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      Ordered online, assembled at home: the deadly toll of California’s ‘ghost guns’

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      When Brian Muhammad, a program manager at a gun violence prevention group in California, asked a 16-year-old boy in 2018 how young people were getting guns, he assumed the answer would be Nevada, the neighboring state with looser gun laws.“Who would waste time going to Nevada when you can just get them in the mail and put it together?” the Stockton teen nonchalantly replied.Three years later, homemade weapons known as “ghost guns” have risen to the top of the Biden administration’s policy agenda. When the president announced executive actions targeting gun violence after the mass shootings in Georgia, California and Colorado, they included steps to regulate the sale of the devices – the first time the federal government took up such efforts.Warnings about do-it-yourself guns have steadily grown in recent years, spurred by ominous news stories describing the weapons’ use in a slew of mass shootings, domestic terrorism cases and gun trafficking busts. In California alone, homemade guns were used in a 2013 mass shooting in Santa Monica, a 2014 bank robbery in Stockton and a shooting spree in rural Tehama county that killed six in 2017. In 2019, a 16 year old killed two students and injured three others before killing himself with a ghost gun at a school in Santa Clarita. The next year, as protests over police violence filled city streets, Steven Carrillo used a homemade machine gun to shoot two security guards at a federal building in Oakland and a sheriff’s deputy in an ambush in Santa Cruz.But as the role of ghost guns in high profile criminal cases has grown, community violence reduction workers warn of the less visible toll ghost guns are taking : ghost guns, they say, have become a hot commodity in many vulnerable communities, a trend that has only intensified during the pandemic.The ease with which these guns can be ordered and constructed, their low cost and the difficulties in tracing them have made them readily available in many California cities, the organizers say. Their rapid spread, combined with Covid-19 limitations to the in-person contact so many violence interrupters rely on, have created a dangerous combination that is contributing to the surge in gun deaths that began last year.“We have people buying guns on the street at a faster pace. We can’t keep up with the number of guns especially when they may be more accessible than social services for some,” said Muhammad, of the Advance Peace program, a gun violence prevention organization, in Stockton.‘If a person wants a gun, they can get it’Antoine Towers, the chair of Oakland’s Violence Prevention Coalition, said he first heard about ghost guns at the beginning of the pandemic.First from friends who bought a ghost gun and assembled it, next up were some family members, then his co-workers. Gun ownership in Black communities in California rose significantly during the pandemic, mass protests and election chaos of 2020, and Towers’ network was opting for ghost guns rather than buying full-priced guns from stores that were inundated with sales.Soon, Towers said, ghost guns started showing up at his work. “We already had a problem with firearms, but it became really ridiculous,” Towers said. “[Ghost guns] are so easy to get right now that the only solution I see is figuring out a way to make sure people who have them aren’t using them. It’s heartbreaking.”Once a niche hobby among gun enthusiasts, do-it-yourself gun kits have been around since the 1990s, but they’ve increasingly become a feature on the nightly news since the early 2010s.The kits are substantially less expensive than a traditional gun bought from a federally licensed store. For example: a pistol from Bass Pro Shop, a US-based outdoor sporting goods conglomerate, can range in price from $470 to more than $900 while a homemade pistol kit from Polymer80, a popular online gun retailer, costs less than $180 and can be assembled with common tools like screwdrivers and a few drill bits.The guns aren’t subject to traditional firearm sale mandates, including background checks and serial numbers, because of a legal loophole. Since they are shipped in several pieces, they fall out of the bounds of what the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) classifies as a legal firearm.“The argument is that they can’t fire in the condition they’re sold in. Because they require some assembly, they’re not firearms,” said Eric Tirschwell, the managing director of litigation for Everytown for Gun Safety, a national gun violence prevention advocacy group.Previously, police say, they mostly found ghost guns during large gun busts and underground trafficking operations. But in the past two years, they are more frequently turning up in the backs of cars or the hands of individuals. Increasingly popular among gun owners, the guns have also become an interesting business proposition for traffickers.Tina Padilla, a peacekeeper with Breaking Through Barriers to Success (BTBS), a Los Angeles-based violence prevention nonprofit, said she first heard about ghost guns on the news a few years ago, especially after mass shootings. Then she heard some young people trickle into the nonprofit’s office discussing their purchases and what kits they were eyeing in passing conversation.“I learned the logistics of getting a ghost gun from working in the community and found out that they can be purchased from different sites, with different credit cards to different addresses and the government can’t trace who’s buying these guns and where they’re going,” Padilla said.