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      How Will Gavin Newsom Survive the California Recall?

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      LOS ANGELES — In the waning days of the campaign to save his job, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California assessed the stakes as nothing short of saving democracy. The possibility of being recalled from office had woken him to the fragile state of the political system, which he compared to … a Fabergé egg.“This is like a Fabergé egg, so to speak, in terms of democracy,” he said. “It’s not a football. You can’t throw it around. It’s delicate. Democracy is delicate. I didn’t realize how delicate it was, and now I’m starting to appreciate how delicate it is and how important this race is, not just for me.”That belated realization has animated the final weeks of this odd campaign, and when the votes are counted after the polls close on Tuesday, they appear very likely to break in the governor’s favor. Yet the election seems destined to be neither a morality play about democracy nor an endorsement of Mr. Newsom and his record. It is more prosaic than that: a lopsided battle between a reasonably popular Democratic incumbent who often seems more self-absorbed than self-aware and a conservative radio talk show host who is arguably to the right of Donald Trump, in a state Mr. Trump lost by 29 percentage points.What the recall does tell us is that California — one of the bluest states in the country — is not so different from other places in being subject to the gravitational tug of partisan forces. Even if Mr. Newsom prevails by a wide margin, the recall has underscored Californians’ continuing ambivalence about his leadership. A victory will be less a vote of confidence than a resounding rejection of the right-wing Republican agenda, a message Democrats hope will resonate beyond California.This should not even be close — and perhaps, despite earlier alarmist polling that suggested a tight race, it never was. On the up-or-down question of whether to recall Mr. Newsom, support for his removal has been consistently about 40 percent, slightly more than the share of the vote that Mr. Trump received in 2020. Mr. Newsom, elected by a large margin in 2018, has just presided over a staggering $76 billion budget surplus that enabled the state to spend generously on myriad programs and people — from elaborate vaccine lotteries to $600 stimulus checks.California Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly two to one, and no Republican has won statewide in 15 years. To defeat the recall, Mr. Newsom needs only to make sure enough Democrats vote. Polls and the large turnout of Democrats in early voting suggest he will do that.The political calculus has been complicated by several factors: the topsy-turvy nature of the Covid pandemic and its hardships, without which the recall would not have made the ballot; the extreme political polarization that has gripped the country; and California’s recall law, which makes it possible for a replacement to win with minimal support should the recall pass. But Democrats’ fears that lackluster turnout could create a doomsday scenario have also reflected lukewarm enthusiasm about Mr. Newsom and underlying dissatisfaction with his leadership on severe challenges like lack of affordable housing and devastating wildfires.Some of the dissonance is personal. He has long moved in an elite, moneyed world of Michelin-starred restaurants and Fabergé collectors. He empathized about sharing the parental pain of Zoom school while his kids attended private schools that were already offering in-person instruction. On the day he took office, he moved with fanfare into the state-owned Governor’s Mansion in downtown Sacramento — without disclosing he had already bought a $3.7 million suburban estate that would be the family home.Some of the tepid support is professional. His extensive use of executive orders and powers contributed to friction and distrust with some Democratic legislative leaders. He has a reputation dating back to his tenure as mayor of San Francisco of being enamored of bright, shiny objects, making headline-grabbing announcements that lack follow-through. Progressives are dissatisfied with his action on issues like fracking and single-payer health care; moderates view him as too liberal. In some sense, he lacks a committed base.But the specter of a Trump Republican governor has united Democrats. Mr. Newsom has capitalized on his ability to accept donations of unlimited amounts — another quirk of the recall law — amassing more than $70 million to wage a scare campaign against the talk-show host Larry Elder, the front-runner to become governor if the recall passes. Mr. Elder’s extreme positions on Covid-19 (he wants to repeal vaccine and mask mandates), climate change (he’s “not sure” state wildfires are due to climate change), abortion (he is “pro-life, 100 percent”) and the minimum wage (“the