California Gov. Gavin Newsom survives recall election
California recall election results reveal Newsom will retain his post as governor.
In the end, the recall effort against California Gov. Gavin Newsom ran out of steam. Though the race may tighten as in person votes are counted, Newsom racked up a comfortable win. As of Wednesday afternoon, he is currently sitting at about 63% of voters who want to keep him, very close to the number President Joe Biden got in the Golden State in the 2020 presidential election.
In the end the forces arrayed against Newsom, the frustrated small business owners who suffered under the lockdowns, those who decry the homeless and mentally ill overrunning the streets in big cities, and those concerned with crime and education just couldn’t muster the turnout to kick the governor out.
There are some lessons in this not just for California, but for the nation.
Having travelled throughout the state over the past week, the most important places I visited, in terms of the ultimate result of the election, were in the GOP-leaning Central Valley. There, in towns like Modesto, Fresno, and Bakersfield, voters landed in favor of the recall, but not in nearly large enough numbers.
THE NO'S HAVE IT - GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM SURVIVES IN CALIFORNIA RECALL ELECTION
What stood out in these rural areas of California was that life has largely returned to normal there, in ways not true for Los Angeles, and especially for San Francisco.
Read more Opinion columns from David Marcus on the California recall
This created a strange situation in which it was in the blue areas of California that the restrictions which launched the recall were still most stridently in effect, whereas in the conservative parts of the state, people were mostly just living their normal lives.
The bottom line is that while Newson is not popular in rural California, that is borne out by those who bothered to vote, but conditions were not bad enough to bring out the kind of numbers needed to recall him.
We spend a lot of time thinking about the left vs right polarization of the United States. Of course, that is a very real thing but in terms of the impact that government has on the lives of Americans the more immediate divide is urban/suburban vs rural/exurban. The frustrated San Franciscan need not move to the "free states" of Texas or Florida, it is enough to move to Bakersfield. Just as in Florida and Texas some urban areas labor under significant restrictions imposed locally.
Newsom had all of the advantages that we knew he would, plenty of money to spend, slavish devotion from unions, especially teachers unions that have meaty organizational power, especially in a mostly mail-in election.
He had the support of most of the national media, and succeeded in shifting focus in the race from his own record to over the top, and sometimes even racist attacks on his conservative Black opponent radio talk show host Larry Elder.
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But none of these big advantages in a bright blue state tell us much that we didn’t already know. Perhaps what we did learn was that in states like California, Democrats are wise to leave rural, right leaning areas more or less to their own devices. And in that sense the recall effort did succeed in keeping the powers that be in the state capitol from running roughshod over the rights of those in California flyover country.
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Democrats are fond of saying that Trump’s impeachment (both of them) is forever, even though he was not removed from office.
If it is true for Trump, it is also true for Newsom, the recall is forever, even if 60% percent of his bosses decided not to fire him.
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The recall was not a wasted effort. In a very real way it helped to check the more restrictive impulses of Democrats across the country by showing there are consequences to suspending the liberties of Americans.
The game was lost, but for many, including those in rural California, just playing it kept the clutches of government farther away from their lives and freedoms.