“Now, instead of people having to purchase weapons for $600 to $700, they can buy them on the computer, put them together and use them on the street,” said Padilla.Police in Stockton first became familiar with ghost guns in 2014, when a homemade AK-47 was recovered after a deadly bank robbery that turned into a hostage situation and hour-long car chase. In 2019, the department recovered 42 ghost guns. And in 2020, it seized 175, nearly four times as many.The ATF has been recovering more ghost guns in the US each year. In 2019, they seized more than 7,100 and in 2020 that number grew to 8,712, according to department data. Police departments in other California cities have reported similar rises. San Francisco police started tracking ghost guns in 2016, and found six that year. In 2019, they recovered 77 and, in 2020, the number leaped to 164. Los Angeles county police found 813 ghost guns in 2020. In Oakland, 16% of all guns seized by police in 2020 were ghost guns. So far in 2021, 22% are ghost guns.Violence intervention workers say the rise in ghost guns has played some role in the rise in gun deaths recorded in cities all across America.“There’s a whole industry of people who are making guns and in this digital age the difficulty factor isn’t there, so if a person wants a gun they can get it,” said Muhammad, the Advanced Peace director in Stockton.Like hundreds of other cities, homicides in Stockton have ticked up in past months. In 2020, 55 people were murdered in the city, the highest number in three years. Muhammad believes that ghost guns have played a role, especially among Stockton’s teens.“We’ve seen a younger group of people engaging in gunplay, he said. “There’s no school right now, and a 14, 15 year old isn’t gonna just sit at home if their parents are out working.” The loss of in-person schooling and extracurriculars, have left “ample time to get in disagreement”, he said.“Whatever people can do to make money, they will. And they know there’s a high demand, with people scared at the beginning of the pandemic and buying guns,” said Rudy Corpuz Jr, the executive director of United Playaz, a San Francisco-based violence prevention and youth development organization.“It’s scary because a lot of the ghost guns are in hands that are not responsible. And when you have kids all over in parks and places where violence happens, there’s potential that one of these can be used, and then one of these kids doesn’t get a chance to grow up.”Padilla, the Los Angeles-based violence interrupter, said the casualness with which she’s heard some young people talk about getting a kit sent to their home worried her. She said language barriers and lack of information among parents can make it difficult for them to regulate the packages that are being sent to their homes.“We need to do more education campaigns because some of these parents may get a package they may not think too much about. We need to let them know that they need to keep an eye out because these guns can cause a lot of harm,” she said.Ghost gun regulationsFollowing three mass shootings this spring, including a downtown San Diego shooting where a ghost gun was used, Biden directed the Department of Justice to develop new regulations around ghost guns. On 7 May, the ATF, which is part of the DOJ, proposed new rules that would close the loophole that allows ghost guns to be sold with little oversight. Under the new measures, the primary parts of a gun kit would be considered firearms, and therefore would need a serial number. Buyers would have to pass a background check.The measures would mark the first effort to regulate ghost guns on the federal level.In California, a 2018 state law required at-home kit builders to apply for a unique serial number, but the requirement only applied to ghost gun builders, and not to sellers, leaving it legal to sell kits without a serial number.San Francisco is set to weigh a proposal that would go further, and ban the sale of ghost guns as well. If the ordinance passed, it would make the city the first in California to do so.Meanwhile, several local district attorneys have sued ghost gun manufacturers and a number of states and cities have had lawsuits against the ATF for their original refusal to regulate ghost gun kits like traditional firearms. The Los Angeles city attorney joined Everytown for Gun Safety in a lawsuit against Polymer80, a popular gun kit seller that is facing a number of other lawsuits in California and Washington DC over their advertisement practices. The suit alleges that the dealer acted negligently and failed “to avoid exposing others to reasonably foreseeable risks of injury”, according to the complaint filed in December.Everytown is also suing 1911builders.com, the gun kit maker and dealer who sold the kit that was used in the Saugus school shooting, on behalf of one of the victims.In November 2019, Mia Tretta was injured in a mass shooting at Saugus high school in Santa Clarita. A 16-year-old student at the school had brought a homemade .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol which he used to shoot five students – two fatally – before turning the ghost gun on himself. The entire incident lasted less than 30 seconds.Since the tragedy, in which she lost her close friend Dominic Blackwell, Tretta’s been a vocal gun violence prevention advocate with Students Demand Action, a youth-led organization that lobbies for strengthened gun laws.