ideal minimum wage is $0.00”) have enabled Mr. Newsom to set the contest in a national frame, warning that California would become Texas and Florida rolled into one. It’s not clear whether the tens of millions of dollars spent on the Vote No campaign has won Mr. Newsom any converts. But that isn’t the goal. The fear is meant to galvanize a large Democratic turnout.Mr. Newsom largely has not campaigned on his record, with the exception of his management of the pandemic, which has earned him strong approval ratings at a time of growing support for mandates on vaccinations and masks.At the same time, fewer than half of those surveyed recently said California was headed in the right direction, and about half thought the state was in a recession. When rated on pressing problems like housing, homelessness and economic issues — which have temporarily taken a back seat to Covid-19 concerns — Mr. Newsom has earned relatively low marks.In recent weeks, Mr. Newsom stayed on message, warning the recall is a matter of life and death. He made little mention of accomplishments beyond boasting in some interviews about ambitious programs that have for the most part not yet gone into effect (like a promise of universal prekindergarten for 4-year-olds and an experiment in providing health care to people living on the street).He would have liked to campaign on his record, Mr. Newsom recently told the Los Angeles Times editorial board. But that would have to wait until his presumed re-election campaign next year.Republicans have probably squandered their best opportunity to regain power. With no obvious strong contenders on the horizon, it seems likely that 2022 will bring a sequel to what is looking like the anticlimactic recall of 2021.Miriam Pawel (@miriampawel) is the author of “The Browns of California: The Family Dynasty That Transformed a State and Shaped a Nation.”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, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Who Are the Republican Candidates in the California Recall?

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      Clockwise from top left: Kevin Faulconer, John Cox, Kevin Kiley, Caitlyn Jenner and Larry Elder.Dozens of Republicans are running to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. But only a handful of them have registered any meaningful support in the polls or raised the kind of money needed to run a statewide campaign. They include political veterans like Kevin Faulconer, the former mayor of San Diego, and Kevin Kiley, a member of the State Assembly from Rocklin. There are business leaders, including John Cox, who has run for office several times before, and first-time candidates, including Larry Elder, a talk radio personality, and Caitlyn Jenner, the former Olympian. Their vast differences reflect the disjointed nature of California’s Republican Party — an institution that has been hollowed out over the years and is now so small that it is practically a third party.Here is the complete list of challengers from the California secretary of state’s office. More

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      Voting in the California Recall: Ballots, Deadlines and Registration

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      More than 35 percent of California’s active, registered voters have already cast their ballots, and early voting is underway in several counties. If you missed the deadline to register to vote in the recall election, don’t worry. You can still register on Tuesday.Our Voter Guide has everything you need to know about where to vote, how to turn in your ballot and when we can expect to know the results.Where is my ballot?All registered and active California voters should have received a ballot by mail in the past few weeks. You can mail that ballot back or return it to a secure drop box by 8 p.m. You can track when your vote-by-mail ballot was mailed, received and counted at https://california.ballottrax.net/voter/.Where can I vote in person?Voters can cast ballots in person (you can find early voting locations here.) until 8 p.m. Pacific when polls close.You can check whether you’re registered to vote here. Visit the Secretary of State’s website to learn more about same-day voter registration.When will we know the results?So when will we know the results? After Election Day, county election officials have to complete their work receiving and counting ballots, although we may have some idea of the vote by then, since nearly eight million ballots have already been returned and many more are expected to come in as we get closer. Counties can process early ballots and get them ready to count, but they cannot start tallying until the polls close. More

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      Farmers May Be a Force in California Recall Election

