Larry Elder charges that the 2020 presidential election was full of "shenanigans" and says he worried about potential voting irregularities in the Sept. 14 California recall election of embattled Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
That’s why Elder, a conservative talk radio host and the polling front runner among the California gubernatorial replacement candidates, is urging supporters to report to his campaign anything they think is suspicious.
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"The 2020 election, in my opinion, was full of shenanigans. And my fear is they're going to try that in this election right here and recall. So I'm urging people to go to ElectElder.com. Whenever you see anything, hear anything suspicious, go to my website. We have a battery of lawyers. We're going to file a lawsuit in a timely fashion this time," Elder said Sunday in an exclusive interview on Fox News "Media Buzz."
Since his 2020 loss to now-President Biden, former President Trump has repeatedly fed his supporters a regular diet of unsubstantiated claims that the election was "stolen" amid "massive" election fraud. Trump refused to concede the election, but dozens of legal challenges by the then-president and his allies were shot down, and then-Attorney General William Barr said the Justice Department had not seen fraud on the kind of scale that could flip the election.
Conservative radio talk show host Larry Elder speaks to supporters during a campaign stop outside the Hall of Justice downtown Los Angeles, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. Elder is running to replace Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in the Sept. 14 recall election. The recall was largely driven by frustration with Newsom's sweeping coronavirus orders that closed schools, businesses and in turn, cost millions of jobs. In a television ad this week, Newsom's campaign blasted his Republican rivals as anti-vaxers, However Elder, and other top GOP candidates Kevin Faulconer, Kevin Kiley and John Cox all say they have been vaccinated against the virus and none has flatly said the vaccines are dangerous. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
In an interview with "Media Buzz" host Howard Kurtz, Elder claimed that "we know there were shenanigans in Michigan, shenanigans in Wisconsin, in Pennsylvania," naming three of the half a dozen states where Biden narrowly edged Trump last November. "There are all sorts of reasons why the 2020 election, in my opinion, was full of shenanigans."
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Elder announced his candidacy in the recall election in mid-July. He quickly became the top fundraising candidate among the 46 replacement contenders on the ballot, and is the clear front runner in most recent polling among the candidates hoping to succeed Newsom.
Accusations that Newsom mishandled the Golden State’s response to the coronavirus, as the worst pandemic in a century swept across the country last year, was what sparked the original effort to recall the state’s Democratic governor.
But with just over a week to go until the deadline for Californian voters hand in their ballots in the gubernatorial recall election, Newsom is hoping that his efforts to combat the coronavirus may save his save job, as he touts the state’s high vaccination rate and warns what may happen if he’s replaced by a conservative Republican in the governor’s office.
Newscom last week compared California’s COVID rates to much higher ones in large states with conservative governors, such as Texas and Florida, during a news conference outside a health clinic in Oakland. And the governor also took aim at Elder, who has said he’d halt the state’s vaccine and mask requirements if elected.
"His model is Texas and Florida, and Mississippi," Newsom charged. "We have among the lowest positivity rates in America. They have the highest positivity rates in America. We have one of the lowest case rates in America. They’re among the highest."
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Many of the other leading replacement candidates have all said while the don’t oppose vaccines, they would join Elder in rolling back Newsom’s statewide vaccine mandates for those working for the state, in health care, and at schools. But Newsom argued that such moves would set California back in its battle to combat the coronavirus and emphasized that "there is no more consequential decision to the health and safety of the people, the state of California, than voting ‘no’ on this Republican recall."
A new Newsom ad running on California airwaves warns that "what’s at stake in the September 14 recall? It’s a matter of life and death." And it charges that Elder "peddled deadly conspiracy theories and would eliminate vaccine mandates on day one."
Elder, in his Fox News interview, insisted that "I'm not anti-vax, despite what his ads say. I've been vaccinated because I'm in a high-risk category and I urge people who are in categories that are high-risk to be vaccinated."
"But I don't believe the science does compel children to be vaccinated. They're not likely to contract the coronavirus. They're not likely to get really sick. They're not likely to go to hospital and they're certainly not likely to die," Elder argued.
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Elder’s correct that younger people are less at risk of severe illness and death from COVID than older people. But his comments stand in contrast the warnings from doctors and medical officials over the sickening of more young people this summer due to the highly infectious Delta variant, which has spread across the country.
Elder also argued that Newsom is "trying to turn this (the recall election) into a referendum against scare because he can't defend his record."
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