“In my situation, we still don’t know who bought the gun. We know who used it, but we can’t trace it back,” Tretta said. “I want people to use my story to show what happens when anyone can get a gun.”‘It won’t stop the guns’Community workers such as Corpuz and Muhammad welcome Biden’s efforts, and agree that the spread of ghost guns needs to be stifled.But they also worry that federal action will beget local police crackdowns, a backlash that would lead to more harm among those who are already most at-risk of being shot. Rather than increased patrols and traffic stops, the interventionists say, communities need traditional violence intervention practices that provide social support and healing services.“The devil’s in the details,” said Corpuz of United Playaz. “You can think a new policy is about the ghost guns but then it leads to harassment. We all want ghost guns off of the street but we have to look to see what the fine print is before we support the rules because they can be harsh on Black and brown communities.”Muhammad of Advanced Peace likened the potential danger of increased policing and harsher sentences for having a ghost gun to the crack-cocaine laws of the late 20th century.“Once the laws happen they affect the bottom rung,” Muhammad said. “Police forces all over the country get access to federal dollars for any campaign, but that won’t stop the shooting; it won’t stop the guns from getting into the hands of young people.” More

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      California governor candidate under investigation over 1,000lb bear sidekick

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      Turns out campaigning across California with a 1,000lb bear is not a foolproof political plan.John Cox, a candidate vying to replace Gavin Newsom in the state’s gubernatorial recall vote, is under investigation for violating a San Diego city law that bans anyone, except zoos, from bringing wild animals – including lions and tigers and bears – into the area. The San Diego Humane Society’s law enforcement division confirmed it was conducting the investigation of Cox, who has made several appearances at lecterns with his ursine companion, Tag, wandering behind him.The stunt has drawn condemnation from animal rights groups and state lawmakers. “Gone should be the days when wild animals were treated as toys or props,” said People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, adding that “dangerous wild animals” should not be part of publicity grabs. Ben Hueso, a San Diego Democratic representative, said a 2019 law barring the use of most animals in circuses should apply, in “spirit”, to Cox’s campaign.Cox defended the treatment of the bear. “Every care was taken to ensure Tag’s comfort and safety with the approval of several government agencies. California needs beastly change and that may ruffle some feathers of leftwing activists,” the campaign said in a statement, sticking firmly to Cox’s animal theme – he has positioned himself as the “beast” to Gavin Newsom’s “beauty” and is demanding “beastly” behavior via website, voteforthebeast.com, and his Twitter account, @beastjohncox.Thus far, despite Tag’s involuntary endorsement, Cox’s campaign isn’t exactly a roaring success. A recent poll put him neck and neck with the former San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer, with support from 22% of respondents. That compares with 49% who support keeping Newsom, a Democrat, in office. More

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      California’s recall election: how does it work – and will Gavin Newsom survive?

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      Why is this happening?The recall election may seem like an oddity, considering Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor, remains fairly popular across the state.But in California, a small but vocal minority can make a recall election happen. According to state rules, a recall election will be called if 12% of people who voted in the last election sign a petition saying they want one.A Republican-led effort to recall the governor, launched in early 2020, gained traction amid the pandemic. Some residents balked at the state’s strict Covid restrictions, while others saw California’s high death toll as a sign of Newsom’s leadership failures.In April, the recall campaign announced it had enough valid signatures – 1,626,042 in total – to trigger an election.How does a recall work?California is one of 19 states that allow voters to recall and remove state officials from office before their terms end.In California, a recall can happen at almost any time for any reason, if enough registered voters support it. Once the signature threshold is hit, voters get 30 days to strike their signatures from the recall petition – and if enough change their minds, the recall effort will fail. But Joshua Spivak, a senior fellow at the Hugh L Carey Institute for Government Reform at Wagner College and an expert on recalls, says that “seems quite unlikely” this time around.Next, officials will run an estimate of how much the recall election will cost, and the state’s lieutenant governor will set a date for the election.On election day, voters will be asked two questions: whether they want to recall Newsom, yes or no – and if more than 50% say “yes”, who should replace him?Who wants to recall Newsom?The campaign, spearheaded by the Republican former sheriff’s deputy Orrin Heatlie, has come out against the Newsom administration’s pandemic-era lockdowns, aid to undocumented immigrants and homeless residents, relatively high taxes and spending on social programs.The effort has picked up financial support from big business donors and a