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      Many say they favor ousting Gov. Gavin Newsom because of high taxes and restrictions on water use in the current drought.Craig Gordon, the owner of several dairy farms near Los Angeles, is a lifelong Democrat. He supported Senator Bernie Sanders for president, he doesn’t like former President Donald J. Trump and he voted for Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2018.But lately, he said, high taxes on milk, coronavirus shutdowns that have cut into his sales and state-imposed limitations on water for agriculture have made him so angry at Mr. Newsom that he has paid for seven billboards throughout the state — most of them in the Central Valley, which produces a quarter of the nation’s food — urging people to remove the governor in Tuesday’s recall election.Mr. Gordon said he has spent about $44,000 for the billboards. “If I had to spend my last dime to get rid of this guy, I would,” he said. School closings during the pandemic have inflicted losses in milk sales of roughly $15,000 a day, he said. Between that financial blow and his taxes, he said, he’ll have to sell his cows and close the business by next year.Farmers are a key constituency in California, where the $50 billion agricultural sector makes up about 3 percent of the state’s gross domestic product. During this year of exceptional drought, they are feeling the pinch of water restrictions, prompting many to support the recall of Mr. Newsom and choose a successor who they feel supports small businesses and will fight hard for their water needs.In interviews in recent days, several farmers said Mr. Newsom hadn’t responded as urgently as they would like to their pleas for more water storage, such as dams, reservoirs or water banks, as a way of helping them through this drought and future ones.“He’s not there for the state of California,” Mr. Gordon said of the Democratic governor. “We’re angry, and the people of the state want this guy gone.”Recall stickers made by Mr. Gordon, who has spent about $44,000 for billboards with the same design throughout California’s Central Valley.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesThat anger spiked last month when the State Water Resources Control Board passed an emergency curtailment order for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed, barring many farmers from using water from rivers and streams. With the drought, the Central Valley is experiencing the effects from years of pumping too much water from its aquifers.“The stress that farmers and our farming community felt through Covid has just been exacerbated this year because of these extreme heat days and now drought,” said Karen Ross, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. “The pain that can be felt cannot be minimized. It’s very real.”Mr. Newsom’s office said the governor supported farmers and ranchers, while also trying to promote water conservation and other measures to fight the effects of climate change. The state budget includes $5.1 billion to be spent over four years to mitigate the drought’s impact. This includes funding for emergency drought-relief projects that would secure and expand water supplies, and for drought contingency planning.Mr. Newsom has also worked with the Legislature to push for more than $1 billion in spending on climate-smart agriculture, his office said. That includes the Healthy Soils Program, which provides grants to enable farmers to adopt soil management practices that sequester carbon. And Mr. Newsom has tried to spread the sacrifice; in July, he asked all Californians to voluntarily cut their water use by 15 percent. (About 80 percent of the water California uses goes toward agriculture.)But in interviews, many farmers said the current water limits, combined with other state restrictions and taxes, have put a chokehold on their livelihoods.Jerry Coelho, an owner of Terra Linda Farms in Riverdale, said that if the water crisis doesn’t ease next year, he’ll have to stop farming half of his 6,000 acres and use that water to help irrigate his more water-intensive crops, like pistachios, almonds and wine grapes.He is aggravated that his water bills remain high while he gets only a small fraction of the water he says he is entitled to. And he is frustrated that there hasn’t been more immediate attention to creating new reservoirs, dams or water banks to harness water from the Sierra Nevada snowpack, a critical source. “There’s always an excuse as to why we can’t get water,” he said. “The worst thing of all is to do nothing.”Climate activists and environmentalists have emphasized the importance of conserving water in a state that is growing increasingly drier with climate change. But Mr. Coelho said he feels that farmers have done everything they can to conserve.Jerry Coelho, a farmer in Riverdale, said he’ll have to stop farming half of his 6,000 acres next year if the water crisis continues. He supports replacing Mr. Newsom with Larry Elder, a conservative radio host.