, Newsom pintó el esfuerzo de destitución en términos nacionales y partidistas y rechazó una postura defensiva. Su estrategia impulsó a los principales donantes y a su base.Al igual que en 2003, cuando se enfrentó a un popular progresista para la alcaldía de San Francisco, Newsom enmarcó la carrera no como un referéndum sobre él, sino como una elección entre él mismo y una alternativa potencialmente catastrófica, en este caso, Elder, cuyo nombre reconocido lo elevó rápidamente a la cima de la lista de aspirantes.La vicepresidenta Kamala Harris se unió a Newsom en un mitin en San Leandro la semana pasada.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesSeñalando que Elder había construido una carrera atacando causas liberales, el gobernador lo pintó como un clon de Trump que impondría políticas de extrema derecha en un estado que ha sido un bastión del pensamiento liberal.“Vota no y sal de ahí”, dijo el gobernador a los votantes, sugiriendo que solo respondieran al llamado de oponerse a la revocatoria y que no respondieron la segunda pregunta de la boleta, que preguntaba quién debía sustituir a Newsom en caso de que la revocatoria triunfara.Millones de votantes eligieron no responder la segunda pregunta de la boleta; Elder recibió alrededor del 44 por ciento del voto de quienes sí lo hicieron. Kevin Paffrath, demócrata, y Kevin Faulconer, un republicano exalcalde de San Diego, habían recibido cada uno cerca del 10 por ciento de los votos a las 10 p. m., hora del Pacífico.Ni el apoyo republicano ni los fondos del partido se acercaron a la gran operación y presupuesto para la campaña que tenía Newsom a su disposición.California no limita los donativos a comités que trabajan a favor y en contra de las revocatorias, pero el estado limita las contribuciones a los candidatos de donantes individuales. Newsom capitalizó las reglas, recaudando más de 50 millones de dólares solo en donaciones de más de 100.000 dólares para oponerse a la revocatoria. Elder recaudó alrededor de 15 millones, y los comités que promovieron la revocatoria recaudaron aún menos fondos.Muchos donantes republicanos importantes comentaron que parecía inútil intentar revocar a un gobernador demócrata en un estado tan abrumadoramente liberal.Thomas Fuller More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Newsom’s Anti-Trump Recall Strategy Offers a Warning for 2022 Midterms

      by

      California Democrats were able to nationalize the vote — thanks to an avalanche of money, party discipline and, above all, an easily demonized opponent.SAN LEANDRO, Calif. — California basks in its clairvoyance. “The future happens here first,” says Gov. Gavin Newsom, calling his state “America’s coming attraction.”By emphatically turning back the effort to recall him from office, however, Mr. Newsom made clear that California’s cherished role presaging the politics of tomorrow was not as significant as another, larger factor in Tuesday’s results: the tribal politics of today.The first-term Democratic governor will remain in office because, in a deeply liberal state, he effectively nationalized the recall effort as a Republican plot, making a flame-throwing radio host the Trump-like face of the opposition to polarize the electorate along red and blue lines.Mr. Newsom found success not because of what makes California different but because of how it’s like everywhere else: He dominated in California’s heavily populated Democratic cities, the key to victory in a state where his party outnumbers Republicans by five million voters.“Gavin may have been on a high wire, but he was wearing a big, blue safety harness,” said Mike Murphy, a California-based Republican strategist.The recall does offer at least one lesson to Democrats in Washington ahead of next year’s midterm elections: The party’s pre-existing blue- and purple-state strategy of portraying Republicans as Trump-loving extremists can still prove effective with the former president out of office, at least when the strategy is executed with unrelenting discipline, an avalanche of money and an opponent who plays to type.Larry Elder, the Republican front-runner in the bid to replace Mr. Newsom, thanked supporters at his election night party Tuesday at the Hilton Orange County in Costa Mesa.Mark Abramson for The New York Times“You either keep Gavin Newsom as your governor or you’ll get Donald Trump,” President Biden said at an election-eve rally in Long Beach, making explicit what Mr. Newsom and his allies had been suggesting for weeks about the Republican front-runner, the longtime radio host Larry Elder.By the time Mr. Biden arrived in California, Mr. Newsom was well positioned. Yet in the days leading up to the recall, he was warning Democrats of the right-wing threat they would face in elections across the country next November.