few Silicon Valley venture capitalists, including the former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya. Far-right movements including QAnon have also bolstered the effort – though recall organizers have tried to distance themselves from those groups following the deadly 6 January attack on the US capitol.In a state that leans heavily liberal (Donald Trump lost in 2020 by 30 points), the recall petition was an unlikely success.So how did the recall gain momentum?Republicans have been trying to recall Newsom since he first took office. Five attempts failed to get enough valid signatures. But the sixth time was the charm.This latest recall effort was launched in February 2020 – before the worst of the pandemic hit California. Recallers had 160 days, or until 17 November, to gather enough signatures. By that date, the campaign had just 749,196 signatures – not nearly enough.But as coronavirus shut the state down, the Sacramento county superior court extended the deadline – arguing it had become “extremely difficult for petitioners to engage in signature-gathering activities for their proposed initiative”.Around then, California entered its most severe, deadly phase of the pandemic. Conservatives protested against the governor’s strict lockdown measures, staging anti-mask rallies. Meanwhile, many of Newsom’s Democratic allies in the legislature worried he wasn’t acting fast enough to stem the wave of infections and deaths.The governor didn’t help his case when he attended a dinner party at the Michelin-starred French Laundry in Napa with bigwig lobbyists – flaunting wealth and flouting mask requirements as the coronavirus death count ticked up.In the following weeks, hospitals were overwhelmed with Covid patients and morgues with the dead. The state employment development department was swindled, on the governor’s watch, into paying billions in fraudulent unemployment claims as millions of jobless Californians struggled for aid.As frustration grew, recallers were able to gather more than a million additional signatures.How likely is the recall to succeed?Newsom’s popularity peaked early in the pandemic, with an approval rating of 63% in May 2020. That figure dropped precipitously amid the last coronavirus surge but is rising again as the state recovers and reopens.Recent polling from the Public Policy Institute of California found that 56% of likely voters oppose removing Newsom from office, and 5% are unsure. Newsom, who was elected to office with the support of more than 60% of voters, remains in a strong spot.And the governor, aware that his political future hinges on the state’s recovery, has launched a number of big programs including the $100bn “California Comeback Plan” to send most Californians additional stimulus checks and provide billions in rent relief.Moreover, “throughout California history, gubernatorial recalls have been largely unsuccessful,” Spivak said. Since 1913, there have been 55 attempts to recall the governor – and only one effort qualified for the ballot, in 2003.That election saw Gray Davis, an unpopular Democrat, removed from office and replaced by the Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger – who was able to leverage his acting fame and family political connections.Who’s challenging the governor?There’s no limit to the number of candidates who can challenge Newsom – and a number of hopefuls have already launched their campaigns. The businessman John Cox is currently touring with a domesticated Kodiak bear. Kevin Faulconer, the former mayor of San Diego, and Doug Ose, a former US representative, are also challenging the governor, as is Caitlyn Jenner, the former Olympic athlete and reality TV star.None of these candidates would stand any real chance against Newsom in a general election. Cox, who ran against Newsom in 2018, lost by nearly 24 points. “The recall can be a rallying cry, in California and across the county,” Mindy Romero, the founder of the Center for Inclusive Democracy, a non-partisan research organization, told the Guardian in March. “For the Republican candidates running against the governor, it can raise their national profiles.”That’s also the case for celebrities: the porn actor Mary Carey and billboard model Angelyne, both of whom ran during the state’s last gubernatorial recall, are back in the game this year.Notably missing from the race so far: a Democrat. The party has largely coalesced around Newsom with progressives and moderates, in California and in DC, throwing their support behind the governor.Still, Spivak said, the coming months could bring political surprises. And at the very least – they will bring a bevy for political stunts as more and more candidates announce runs. “I think we’re going to see quite a bit of craziness,” he said. More

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      The recall circus is back: Schwarzenegger’s 2003 win and the fight to oust Gavin Newsom