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesHe supports replacing Mr. Newsom with Larry Elder, a conservative radio host and the governor’s leading challenger, who has met with farmers on campaign stops, telling them in a Fresno appearance this month that if elected, he would immediately suspend the 1970 California Environmental Quality Act. That move, according to The Fresno Bee, would allow dams and reservoirs to be built more easily.Farmers’ water needs have been a central cause in politics for decades, and a major issue in the state for a century, said Issac Hale, a postdoctoral scholar at the Blum Center on Poverty, Inequality and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara.“This is a complaint that has been in the Central Valley for years, and is a real source of tension with the agriculture industry and Democrats who are concerned about water conservation,” he said, adding that there’s a racial divide between farm owners and their workers, many of them Latino, who have traditionally voted Democratic.About half of the voters who had returned ballots as of Friday are white, Mr. Hale said, which could benefit the recall effort. But ballot-return rates in the Central Valley were lower than in areas that usually support Democrats, he said.Some farmers expressed sympathy for Mr. Newsom. “He’s the governor at a very difficult time, and I believe he’s done the best job that he’s been able to do,” said Don Cameron, the general manager of Terranova Ranch, about 30 miles southwest of Fresno, and a supporter of Mr. Newsom’s in the recall election. “There are a lot of farmers who don’t agree with that position, but it’s down political lines, unfortunately.”Don Cameron, a farmer about 30 miles southwest of Fresno, backs Mr. Newsom and says that state officials have had to make difficult, but necessary, decisions on water restrictions.Ryan Young for The New York TimesFor 30 years, Mr. Cameron has promoted his design for a water bank that collects floodwater by spreading it on farmland to seep underground, where it can restore aquifers and prevent flooding. It can hold twice as much water as a dam, he said. The state has adopted the idea as part of its larger plan to create a more dependable water supply.State officials had to make grueling, but necessary, decisions about water use, he said. “They didn’t have the options. We know this is going to hurt. We’re always optimistic in farming, but we have a lot of things going against us right now, and without water, we can’t farm.”Bryce Lundberg, who represents the agriculture business on the State Board of Food and Agriculture, said that while Governor Newsom had to prioritize the pandemic response, progress has still been made on water issues.Mr. Lundberg, an owner of Lundberg Family Farms, which grows rice, said Mr. Newsom has prioritized plans for an environmentally friendly off-river reservoir in the Sacramento Valley called the Sites Reservoir. The reservoir would capture excess water from major storms and save it for drier periods.“There are a lot of farmers under severe stress, and a lot of farmers who are going under business this year because they don’t have any water,” said Mr. Lundberg, who backs Mr. Newsom in the election. “It’s human nature to look for faults, but they’re not looking in the right place if they want to blame it on Governor Newsom.”Some minority farmers are feeling particularly disappointed in the state, saying that their small acreage denies them the influence of larger farms that may lobby the state to make decisions, said Chanowk Yisrael, an owner of the Yisrael Urban Family Farm in Sacramento. Many farmers of color also rent their farmland from other farmers who may reduce the renters’ water supply rather than limit their own.Mr. Yisrael said he hasn’t decided how he’ll vote, but he understands that Mr. Newsom is grappling with a welter of complex problems: climate change, raging wildfires and the challenges of the pandemic. Still, he added, “many of the things that should be talked about are kind of getting swept under the rug.”For Lorna Roush, who manages Schultz Ranch in Fresno County with her father, brothers and children, the worry that water will be scarce when she eventually takes over the farm has added to her concerns about Mr. Newsom. Her family has tried to make plans for a potentially sharp reduction in water supply; they already minimize their usage, she said, and have made adjustments to their farming practices.“Governor Newsom has had the chance to dig into this, research it and understand what the policies are doing to California agriculture, and he’s not doing anything about it,” said Ms. Roush, who declined to say how she voted. “We’re always worried.”Follow NYT Food on Twitter and NYT Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest. Get regular updates from NYT Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More

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      Higher Approval, a New Electorate and No Schwarzenegger. This Isn’t a 2003 California Recall.