“Engage, wake up, this thing is coming,” he said in an interview, calling Mr. Elder “a national spokesperson for an extreme agenda.”California, which has not elected a Republican governor since the George W. Bush administration, is hardly a top area of contention in next year’s midterms. Yet for Republicans eying Mr. Biden’s falling approval ratings and growing hopeful about their 2022 prospects, the failed recall is less an ominous portent than a cautionary reminder about what happens when they put forward candidates who are easy prey for the opposition.The last time Democrats controlled the presidency and both chambers of Congress, in 2010, the Republicans made extensive gains but fell short of reclaiming the Senate because they nominated a handful of candidates so flawed that they managed to lose in one of the best midterm elections for the G.O.P. in modern history.That’s to say that primaries matter — and if Republicans are to reclaim the Senate next year, party officials say, they will do so by elevating candidates who do not come with the bulging opposition research files of a 27-year veteran of right-wing radio.“Larry Elder saved their lives on this,” Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist in Sacramento, said of Democrats. “Until this race had a general election context, there was not a lot of enthusiasm for life in California. But when you have the near-perfect caricature of a MAGA candidate, well, you can turn your voters out.”Gray Davis, the Democratic former California governor who was recalled in 2003, put it more pithily: “He was a gift from God,” he said of Mr. Elder. “He conducted his entire campaign as if the electorate was conservative Republicans.”Gray Davis, center, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, right, who took the governor’s office from Mr. Davis after a 2003 recall election, watched Mr. Newsom’s inauguration in 2018.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesHungry for some good news after a bleak month, Democrats will nonetheless happily seize on Mr. Newsom’s apparent triumph. After all, Mr. Biden himself knows all too well from his experience as vice president in 2010 — when his party lost the Massachusetts Senate seat vacated by the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy — that even the safest-seeming races can’t be taken for granted in special elections.Moreover, Mr. Newsom’s success politically vindicates the president’s decision to enact a mandate on businesses to require the Covid-19 vaccine. The governor campaigned aggressively on his own vaccine requirements and lashed Mr. Elder for vowing to overturn them.In fact, before Mr. Biden announced that policy on Thursday, Mr. Newsom’s lieutenants believed they were showing the way for other Democrats — including the president. “We’re doing what the White House needs to do, which is get more militant on vaccines,” Sean Clegg, one of the governor’s top advisers, said in an interview last week.Historically, much of California’s political trendsetting has taken place on the right.From Ronald Reagan’s first election as governor, signaling the backlash to the 1960s, to the property-tax revolt of the 1970s, foreshadowing Reagan’s national success in the 1980s, the state was something of a conservative petri dish.Even in more recent years, as California turned to the left, it was possible to discern the Republican future in Gov. Pete Wilson’s hard line on illegal immigration in the 1990s, and in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s potent cocktail of celebrity, populism and platitudes in the 2000s.Earlier this summer, it appeared that, once again, California could augur national trends. Burdened by rising crime, homelessness and Covid fatigue, Mr. Newsom was seen in polls as in danger of being recalled.His challenge, however, was not a tidal wave of opposition, but Democratic apathy.That began to change when Mr. Newsom outspent his Republican opponents and supporters of the recall four-to-one on television over the summer. Voter sentiment turned even more sharply away from replacing him once Mr. Elder emerged, transforming the contest from a referendum on Mr. Newsom into a more traditional Republican-versus-Democrat election.Every Democratic campaign sign and handbill, and even the ballot itself that was mailed to registered California voters, termed the vote a “Republican Recall,” emblazoning a scarlet R on the exercise.