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      When California granted its voters the ability to recall a sitting governor, back in 1911, it meant to offer a stern reminder to over-entitled elected officials that they serve the people, not the other way around.The reality, though, has been a lot less edifying.Californians have voted in a governor recall election only once, in 2003, when Arnold Schwarzenegger unseated the unpopular Democratic incumbent Gray Davis. Both then, and now as Gavin Newsom finds himself against the ropes, the process has been driven by showbiz carnival barking and partisan sound and fury as much as it has by the high-minded democratic ideals of the Progressive Era.Last time, more than 250 people applied to run, and 135 of them ended up on the ballot, including a porn star, a 100-year-old woman sponsored by a discount store, a bounty hunter, a sumo wrestler, the Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt (who, in a wheelchair, said he’d prefer to be paralyzed from the neck down than paralyzed, like Davis, from the neck up), and the former child actor Gary Coleman.It didn’t help that the election rules, which had gone untested for close to a century, virtually guaranteed a freak show of candidates and platforms lured by a low entry bar and the promise of a single winner-take-all contest. With no requirement to win the support of a majority of the voters, the foreshortened campaign season was primed to reward attention-seeking over substance.Schwarzenegger himself reveled in the circus atmosphere, telling the late-night TV host Jay Leno as he announced his candidacy that it was the toughest decision he’d made since going for a bikini wax in 1978. He showed up to only one debate and spent considerably more energy recycling well-worn lines from Terminator movies than he did articulating policy positions.Schwarzenegger enjoyed frontrunner status from the get-go, and at the time that served to conceal a deeper truth: that the recall election offered a backdoor for the Republican party to attain statewide office in a solid blue state that had otherwise largely shut them out. The recall was initiated by a group of conservative tax protesters upset over rising budget deficits, but the party quickly took control of the process and pushed it in a different direction – to take power first and figure out what to do with it only after.Davis was a colorless, relatively unpopular establishment politician whom the Republicans nevertheless couldn’t beat when he ran for re-election in November 2002. When the budget crisis of early 2003 gave critics an opening to collect recall signatures, however, he suddenly looked a lot more vulnerable.Republican party leaders understood they needed to stir up just enough popular resentment against the political establishment to keep the governor below 50% in the recall election. Then, the concurrent replacement vote would put the incumbent party, the Democrats, at a distinct disadvantage, with Davis excluded by definition and no other heavyweight Democrat wanting to risk looking disloyal to him.The Republicans ran this playbook to perfection.Many senior Democrats begged Senator Dianne Feinstein, a former San Francisco mayor, to run in the replacement race so they’d have a viable alternative to the Schwarzenegger celebrity juggernaut. But Feinstein demurred, leaving the lightweight lieutenant governor, Cruz Bustamante, as the last Democrat standing. Davis lost the recall by more than 10 points, and Schwarzenegger trounced Bustamante by a similar margin.We can’t be completely sure yet what to expect in 2021, because recall petition signatories have until 8 June to withdraw their names if they wish. If their number dips below 1.5m from more than 1.6m confirmed last week by the California secretary of state’s office, unlikely as it seems, the recall will be off again.Only after 8 June are the floodgates of multiple candidacies likely to open. Still, the media are already feasting on the fact that Caitlyn Jenner, the trans former Olympic athlete and step-parent to the Kardashians, is running as a populist celebrity Republican. Her first ad positions her as a “compassionate disrupter” in the Schwarzenegger mould, but many political analysts see her, rather, as a torchbearer for Donald Trump in a state that preferred Joe Biden for president by a staggering 29 points.Jenner has yet to attain anything close to frontrunner status, and she may not even be the strongest Republican in the race – a title that probably goes, for now, to the more conventional and more centrist former San Diego mayor, Kevin Faulconer.But Jenner’s early entry suggests once again that California Republicans who know they can’t reach 50% in a conventional statewide race will milk the opportunity for all it is worth.The party is banking once again on fuming resentment against the Democrats in Sacramento – a “throw out the bums!” mentality fueled by the frustrations of the Covid-19 pandemic, economic crisis, homelessness and other social ills.Even if the Republicans succeed, though, it’s unclear how strong a mandate they can claim. Schwarzenegger did not reach 50% of the vote but he came very close, with a more than respectable 48.6%. The Republican contenders so far, though, seem unlikely to meet that bar, in large part because Republican support in California has dropped significantly in the intervening 18 years. John Cox, a perennial losing Republican candidate in California statewide races now running again, won 38% of the vote to Newsom’s 62% in the 2018 gubernatorial election. That same dismal 38% could easily see him, or Faulconer, or Jenner claim the governor’s office in a winner-take-all recall.Such realities have inevitably, triggered impassioned debate about the meaning of “popular government” as defined by California’s 1911 constitution. The concern of many good government groups, as well as Democrats keen to retain their monopoly grip on California’s statewide offices, is that a process designed to be an honest check on abuse of power has instead become an orgy of special-interest maneuvering and stealth politics by a minority party. (Very similar criticisms surface regularly about California’s ballot initiative process, another brainchild of the Progressive Era, which often degenerates into a slugfest