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      This California recall election is different in several key ways from the one that ousted a Democratic governor 18 years ago.As Californians who haven’t already voted by mail head to the polls for the recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday, they may be reminded of a similar election 18 years ago. In 2003, another Democratic governor, Gray Davis, was recalled and replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger.It’s easy to draw parallels between the two races. While Mr. Davis was criticized for his handling of an electricity crisis, Mr. Newsom has been faulted for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. In both years, dozens of candidates across the political spectrum qualified for the ballot as potential replacements. And like the 2003 race, this year’s contest is expected to have high turnout for an off-cycle election.Despite these similarities, the two elections are quite different in several notable ways.California’s increasingly Democratic leanCalifornia has been reliably blue for decades, voting for the Democratic nominee in every presidential election starting in 1992. But the degree to which the state leans left has increased significantly in recent years because of changing demographics and Democratic gains with white college-educated voters.In 2000, Al Gore won California by 12 percentage points. In 2020, Joe Biden won the state by 29 points. The Democratic trend can also be seen at the governor level. While Mr. Davis won re-election by just five percentage points in 2002, Mr. Newsom prevailed by 24 in 2018.The state’s second- and third-largest counties by population, San Diego and Orange, epitomize California’s increasing Democratic lean. George W. Bush carried San Diego County by four percentage points in 2000, while Mr. Biden carried it by 23 points in 2020. Mr. Bush carried Orange County by 15 points in 2000; Mr. Biden by nine in 2020.California’s heavily Democratic partisan baseline makes it extremely difficult for a Republican to win a statewide election without winning significant crossover support from Democratic-leaning voters.Political polarization steepens this challenge for California Republicans, just as it has become increasingly hard for Democrats to win races in heavily Republican states like Tennessee, Indiana and Arkansas.Changing demographicsA major reason Democrats have gained ground is California’s increasing diversity.America’s demographics have changed significantly in the last 20 years, and California is no exception. According to the census, 46.7 percent of Californians were non-Hispanic white in 2000. By 2020, that fell to 34.7 percent.At the same time, Hispanic and Asian American shares of the population have grown. The percentage of Hispanic residents (of any race) increased to 39.4 percent from 32.4 percent, while the percentage of Asian residents (Asian alone or in combination with another race) increased to 17.8 percent from 12.3 percent.Approval ratingsPerhaps the biggest difference between this election and 2003 is that Mr. Newsom has a substantially higher approval rating than Mr. Davis had when he was removed from office.According to 2003 exit polls, Mr. Davis’s approval rating was at just 26 percent, with 73 percent disapproving, on Election Day. Voters were deeply dissatisfied, blaming him for the skyrocketing bills and rolling blackouts that emerged from the electricity crisis.Recent polls show California voters generally think Mr. Newsom is doing a good job. A YouGov poll found 53 percent of likely voters approved of his performance, with 38 percent disapproving. Another poll from the Public Policy Institute of California found similar results, with likely voters at 53 percent approve and 43 percent disapprove.While voter anger over coronavirus-related policies like business closures and stay-at-home orders helped get the recall on the ballot, Mr. Newsom has received positive marks on his handling of the pandemic. The YouGov poll found that 55 percent of likely voters rated his handling of the virus outbreak as “excellent” or “good,” while the Public Policy Institute of California poll found that 58 percent of likely voters approved of his response to the pandemic.Republican opponentsAnother key difference between 2003 and 2021 is the profile of each leading Republican candidate.In 2003, Mr. Schwarzenegger was extremely popular among California voters and Americans in general. One Gallup poll found 79 percent of registered voters in California had a favorable opinion of him, while a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll showed 72 percent of Americans liked him.Beyond Mr. Schwarzenegger’s appeal as a popular actor, he also carved out a more ideologically moderate profile on a number of issues. In one radio interview on “The Sean Hannity Show,” he said he supported abortion rights; expressed opposition to offshore drilling; and voiced support for stricter gun control laws.This year, the leading Republican challenger is the conservative talk radio host Larry Elder. In contrast with Mr. Schwarzenegger’s efforts to distance himself from conservative orthodoxy, Mr. Elder has taken conservative stances on hot-button issues like abortion, the minimum wage and climate change. He has also vowed to repeal the state’s mask and vaccine mandates, something that Mr. Newsom’s campaign has emphasized in negative advertisements.Although recall elections are framed on the ballot as a referendum on the incumbent, Democrats have worked hard to elevate Mr. Elder’s profile and frame the contest as a clear choice between two candidates. The idea is that if voters feel lukewarm about Mr. Newsom, they may still prefer him to the alternative.The state of the raceThe most recent polls have given Mr. Newsom about a 17-percentage-point advantage in his effort to remain in office. While polls in recent years have tended to underestimate Republicans in Midwestern battleground states, this does not appear to be the case in California. Polls accurately estimated Mr. Biden’s margin in California last year, and even underestimated Mr. Newsom’s winning margin in 2018.Ryan Matsumoto is a contributing analyst with Inside Elections. You can follow him on Twitter at @ryanmatsumoto1. 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      In California, Republicans Struggle to Expand the Recall’s Appeal