“We defined this as a Republican recall, which is what it is,” Rusty Hicks, the California Democratic chairman, boasted shortly before Mr. Newsom and Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage at a rally Sept. 8 near Oakland.A rare convergence of interests between Democrats and Republicans ultimately favored Mr. Newsom: The only people more thrilled to elevate the profile of Mr. Elder, a Black conservative who delights in puncturing liberal pieties, were the paid members of the governor’s staff.Mr. Elder campaigning in Monterey Park on Monday.Alex Welsh for The New York TimesMr. Elder appeared on Fox News in prime time 52 times this year, according to the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters. No other Republican candidate appeared more than eight times.While that exposure helped Mr. Elder become the most popular alternative, it served to undermine the cause of removing Mr. Newsom from office, by ensuring the contest would feel more like a general election than like the last, and to date only, successful California gubernatorial recall.In 2003, Mr. Schwarzenegger was better known for his Hollywood credits than for his politics. He also hammered away at a distinctly local issue, California’s tax on automobiles, which kept the race centered on state rather than federal policies. And the incumbent, Mr. Davis, was far more unpopular than Mr. Newsom is.California then was also a different state in a way that illustrates how politically polarized it has become. In 2000, Mr. Bush lost California by about 11 percentage points, while still carrying Republican redoubts like Orange and San Diego Counties. Last year, Mr. Trump was routed in the state by nearly 30 points and lost the same two counties decisively.“There is no safe landing place today for moderates because, even if you’re mad at Gavin, the alternative is Ron DeSantis,” said Mr. Murphy, alluding to the Trumpian Florida governor.Indeed, what so delighted conservatives about Mr. Elder — his slashing right-wing rhetoric — is what made him an ideal foil for Mr. Newsom.Mr. Newsom turned his stump speech into a chapter-and-verse recitation of the greatest hits on Mr. Elder: comments he made disparaging women, minimizing climate change and questioning the need for a minimum wage. Joined by a parade of brand-name national Democrats who arrived in California equipped with anti-Elder talking points, the governor spent more time warning about a Republican taking over than he did defending his record.He also invoked the specter of red states and their leaders, scorning Republicans’ handling of Covid, voting restrictions and, in the final days of the campaign, Texas’s restrictive new abortion law.While House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the most prominent California Republican, kept his distance from the recall, Mr. Newsom was regularly joined by Democratic members of the state’s congressional delegation, who linked the recall to Mr. Trump’s refusal to concede defeat and to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.“A different type of insurrection in California,” as Representative Karen Bass put it at a rally in Los Angeles.Mr. Elder, for his part, happily ran as the provocateur he is, overwhelming more moderate G.O.P. hopefuls like former Mayor Kevin Faulconer of San Diego. He vowed to end vaccine mandates for state employees the day he was sworn in, which prompted chants of “Larry, Larry!” from conservative crowds but alienated the state’s pro-vaccine majority.California recall supporters rallied for the Mr. Elder in the Los Angeles suburb of Thousand Oaks.Allison Zaucha for The New York TimesMr. Newsom’s polling showed him leading 69-28 among Californians who said they were vaccinated, his advisers said, a significant advantage in a state where nearly seven in 10 adults have gotten their shots.The possibility that Elder-style figures could win primaries in more competitive states alarms many establishment-aligned Republicans as they assess the 2022 landscape.Nominees too closely linked to Mr. Trump, or laden with personal baggage, or both, could undermine the party’s prospects in states like Georgia, Arizona, Missouri and Pennsylvania that will prove crucial to determining control of the Senate.Similarly, Republicans could struggle in battleground governor’s races in Ohio, Georgia and Arizona if far-right candidates prevail in primaries thanks to Mr. Trump’s blessing.In few states, however, is the party’s Trump-era brand as toxic as it is in California.“This is not about Schwarzenegger, this is not even Scott Walker,” Mr. Newsom said, alluding to the former Republican governor of Wisconsin who fended off a recall. “This is about weaponizing this office for an extreme national agenda.”It is, the governor said, “Trump’s party, even here in California.” More