{"id":80367,"date":"2021-08-24T14:48:46","date_gmt":"2021-08-24T18:48:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=80367"},"modified":"2021-08-24T14:51:36","modified_gmt":"2021-08-24T18:51:36","slug":"not-only-is-gavin-newsom-in-big-trouble-he-may-take-biden-with-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=80367","title":{"rendered":"Not only is Gavin Newsom in BIG trouble, he may take Biden with him."},"content":{"rendered":"

Gavin Newsom Is in Trouble. Could He Take Biden with Him?<\/h1>\n

The Powers That Be<\/em><\/p>\n

Arnold Schwarzenegger\u00a0<\/strong>was right. In March, no one thought that Governor\u00a0Gavin Newsom<\/strong>\u00a0had to worry about the Republican-led recall campaign against him. Back then, Newsom called the recall a \u201cdistraction,\u201d waving it off as a pandemic hobby for anti-vaxxers and Trump goons. But Schwarzenegger, who was elected governor after the recall of Democrat\u00a0Gray Davis<\/strong>\u00a0in 2003, told Politico\u2019s\u00a0Carla Marinucci<\/strong>\u00a0that, actually, Newsom had reason for concern. It doesn\u2019t matter that Democrats outnumbered Republicans in California by a 2:1 margin, Schwarzenegger said, or that the state\u2019s once-healthy Republican Party had shriveled into a reactionary collection of racist surfer dads in Orange County and MAGA Facebook moms in Modesto. What mattered, he argued, was the perception that Californians are working hard, with many falling behind because of the coronavirus pandemic, while the government in Sacramento fiddled. \u201cThat\u2019s what I see as the similarities from 2003,\u201d Schwarzenegger concluded. \u201cIt\u2019s the same vibe.\u201d<\/p>\n

The vibes: People in California like to talk about them, especially where I live, in Venice, on the westside of Los Angeles. Usually the vibes are good. Heading into the final few weeks of the Sept. 14 recall election, however, the vibes are decidedly bad. Crime, wildfires, and the scourge of the Delta variant are top of mind. Homelessness is out of control, making homeowners and renters alike think twice about supporting Newsom, even if they cast ballots to elect\u00a0Joe Biden<\/strong>\u00a0in 2020. Some of these afflictions are unique to California, but their clumsy handling by Democrats here should be an ominous warning sign for a party whose messaging on crime has been muddled between law-and-order candidates like former cop\u00a0Eric Adams<\/strong>\u00a0in New York City, and outspoken defund-the-police progressives, like\u00a0Cori Bush<\/strong>\u00a0in Missouri. Whether or not the Newsom recall succeeds, Republicans have exposed a clear vulnerability for Democrats heading into next year\u2019s midterms: claiming that California\u2019s supposed societal breakdown is the inevitable byproduct of lefty decadence, the failure of elite liberal governance\u2014and the future of Biden\u2019s America.<\/p>\n

These days, the messiah of All Politics Is Local here is\u00a0Alex Villanueva<\/strong>, the Los Angeles County sheriff. \u201cNothing will change your political viewpoint more than a transient taking a shit in your front yard,\u201d he told me. Villanueva is a Democrat, elected in 2018, but he\u2019s since gone full-blown Law and Order, appearing on Fox News to belittle \u201cwoke privileged Democrats\u201d who want a more \u201ccompassionate\u201d approach to criminals and homeless people. \u201cThe Democratic Party of 2021 has smoked some powerful stuff that\u2019s made them blind to what\u2019s happening on the ground,\u201d he said. \u201cDemocrats think party loyalty alone is going to help them survive? They\u2019re fooling themselves. This has nothing to do with politics. It\u2019s not a Trump thing, it\u2019s not a Republican thing. Normal people just want normal stuff they should expect from a functioning government and civil society.\u201d<\/p>\n

That frustration is on full display in Venice. After an outcry from westside residents fed up with the homelessness, crime, fires, and rampant drug use all around them,\u00a0Mike Bonin<\/strong>, the progressive city councilman representing parts of Venice and the westside, finally put into motion a plan to clean up the tent encampments along the Venice boardwalk this summer. But it might be too late to save his political career. Bonin is facing a recall effort of his own over his slow response to the homelessness crisis, supported by plenty of local Democrats who listen to NPR, practice yoga, and drink green smoothies.<\/p>\n

While I was on the phone with him, Villanueva texted me a photo from an I-10 underpass near Banc of California stadium showing a quarter mile-long pile of trash. \u201cThere\u2019s garbage everywhere, and no one wants to clean it up,\u201d he said. \u201cThe city isn\u2019t doing shit.\u201d Crime is also up throughout the state. Even former California Senator\u00a0Barbara Boxer<\/strong>\u00a0was attacked and mugged in broad daylight in a \u201cnice\u201d part of Oakland last month. \u201cHow could you do this to a grandmother!\u201d she cried.<\/p>\n