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      California has not been as progressive lately as its reputation would suggest. Yet Republicans have had trouble breaking the recall out of the fringe.THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — The small faction of Californians who still call themselves Republicans did something seemingly impossible when they forced Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of America’s largest Democratic state, to face voters in a recall.It was a side of California often overlooked: the conservative minority that for decades has been on the leading edge of the Republican Party’s transformation into a vehicle for the anti-establishment grievance politics that swept former President Donald J. Trump into office in 2016. The California conservative movement led a national campaign against affirmative action in the 1990s, later shaped the anti-immigration views of the Trump strategists Stephen Miller and Stephen K. Bannon, and gave rise to a new generation of media heavyweights such as Breitbart News and Ben Shapiro.But with Mr. Newsom leading the latest polls before the election on Tuesday, some of those same forces have struggled to gain mainstream support for the recall.California Republicans lack a single, unifying leader who has the ability to appeal beyond the hard right. The hollowed-out state party has left them with few avenues for organizing in such a vast place. And they have been unable to convert the populist anger at the governor over his handling of the pandemic into a broad-based backlash from voters who are right, left and somewhere in between. What started as a fringe campaign to flip the highest office in liberal California and upend the national political calculus seemed to be losing steam with Election Day approaching.Mr. Newsom’s allies blasted the state with advertising that linked the recall to a far-right coalition of conspiracy theorists, anti-vaccine activists and allies of the former president. And mainstream Republican supporters of the recall said the effort had become saddled with too much of the national party’s baggage.“The Republicans have struggled, I think, to identify with clarity that Democrats have been in charge out here for 15 years,” said Doug Ose, a Republican and former three-term congressman who recently dropped out of the race to replace Mr. Newsom after having a heart attack. Instead of focusing on questions such as whether Californians were better off today than they were 15 years ago, Republicans, he said, were being drawn into debates over abortion and other national issues.“Quit taking the bait,” Mr. Ose said of the Republican attention to the Texas abortion law. “Nobody in Texas is going to vote in this election. Why are we talking about what’s happening in Texas?”In a state where Democrats have been adding to their share of the electorate in recent years — now accounting for 46 percent of all registered voters, according to the Public Policy Institute of California — the Republican Party has been steadily shedding voters. Republicans are only 24 percent of the electorate, compared with 35 percent in 2003, the last time the state recalled its Democratic governor, Gray Davis.That is a far cry from the California that produced two Republican presidents — Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan, who was twice elected governor — and that provided a national model for how to run as a celebrity conservative reformer in a deep-blue state: former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.Mr. Schwarzenegger left office in 2011, and the state has not elected a Republican for a statewide seat since then. But if ever there was a time for conservatives to notch a rare, consequential victory in California, this would seem to be it.Residents have been anxious about this latest round of state-mandated, pandemic-related closures, with almost half sharing the mistaken belief that California is in an economic recession, according to one recent study. Jarring reminders of the state’s inability to solve fundamental, perennial problems are everywhere, from the tent cities that lined the Venice boardwalk to wildfires that suffocated Lake Tahoe.And voters have demonstrated an independent streak lately, rejecting progressive initiatives at the ballot box by large margins. Last year, as the state went for President Biden by a margin of nearly 2 to 1, voters defeated a referendum that would have repealed the state’s ban on affirmative action, 57 percent to 43 percent. At the same time, Californians voted in favor of allowing drivers for Uber and other ride-hailing and delivery apps to remain independent contractors, rebuffing a push from labor and progressive groups to classify them as employees who are entitled to wage protections and benefits.In Orange County and other traditionally right-leaning parts of the state, voters who had swung toward the Democratic Party in 2018 swung back in 2020. Four of the 15 seats that Republicans flipped in the House of Representatives in 2020 were in California, including two in Orange County. And despite losing the state, Mr. Trump still received 1.5 million more votes from Californians in 2020 than he did in 2016.