Mark J. Terrill/AP Photo
California Gov. Gavin Newsom delivers his State of the State address from Dodger Stadium, March 9, 2021, in Los Angeles.
As of today, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is headed for a recall election. With more than two million signatures collected, far above the 1.5 million threshold required, the first-term governor will be forced into a special election later this year to defend his post, well before his re-election effort begins in 2022. Though it will take weeks to verify every signature and arrive at a formal, final tally, the governor himself even admitted on Monday that the recall campaign seemed to have enough backing to force a vote.
Early polling looks favorable for Newsom’s odds of surviving this brush with ouster. California is overwhelmingly Democratic, and neither the state’s voting liberals nor other party representatives have soured on him. A motivated Republican minority, with some libertarian oddballs and significant funding from national conservatives, has driven this campaign from the outset.
But Newsom isn’t leaving it to chance. He cut a 90-second video trailer to hype up the regular and regularly dull State of the State address, which, as CalMatters reporter Lauren Rosenhall noted, looks a lot like a campaign ad. He’s begun a messaging blitz against the recall, rolling out a strategy that seeks to paint the referendum as a close sibling of xenophobic, pro-Trump extremism.
And though Democratic groups haven’t yet committed big money to fighting it out on the airwaves, the national Democratic Party is also taking the threat seriously. Already, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Cory Booker (D-NJ), all former presidential candidates who occupy different positions on the political spectrum, have put out calls to support Newsom, condemning the recall as an “extremist” measure.
The last time a recall campaign was mounted in California, in 2003, it resulted in Republicans controlling the governor’s mansion for nearly two terms, interrupting a nascent leftward takeover in California politics. The damage was considerable. A Republican takeover of the top seat in California would be beyond cataclysmic for the party. Even if it’s unlikely, the downside is too much to risk in a state that is essentially a Democratic flagship, given its size, reliable commitment to Democrats at all levels of government, and its close to one-party status.
But even as Newsom fights for his life politically, he’s also never been more powerful. With the Senate confirmation of Health and Human Services director Xavier Becerra expected this week, Newsom will have a third high-ranking position, one that’s usually filled by election, that he can fill via appointment. Becerra served as the California attorney general from 2017 until his recent elevation by Joe Biden.
Newsom has already tapped Alex Padilla, who served as secretary of state, to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Vice President Kamala Harris. To replace Padilla, Newsom chose Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, making her the highest-ranking Black woman in the state. So with the Becerra replacement, Newsom will have handpicked three normally elected officials for top-rung positions. Granted incumbency, those replacements can hold down those seats basically without challenge for as many terms as they want.
That’s to say nothing of California’s (very, very) senior senator Dianne Feinstein, who is 87 years old, and widely known to be in mental decline, which resulted in her stepping down as ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee after she bungled the Amy Coney Barrett Supreme Court confirmation hearing. It would be legitimately psychotic if Feinstein pursued re-election in 2024 at 91 years of age. It’s possible she will resign the seat before her term is up, which could add a fourth high-profile appointment to the docket for Newsom (and potentially even a fifth, depending on who he chooses to fill that seat). Newsom vowed on Monday to replace Feinstein with a Black woman if he got the opportunity, though Feinstein responded by promising to finish her term.
This puts Newsom in a unique position to single-handedly reshape the contours of not only California state politics, but the California Democratic Party in its entirety, and the national Democratic Party by extension, a process already under way. Joe Biden has drawn fairly extensively on California Democrats for executive branch positions, and as defections mount as the administration wears on, it’s not unlikely that he’ll return to the Golden State’s bench for political talent. That makes Newsom something of a kingmaker in the party, someone with stealth staffing power in the White House, able to fast-track the political careers of a number of Democratic politicians.
This puts Newsom in a unique position to single-handedly reshape the contours of not only California state politics, but the California Democratic Party in its entirety.
To find a historical parallel in California, you’d have to go all the way back to the 1950s, when Earl Warren served as the state’s governor, and went on an appointment spree of his own. That also elevated his own political profile—Warren went on to make a spirited run for the presidency, before being tapped for the Supreme Court by President Dwight Eisenhower. Warren eventually became chief justice of one of the more influential and progressive Supreme Courts in American history.
Newsom looked like he might have legitimate presidential aspirations a year ago, but as his early and effective management of the pandemic gave way to a series of PR crises and inexplicable decisions (like dining at elegant restaurant The French Laundry while the rest of the state was on lockdown), those ambitions have stalled. Facing this recall campaign, he’s in a precarious position, one that won’t immediately become solid even if he survives the special election.
Newsom, of course, could emerge from a special election with a resounding victory, empowered to pursue his agenda and positioned to coast to re-election. Much of the popular outrage driving the Newsom recall campaign is based on COVID lockdowns and their economic consequences. By the time the special election actually takes place, however, those lockdowns will be long since relieved. Even with a just-average vaccination campaign, a vast majority of the state’s willing recipients will have been inoculated by that point. In fact, there’s every indication that the state of California will be in an economic boomlet, thanks to pent-up economic demand and generous federal stimulus from the Biden administration. Making the task even more difficult is the fact that Republicans need not only to have a majority of voters choose to recall Newsom, but also to vote for a GOP candidate to replace him. The party has not coalesced around a candidate—Trump is extremely unpopular, and there’s no clear heir to Trumpian politics in the running anyway.
But that also would require a substantial and motivated turnout from Newsom backers during an off-year election event induced by an asymmetric urgency from the state’s right-wing minority. If Newsom only just survives, and proves to be wounded or worn out by the effort, it’s possible that a national Democrat could return the favor and bail him out with a national appointment of his own. He’s not a lawyer, so it’s unlikely that he’d follow the Warren path exactly (though Democrats do urgently need to replace some elderly justices on the nation’s highest court). Still, it wouldn’t be entirely surprising to see him jump ship and take up a national post. If he does, he’ll be surrounded by plenty of familiar faces.