between well-financed corporate interests and much poorer non-profit advocates who have to rely on guerrilla PR tactics and positive media coverage to fight back.)On the other side of the ledger, plenty of observers think that a recall, even one as messy and colorful as the 2003 drama, is a sign of democratic health and believe that voters are more than capable of sorting out which candidates are viable and which are not.Jerry Brown, who served as the California governor in the 1970s and 1980s and ultimately returned to the job in 2010, memorably told a television interviewer in 2003 that it was easy to overstate the importance of experience. “I’ve been there, I can tell you what it is,” he said. “It’s not like, you know, fixing a complicated airplane engine. It takes some intelligence. It takes common sense. It takes some character, some understanding and concern about what is needed by California. And there are a lot of people that can do that.”That spirit of reaction against an entitled political class clearly prevailed 18 years ago. Whether voters will take the same attitude now, given the mixed results of the Schwarzenegger governorship and the deep unpopularity of the Trump presidency with its “I alone can fix it” mantra is another matter.Gray Davis was ultimately undone by time – his poll numbers kept worsening from the time the recall qualified for the ballot until election day. Newsom, on the other hand, has time on his side. At the height of the pandemic last winter he found himself in significant difficulty, harangued by reports that his children were attending private school in person while most California public schools remained closed and that he had whooped it up at Napa Valley’s pre-eminent luxury restaurant, the French Laundry, in defiance of his own lockdown rules.Now, though, the pandemic has eased, the vaccine rollout has gained steam, public school students are returning to their classrooms, and the economy is recovering. The most recent polls suggest Newsom will survive the recall with relative ease. The election, however, is unlikely to take place before October or November, which leaves plenty of time for new things to go wrong. Drought, wildfires, a resurgence of the pandemic – all are eminently possible in the state where disaster movies were invented.Schwarzenegger himself counts both Newsom and Jenner as friends – making him an unusually conciliatory Trump-era Republican, but his attitude to the recall is unequivocal. “I hope as many people as possible are jumping into the race,” he told the late night host Jimmy Kimmel last week. “Anyone has a chance, because I think the people are dissatisfied with what is going on here in California.” More

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      In Fox interview, Caitlyn Jenner declares herself ‘outsider’ in California governor race

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      In her first major interview as a candidate for California governor, Caitlyn Jenner sought to appeal to Trump Republicans – telling Fox News’ Sean Hannity she’s an “outsider” looking to “disrupt” politics as usual.The former Olympian and reality TV star sat down with Hannity at her private airplane hangar in Malibu, a wealthy, celebrity enclave west of Los Angeles, to introduce herself as a candidate to replace Democrat Gavin Newsom in the forthcoming recall election.“I am an outsider,” she told Hannity, adding that she wants to surround herself “with some of the smartest people out there” to help her develop her platform. “I’m in a race for solutions. I need to find solutions to be able to turn this state around,” she said.Jenner, who has no prior experience in elected office, has seen her campaign get off to a stumbling start. The news release touting her first campaign video initially misspelled her name. And this week, the former Olympic athlete, who has presented herself as a champion for trans rights, said she opposes transgender girls competing in girls’ sports.“For me as a trans woman, I think role models are extremely important for young people,” Jenner said on Wednesday. “Our suicide rate is nine times higher than the general public. And for me to be a role model, for them, to be out there, I am running for governor of the state of California, who would ever thunk that? We’ve never even had a woman governor.”“But some are mad at you,” Hannity prompted.“That’s that, I don’t care. I move on,” she said.In an interview with TMZ this week, she said: “I oppose biological boys who are trans from competing in girls’ sports in school. It just isn’t fair. We have to protect girls’ sports in our schools.”The comments, which came as conservative lawmakers across the country advanced legislation banning trans children from sports teams and limiting their access to gender-affirming healthcare, have sparked anger and dismay among LGBTQ + advocacy groups and children’s welfare groups. They have also added fuel to criticisms that Jenner is disingenuous. Her campaign ad features footage of her playing in a women’s golf tournament.“Make no mistake: we can’t wait to elect a trans governor of California,” tweeted Equality California, an advocacy group. “But Caitlyn Jenner spent years telling the LGBTQ+ community to trust Donald Trump. We saw how that turned out. Now she wants us to trust her?”Jenner supported Trump in 2016, but later distanced herself from him over his administration’s record on trans rights. Her current gubernatorial bid is bolstered by former Trump campaign figures.On Tuesday, Jenner released her first campaign ad, in which she called herself a “compassionate disruptor”.