Covid, of course, has only compounded the apocalyptic mood. California\u2019s unemployment system functions about as well as a late-Soviet grocery store, leaving too many working people without the pandemic benefits they were promised. Wealthy white people pulled their kids out of school during the pandemic and created learning \u201cpods,\u201d while brown and Black students with working parents stayed at home, logging in for a few hours of haphazard online learning, without the meals and programs they had at their schools. Business owners\u2014merchants, restaurant owners, contractors, salon owners\u2014they\u2019re furious at Newsom for what they considered nonsensical and random shutdown measures, a fury that peaked during the winter shutdown when the state was grappling with a second wave of coronavirus.<\/p>\n

These are all reasons why Schwarznegger was right in another sense. He told Politico that the election wouldn\u2019t just be about two political parties, Republicans versus Democrats, each side marshaling their voters to the polls. \u201cIt had nothing to do then\u2014and it has nothing to do today\u2014with either party,\u201d Schwarzenegger said. \u201cPeople are dissatisfied. [The recall is] the people\u2019s way of kind of letting off some steam, and then they decide: Do we want to follow through, or not follow through?\u201d Indeed, for many voters on the wrong side of government\u2019s failures, real or perceived, the recall simply represents the first big opportunity of 2021 to say \u201cfuck you\u201d to a Person In Charge. That person happens to be Gavin Newsom, and he\u2019s in real trouble.
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\nThe Newsom campaign and dial-a-quote political strategists want voters to think that the recall is just another G.O.P. coup attempt. \u201cThis is going to be totally tribal,\u201d\u00a0David Townsend<\/strong>, a Democratic consultant, told the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0last week. \u201cThis is not going to be about Newsom. It\u2019s going to be about whether Democrats want Trump to have a governor in California.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, the complete opposite is true. If the election were about partisanship and tribalism, Newsom would be on pace for something like a 63-34 victory, the margin here in last year\u2019s extremely tribal presidential election. But the race is much closer than that. The FiveThirtyEight polling average of the recall currently has KEEP at 48.8 percent and REMOVE at 47.6 percent. That question on the recall ballot\u2014Question One\u2014has been the centerpiece of Newsom\u2019s campaign all year. But Newsom\u2019s real predicament coalesces around the fact that plenty of the people considering REMOVE are lifelong Democrats who voted for Joe Biden in 2020, like\u00a0Alex Chavez<\/strong>, the owner of Service & Supply, a barbershop with locations in Venice and downtown Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy biggest gripe with Newsom has been the handling of Covid,\u201d Chavez told me. \u201cThe decision to open bars and restaurants before schools and other businesses? As a parent and a business owner, you\u2019re telling us masks work, and the first thing you open are places where you can take your mask off and be social? It all seemed counterintuitive, and also in his personal interest, since he owns a restaurant and he\u2019s a wine guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chavez, 34, said he closed his shops in Spring 2020 even before the first shutdown order, to be a good citizen. But after a year of mixed messages, he and his colleagues felt confused and forgotten, watching other businesses open up again while they couldn\u2019t. \u201cIt just felt like they deemed us not big enough to worry about. Like, we\u2019re just barbers and hairdressers and nail techs. They didn\u2019t understand that we are not normal everyday people, with a household and other employees relying on us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Never mind that plenty of pandemic restrictions have been local orders, handed down by mayors and health directors in counties and cities across California, not the governor directly. But in the fog of memory, it doesn\u2019t matter: All of that political frustration falls back on Newsom, and he makes for a convenient target. Almost too handsome, he looks like a crooked politician straight out of Hollywood central casting. A friend of mine in Santa Monica\u2014a white guy in his 30s who works in tech and voted for Biden\u2014texted me that he\u2019s voting for the recall. Why? \u201cHe\u2019s a standard politician bureaucrat. Crime and homelessness out of control. People fleeing CA for other states. Why not go for change?\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bad rap, actually. Yes, Newsom is rich and looks fantastic in a suit. But he grew up dyslexic and shy, and fought more than plenty of his own personal demons. Beneath the shiny hair and Chiclet white teeth, he\u2019s a sophisticated policy thinker and the author of two books. Early in his career, as the mayor of San Francisco, he made the heroic, renegade decision to grant marriage licenses for gay couples at a time when most Democrats, including\u00a0Barack Obama<\/strong>, were afraid of culture war backlash. Since then, Newsom climbed the political ladder and waited for\u00a0Jerry Brown<\/strong>\u00a0to finally ride off to his ranch in Colusa County. He was elected governor in 2018 by a landslide, easily dispatching businessman\u00a0John Cox<\/strong>, now one of his many Republican challengers in the recall. (Cox is the one running the \u201cBeauty and the Beast\u201d ads on TV, with the live Grizzly Bear. Cox is the beast, ready to clean up California. Newsom, well, you get it.)<\/p>\n