“You didn’t see it in the vote for Biden,” said Charles Kessler, a professor at Claremont McKenna College who studies the American right. But the results in California in 2020 overall, Mr. Kessler said, looked like “the beginnings of a kind of revolt against the Hollywood, high-tech San Francisco-led Democratic Party in the state.”Mr. Elder, the recall candidate, comes from the tradition of California conservatives whose appeal is in refusing to appeal to liberals. Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesThe other California — the one of megachurches in the sprawl of the irrigated desert, Trump boat parades and a would-be secessionist enclave near the Oregon border that calls itself the “State of Jefferson” — occasionally finds common cause with moderates and independents to shake up state politics.But Mr. Kessler said that a major difference between today and 2003, when Mr. Schwarzenegger replaced Mr. Davis in the last recall, was that the Republican Party lacked a candidate with crossover appeal. Success, he said, would depend on a candidate “who gives you an alternative to the Democrat without having to embrace another party exactly.”That is not Larry Elder, the Republican front-runner in the recall race.A talk radio host, Mr. Elder comes from the tradition of California conservatives whose appeal was that they refused to appeal to liberals. The list includes Los Angeles-born Andrew Breitbart, the conservative writer and activist who founded Breitbart News, and Mr. Miller, who is the former architect of Mr. Trump’s anti-immigration agenda and who grew up in Santa Monica listening to Mr. Elder’s show.At times, Elder campaign events have felt not all that different from Trump rallies.At a Labor Day rally in the suburb of Thousand Oaks, about 40 miles outside downtown Los Angeles in Ventura County, Mr. Elder drew boos from the crowd when he mentioned The Los Angeles Times, and laughter when he said he intended to “speak slowly” because CNN was there. He dropped the kind of bombs that made him a national name in conservative talk radio, winning applause from of his mostly white audience.“What they’re afraid of,” Mr. Elder said, referring to his Democratic opponents, “is Larry Elder from the hood who went to a public school will be able to make the case to Black and brown people: ‘You are being betrayed. You are being used. You are being manipulated.’”“Racism has never been less significant in America,” added Mr. Elder, who is Black.Shelley Merrell, who runs a fire safety company in Ventura, nodded along as Mr. Elder called systemic racism “a lie” and rattled off statistics about police officers killing unarmed white people in larger numbers than they did Black people. Ms. Merrell, who is white, said that her support for the recall was rooted in her belief that California had become too inhospitable to businesses.“I love my employees, and I just want to give them the best life possible, but it’s getting more and more difficult,” she said as she urged passers-by at the event to take her pro-recall material, including one flier that read, “Don’t Vote By Mail.”The in-your-face, contrarian style of right-wing talk radio hosts who scorn the mainstream media and mock liberals has served Mr. Elder well, helping him build a weekly national audience of 4.5 million listeners. California was the ideal market to build out his brand, as it was for other stars of conservative radio. Rush Limbaugh got his start at KFBK in Sacramento, and Sean Hannity started his career at KCSB in Santa Barbara.But Mr. Elder may find that what works on talk radio is ill-suited to win a statewide election in California.“We cannot simply appeal to ourselves,” said Kevin Faulconer, the former mayor of San Diego and Republican recall candidate whose centrist campaign was often overshadowed by the far-right rhetoric of Mr. Elder. “We can be a party that wins again in California if we focus on solutions, if we focus on reform and if we’re inclusive. You cannot win office in California until you get Democrats and independents.”Kevin Kiley, a lawmaker in the State Assembly and one of the other more moderate Republican recall candidates, said he would not put a conventional political label of left, right or center on the kind of coalition he hopes to appeal to. Cognizant of what having an “R” after his name on the ballot means to many California voters, he has pitched himself as a bridge candidate.“Part of the unique opportunity with this recall is it is a chance to cross party lines,” Mr. Kiley said. “They’re not signing on for four years. They’re signing on for one year.” (If Mr. Newsom is recalled, the winning candidate to replace him would serve out the remainder of his term through 2022.)At the rally in Thousand Oaks, Mr. Elder seemed to acknowledge that his appeal was limited, and pivoted slightly to a more centrist message. He insisted that he was not merely a “Trump supporter” but a Republican through and through — since he cast his last vote for a Democrat in 1976, for former President Jimmy Carter, a decision he said he had regretted ever since.Mr. Kessler, the professor at Claremont McKenna College, said if there was another Republican renaissance coming to California, he doubted that this was the moment. But he also said he doubted that the current state of one-party control was sustainable. “This is a case where I think from the Republican point of view, things have to get worse in the state before they can get better,” he said. More