“California, it’s time to reopen our schools, reopen our businesses, reopen the golden gates,” Jenner narrates, over folksy images of farms, diners and embracing families. “So I don’t care if you’re a Republican, Democrat, I’m running to be governor for all Californians. To reclaim our true identity, to bring back the gold to the Golden State,” she said.But Jenner has had trouble pinning down her political identity, as she strives to woo Trump Republicans and moderate voters in a heavily left-leaning state. “I am all for the wall, I would secure the wall,” Jenner told Hannity. “We can’t have a state, we can’t have a country without a secure wall.”However, she hesitated as Hannity pushed her on whether she opposed social support for undocumented immigrants: “We are a compassionate state … Some people we’re going to send back OK, no question about that. But I have met some of the greatest immigrants [in] our country.”Later, Hannity corrected her when she said she’s pro- “illegal immigration”. “You’re pro legal immigration” he corrected.“Sorry, did I miss the legal part?,” she said. “Thanks for catching me.”Jenner will have to win over Trump-aligned Republicans, who launched the recall effort against Newsom. The effort gained steam this winter, as California struggled through its most deadly phase of the pandemic.“For a candidate like Caitlyn Jenner to win, it has to be like a layered cake. The bottom layer has to be Trump supporters,” Bill Whalen, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a speechwriter for the former Republican governor Pete Wilson, told the Associated Press. “Where do you go to get Trump supporters? Simple. Sean Hannity,” Whalen said.In a state that Trump lost by 30 points in the 2020 election, Jenner – like any other Republican seeking to challenge Newsom – would also have to win over moderates and independents in order to win.Jenner and Hannity reviewed common Republican talking points – lamenting pandemic-time business shutdowns, worrying over water restrictions for farmers amid drought, and trash-talking the much-maligned endangered Delta Smelt.Jenner is the most prominent celebrity to enter the recall race. Other Republican challengers include John Cox, a businessman who lost to Newsom by 24 points during the last gubernatorial election and who is currently hitting the campaign trail with a domesticated Kodiak bear. Kevin Faulconer, the former mayor of San Diego and Doug Ose, a former US representative, are also in the running.No Democrats are currently challenging Newsom, who still retains broad support. Recent polling from the Public Policy Institute of California found that 56% of likely voters oppose recalling the governor, and 5% are unsure. Only 40% would vote to remove the governor from office. More

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      Should Gavin Newsom Be Nervous About the California Recall?

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      Two events that attracted scant notice on Nov. 6, 2020, speak to how quickly political fortunes can change in California.In Sacramento, a judge granted an obscure group extra time to collect signatures in a long-shot effort to force a vote to recall Mr. Newsom. The secretary of state could muster only less-than-compelling objections to the extension: He had recently acquiesced readily to the same request, before the same judge, to grant extra time for an initiative to legalize sports betting at casinos run by Native American tribes, major donors to state Democrats.That evening, Mr. Newsom attended the birthday party of a close friend and prominent lobbyist at the deluxe French Laundry restaurant in Napa, flouting protocols he preached during the pandemic.Eleven days later, the little-noticed events became front-page news: Images from the French Laundry dinner gave recall backers the momentum they needed to exploit the extra four months granted by the judge and to compel a referendum on Mr. Newsom, who found himself trapped in a new narrative.Today, all signs suggest Mr. Newsom should prevail. Polls show a majority of Californians opposed the recall effort.But just as the events on that November day unexpectedly propelled a recall few had taken seriously, his fate could shift just as swiftly and dramatically. Democrats need to think through the consequences and weigh what is best for the state against what is best for Mr. Newsom.In the fall, voters will be asked two questions: Should Mr. Newsom be recalled? And if so, who should replace him? Many unpredictable factors will influence those votes. Will the relatively low numbers of Covid-19 cases hold? Will students be back in classrooms that have been largely empty for more than a year? Will the drought and looming fire season trigger water shortages, power shut-offs, devastation and apocalyptic imagery? Will he commit another blunder like the French Laundry dinner, reinforcing his image as an out-of-touch elitist?And crucially: Will a credible Democrat enter the contest?It is obviously in Mr. Newsom’s interest to keep other Democrats off the ballot and brand the election a Republican recall. A “Vote no” message is cleaner than “Vote no, but just in case, vote for this other Democrat.” Worse than muddled messaging, a viable Democratic alternative, even posed as an insurance policy, could morph into a real threat. Mr. Newsom already finds himself navigating with difficulty between conflicting constituencies on issues like health care, housing, fracking and drought. Some groups have signaled that their enthusiasm in opposing the recall is contingent on the governor’s actions in the intervening months. The