But despite receiving high marks from voters during the early days of the pandemic for his handling of the shutdown and untold other disruptions, support for Newsom has waned. Voters still don\u2019t know much about his personality or agenda, and his campaign has struggled to articulate a message. Newsom frequently engages with the press and gives plenty of speeches\u2014he rolls his sleeves up for photo ops, cleaning up trash piles from under freeways, meeting with homeless people, and inspecting wildfire damage\u2014but it\u2019s also clear that Newsom\u2019s campaign knows he doesn\u2019t test well with voters. Newsom doesn\u2019t even front his own ads. For that, recall opponents enlisted\u00a0Elizabeth Warren<\/strong>, who registered almost no support among people of color during her presidential campaign, but will probably play well with the aforementioned NPR listeners. Their latest spot calls the recall a matter of \u201clife and death,\u201d warning that any of Newsom\u2019s Republican challengers would roll back mask and vaccine protocols and send California reeling backward. Newsom doesn\u2019t appear in that one either.<\/p>\n

The one thing that everyone in California\u00a0does<\/em>\u00a0know about Newsom, of course, is how he was caught on camera last November attending an indoor dinner with friends at\u00a0Thomas Keller<\/strong>\u2019s French Laundry, without a mask, even as he was telling Californians to stay home and mask up. It only fed into the perception of Newsom as another rich, privileged Democrat\u2014cozy with tech titans in Silicon Valley and the Bay, but out of touch with everyone else who was getting drilled by the economic slowdown. It was almost as bad as the time\u00a0Chris Christie<\/strong>\u00a0closed down the beaches of New Jersey as part of a 2017 government shutdown, only to be photographed days later marooned on the sand with his family. Before the French Laundry fiasco, recall supporters only had about 55,000 signatures, well short of the 2 million needed to certify the ballot measure. A month after Newsom\u2019s dinner, the petition had passed one million signatures.
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\nBut another one of Newsom\u2019s many problems is that he isn\u2019t running against a single opponent he can demonize. Newsom has far more money behind him\u2014Netflix co-C.E.O.\u00a0Reed Hastings<\/strong>\u00a0is helping bankroll his TV ads\u2014but he\u2019s also fighting a multifront battle against several opponents, none of whom come off as scary or as Trumpy or as radical as the Newsom campaign would wish. Complicating matters even more, Newsom can\u2019t really attack any of them by name, since that would inadvertently raise their profiles. So, he\u2019s left vaguely alluding to one Republican or the other, and letting reporters fill in the blanks.<\/p>\n

The current frontrunner is conservative talk show host\u00a0Larry Elder<\/strong>, the \u201cSage from South Central.\u201d Right-wingers love him\u2014he\u2019s always Zooming into Fox News, where he\u2019s floated the idea of eliminating the minimum wage and removing all mask mandates in California. But his TV ads, like those of his fellow Republican candidates, mostly focus on topics a lot of Californians agree with: fighting crime, fixing homelessness, lowering taxes, and fixing the state\u2019s dysfunctional unemployment system. Few of Newsom\u2019s opponents are bothering with the details, but collectively they\u2019re hammering voters with the same advertising blitz: Newsom has failed California, so give someone else a shot.<\/p>\n

Elder has been subject to a relentless oppo dump showing up in the pages of the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>, with stories about his past radical statements and a recent article claiming that he once brandished a handgun at an ex-girlfriend during a fight. (Elder vehemently denied the allegation.) Elder, though, has stayed relentlessly on message, attacking the media, calling Newsom an elitist, and running a series of simple, straight-to-camera ads that don\u2019t mention his party affiliation\u2014only the claim that Newsom has one set of rules for himself and his rich friends, and another for hard working Californians. The polls are few and far between, but in July, Elder was leading all candidates with 18 percent of the vote.<\/p>\n

The way the recall ballot works, that\u2019s all it might take to win. If enough people vote to recall Newsom on Question One, the next governor will be the replacement option on the ballot with the most votes. There are 46 possible candidates for Question Two, most of them gadflies. But that means the next governor of California could very easily be a talk show host who wins election with something like 20 percent of the vote.<\/p>\n

That person will only be in Sacramento for a year until next year\u2019s midterms, but the Newsom campaign wants voters to know that\u2019s more than enough time to do some damage in a blue state that takes its liberal bent for granted. And, some Democrats whisper, what if something happens to a certain 88-year old California Senator? Yep, Governor Larry Elder wouldn\u2019t just have the power to make appointments to the judicial bench or state regulatory commissions. He\u2019d have the power to swing control of the United States Senate.
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\nDemocrats around the country have slipped back into a risky kind of complacency now that Trump is out of office, and things are no different in California. College-educated voters who spent 2020 posting on their Instagram stories about the existential importance of voting and Yas Kweening\u00a0Stacey Abrams<\/strong>\u00a0on Twitter? They now seem checked out. I know far too many people in California, many of them millennials, who voted for Biden last year, but today either don\u2019t know that there\u2019s a recall, don\u2019t know how the ballot works, or simply don\u2019t care. Those voters are even harder to reach in today\u2019s fractured media environment, especially in an off-year election when a lot of people are trying to take a breather from politics.<\/p>\n