election (still technically unofficial pending a 30-day waiting period) is likely to occur just after he must decide the fate of bills passed during the legislative session.In 2003, amid energy and fiscal crises, California voters ousted an unpopular governor, Gray Davis, in the state’s first gubernatorial recall, which felt, despite its zanier moments, like an exercise in democracy that bore some resemblance to the process lawmakers envisioned in 1911. This time feels more like farce than history, echoing the desperation and extremes of a world where Republican members of Congress deny election results and mobs invade capitols.That feeds the temptation to dismiss the recall as a costly but inconsequential circus, featuring Caitlyn Jenner and a cast of thousands — including a 1,000-pound bear that appeared with the candidate John Cox on his Meet the Beast bus tour this week. Mr. Newsom trounced Mr. Cox in the 2018 election and would seem poised to do equally well against any of the candidates who have declared so far. Republicans, outnumbered in California by Democrats almost two to one, have not won a statewide race since 2006.But it would not take a far-fetched string of events for this to go horribly wrong. What if public sentiment turned against Mr. Newsom for whatever reason, a Republican won and something happened to one of the state’s Democratic senators? The health of Dianne Feinstein, who turns 88 next month, has been the subject of much concern. The new governor could appoint a Republican replacement, upending Democratic control of the U.S. Senate. Is that a risk Democrats are willing to take, to protect Mr. Newsom by keeping Democratic alternatives off the ballot?Perhaps the risk will seem very small when the deadline to enter the race arrives, 60 days before the election. But there is no shortage of ambitious Democrats for whom a late entry might prove attractive, including ones with both name recognition and access to the money necessary to wage a credible campaign. Like Representative Adam Schiff, who recently lobbied the governor unsuccessfully to be appointed the state’s attorney general and raised more than $40 million in 2020. Or Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, who became the first woman elected to the post, in her novice run for office, aided by more than $10 million from herself and her father, a real estate developer.For now, they have all pledged allegiance to Mr. Newsom, whose campaign has orchestrated displays of pointed unity, suggesting that any Democrat who broke ranks would be nothing short of traitorous. It is hard to see how that unity will hold. Or how it can be justified as being in the best interests of the Democrats, or the democracy. But Mr. Newsom has had something of a charmed existence in his political career, and perhaps his luck will hold.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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      Political animal: California governor hopeful greets voters with 1,000lb bear

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      The businessman John Cox lost California’s last governor’s race to Gavin Newsom by 24 points. Now he’s back, and this time, he’s got a bear.As Newsom faces a recall election, the Republican has launched a new campaign against him, attempting to portray the well-groomed governor as a “beauty” and himself as a “beast”. To drive home this message, he has employed some nonhuman staff, including an enormous bear – an apparent homage to the California flag.The bear appeared at a press event on Tuesday in Sacramento. The campaign had hyped the moment by promising the 1,000lb creature as a “special guest”. As part of his Meet the Beast Bus Tour, Cox appeared at a podium in front of a vehicle emblazoned with his face next to that of a ferocious-looking bear. In reality, however, the animal appeared fairly uninterested in politics, lumbering around a few feet behind Cox before flopping on to the ground, panting heavily. It did not offer an endorsement, unless not eating the candidate counts as support.A handler occasionally fed the bear while Cox – who uses Twitter as @BeastJohnCox – took questions from reporters, decrying Newsom as a “pretty boy politician”. He said the bear was there to help him get his message out, and also addressed the animal’s welfare: “We made sure that everything about this bear is taken care of in the utmost.”Cox is gunning for a recall election expected to take place in the autumn after Newsom opponents gathered enough signatures to force a vote. The beast is one of an unusual collectionof contenders, who also include Caitlyn Jenner, a former Facebook executive, and a billboard model.The bear is not the only animal Cox has pressed into service. In a campaign ad titled “Meet the BEAST”, a macaw repeatedly mocks Newsom as a “pretty boy” as it wolf-whistles. “We chose pretty over accomplished,” a voiceover warns Californians of Newsom, who grew up with dyslexia, launched a wine business, became the mayor of San Francisco, rose to lieutenant governor and won the 2018 governor’s race with nearly 62% of the vote – though he does have slicked-back hair. Images of the bird are interspersed with shots of a bear thundering through the forest, suggesting Cox would do the same in the halls of the capitol.At the press conference, however, the docile bear appeared far less likely to bring about significant legislative change. Cox noted that it had been raised in captivity, meaning its “mother didn’t have an opportunity to teach it how to fish”.“If it were out in the wild, it would die very quickly,” he said. More