A July poll from the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>\u00a0and UC-Berkeley told the story and set off panic among Democrats: Almost 90 percent of Republicans expressed a high level of interest in the recall election, while only 58 percent of Democrats and 53 percent of independent voters said the same. The poll also revealed a weak spot for Newsom among Hispanic voters, who make up roughly 28 percent of the California electorate. While the poll found that a majority of registered Hispanic voters opposed the recall, the Hispanics most likely to vote were more inclined to vote against Newsom. Meanwhile, the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Initiative has projected that the Latino share of the vote will be smaller in September than it was in 2020.<\/p>\n

Javier Gonzalez<\/strong>, a labor organizer who works for the Janitor\u2019s Union in Los Angeles, SEIU Local 1877, and worked for\u00a0Bernie Sanders<\/strong>, said Latino voters have long felt that the government has left them behind. But that frustration grew more acute during the pandemic, especially as Hispanic communities suffered higher Covid rates than whites. \u201cThey are tired of being the progressive voter that\u2019s taken for granted,\u201d Gonzales told me. \u201cAverage working people in L.A. are increasingly Latino. They repair cars, they\u2019re painters, they work construction, they have small businesses. They are feeling like they pay all the taxes, they go to church, they follow the rules, they raise the kids. But then they hear, \u2018We are shutting down, but please come in to work.\u2019 … This is their opportunity to say Fuck You.\u201d The way Gonzalez tells it, Latino voters don\u2019t even need to vote against Newsom to send him packing. His coalition is fragile enough that they can end his governorship simply by staying home.<\/p>\n

Newsom\u2019s mission in these remaining few weeks is to let voters know that yes, there\u2019s a recall, here\u2019s how it works, and\u00a0please<\/em>\u00a0send in your ballot. Newsom\u2019s team is sending out half a million text messages every day to registered Democrats asking them for support, and Stop The Republican Recall, the formal name for Newsom\u2019s effort, is blanketing television and YouTube with anti-recall ads. Their late efforts might be working. Chavez, the barber shop owner, was ready to vote for the recall, but he did some research on the challengers and told me he\u2019s decided to let Newsom have his final year. \u201cI believe in science. I believe in fair wages. I don\u2019t want the mask mandates and vaccines to go away,\u201d he said. \u201cBut if the recall doesn\u2019t go through, they shouldn\u2019t be looking at that as a victory. There are enough people out there who are Democrats and independents who don\u2019t like what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben LaBolt<\/strong>, a former Obama adviser who now lives in San Francisco, said Democrats in California have to do more to confront the real world problems of homelessness, housing, affordability, and safety. Those concerns, he said, transcend party lines, but Democrats in the state are so afraid of crossing left-wing activists and their academic concerns, hashed out on Twitter and other forums online, that they\u2019re losing touch with working and middle class people. \u201cTeachers and firefighters are forced to commute for hours, immigrant communities that moved here for a better life don\u2019t feel safe, the socialists on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors argue about civil liberties for homeless people that are killing themselves with fentanyl in broad daylight, instead of forcing them into treatment and building the buildings that could house them,\u201d he told me. LaBolt predicted that Newsom will win, in part, because Elder is \u201ca Trumpian lunatic.\u201d But he said that after the recall, \u201cDems would be smart to treat these concerns as serious issues that deserve a results-oriented response.\u201d<\/p>\n

What might save the campaign, in the end, is mail-in voting, instituted during the pandemic. Some 22 million registered voters are getting ballots in the mail as you read this. A little more than 10 million of them are Democrats. About five million are Republican, with five million more claiming no party affiliation. That might seem like easy math in favor of Newsom, but his campaign is quite obviously in break-glass mode, worried that enough Democrats might not even pay attention to the ballots in their mailboxes. Newsom\u2019s campaign even called in Joe Biden and\u00a0Kamala Harris<\/strong>\u00a0to campaign for him down the stretch. In California! \u201cIt won\u2019t do shit,\u201d Gonzales sniffed. Maybe, maybe not. But after four years of exhausting Trump panic, a grueling presidential campaign, and almost two years of a pandemic that seems like it\u2019s not going away, Democrats are going to have to find a way to galvanize millions of voters once again\u2014all to save a politician that not many people cared about in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gavin Newsom Is in Trouble. Could He Take Biden with Him? The Powers That Be<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}