Newsom holds on to his job as California governor
” ‘No’ is not the only thing that was expressed tonight,” Newsom, who will now finish out his term, said Tuesday night. “We said yes to science, yes to vaccines, yes to ending this pandemic.”
Newsom was bolstered by a robust turnout among Democrats, who outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1 in the Golden State but had initially appeared disinterested in the race.
As recently as a month ago, Newsom’s fate had appeared highly unpredictable with many voters’ lives disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, raging wildfires and a historic drought. A group of conservative activists launched the recall last year because they disagreed with Newsom’s progressive policy stances, and the effort took off amid frustration among some Californians about what they viewed as Newsom’s onerous and ever-changing Covid regulations for business and restaurant owners, as well as for school re-openings.
But the emergence of Republican replacement candidate Larry Elder, a conservative talk radio host opposed to mask and vaccine mandates, and the surge in Covid cases caused by the Delta variant allowed Newsom to crystallize the choice for voters in the final weeks at his events and on the airwaves. With the help of top national Democrats, including President Joe Biden who campaigned for him in Long Beach on the eve of the election, Newsom argued that the recall amounted to a “life or death” choice for voters and promised that his top priority was to keep them safe.
Despite some early concerns about apathy among Democratic voters, Newsom’s team projected confidence as the finish line came into view Tuesday night, with one top adviser telling CNN they “could be headed for record turnout” in a statewide special election.
The Newsom adviser told CNN that Biden’s eleventh hour visit “buoyed” the governor, and the President’s aides believe a strong showing could give Democrats and independents a stronger sense of confidence as the administration fights over mask-wearing, vaccines and more.
As the early signs suggesting a good night for Newsom mounted, a senior aide to Elder sought to pump the brakes, saying that Elder’s staff expected early returns to show Newsom well ahead, but that Elder would gain ground as the night wore on and votes cast on Election Day were counted.
Even before the polls had closed, Elder alleged without evidence that Democrats were going to cheat in Tuesday’s special election and said he was preparing to file lawsuits. He was taking a page from the playbook of former President Donald Trump, who released a statement Monday baselessly claiming that the recall election was rigged because more than 22 million registered voters received a ballot in the mail. Newsom’s team said they are prepared to handle any legal challenges to the results.
Exit polling on Tuesday night suggested that Newsom’s pandemic-focused message may have broken through with voters, who listed the coronavirus as the most pressing issue facing the state.
There’s broad support for Covid mitigation measures, with more than 6 in 10 saying that getting vaccinated is more of a public health responsibility than it is a personal choice.
The pandemic remains at the top of voters’ minds, with about one-third — the highest share of any issue — saying it’s the biggest issue for the state, according to the exit poll.
Voters’ assessments of the state of the coronavirus in California were mixed, with about 4 in 10 say the situation is getting better, 3 in 10 that it remains about the same and just under one-quarter that it’s worsening.
Top national Democrats, in a likely preview of the party’s messaging heading into the 2022 election cycle, framed Newsom’s success as a broad disavowal of the Republican Party’s attitude toward the coronavirus and its fealty to Trump.
“Once again, voters rejected the Republican Party’s denial of the pandemic sweeping our country and their subsequent refusal to address it, rejected Republicans’ disproved conspiracy theories about our elections, and rejected Republicans’ unwavering loyalty to the man who caused it all — Donald Trump,” Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison said in a statement.
Whether or not the dynamics that preserved Newsom’s governorship have lasting power across the country, especially in less Democratic states, the fight will have strengthened the Democratic governor ahead of his reelection bid next year.
Newsom’s “stop the recall” campaign raised more than $71 million, a stunning figure that completely overwhelmed all of his GOP rivals. A Newsom campaign source says the Democratic governor will wake up Wednesday with $24 million in cash on hand for his reelection and an “online army” of volunteers whom he can reconnect with as his political future unfolds.
The campaign says it received more than 600,000 small-dollar donations — which they define as less than $100 — and that 90% of those were from California, all donors whom he can reactivate as he heads into his reelection campaign.
In his brief remarks on Tuesday night after the race had been called, Newsom lamented the odd and occasionally nasty contest that had unfolded over the past couple of months.
A turnout operation
In order to hold onto his job, Newsom — first elected in 2018 — needed a majority of voters to have voted “no” on the first ballot question about whether they want to oust him. Newsom’s operation was largely a turnout, rather than a persuasion, campaign. With registered Democrats outnumbering Republicans in the state by nearly 2 to 1, his biggest hurdle was getting them engaged in an off-year election amid the disruptions of the pandemic. There were good signs for Newsom on that front in recent days, with Democrats casting pre-election ballots at a higher rate than their registration in the state, but Republicans had been counting on their voters showing up on Election Day to vote in person.
Those quirky recall rules helped Newsom paint Elder as a viable threat to this deep blue state.
Biden called Elder a “clone of Donald Trump” Monday night, casting the California election as a mission to once again defeat the former Republican President he unseated last fall and protect “California from Trump Republicans trying to block us from beating this pandemic.”
“You either keep Gavin Newsom as your governor,” Biden said, “or you’ll get Donald Trump.”
Newsom paints ‘life or death’ choice
Newsom leaned into the differences between his and Elder’s approaches to stop the spread of Covid-19, which many California strategists say tilted the race in Newsom’s favor in the final weeks.
Newsom adviser Sean Clegg told reporters Monday night that the surge of the Delta variant was a “turning point” for the campaign.
“What Delta brought into clear, clear focus was what the stakes are in this election when one party has basically become an anti-science, anti-vaccine, anti-public health party,” Clegg said.
Partisanship was not a perfect predictor of voter behavior in this election, but in that same survey, 90% of likely Democratic voters said they wanted to keep Newsom and 7% said they would vote to recall him. Among likely Republican voters, 82% favored recalling Newsom and 17% said they were opposed to the recall. Independent voters were more split: 44% said they favored the recall and 49% were against it.
Overall, according to the exit poll, women make up slightly more than half the electorate in the California recall, just as they did in the 2020 presidential election and the 2018 gubernatorial race. White majorities narrowly make up the majority of the electorate, the exit poll finds, with the remainder people of color. In 2020 exit polling, about half the electorate was White; in 2018, it was 63%.
Once unlikely recall effort gained steam with Covid frustrations
When Newsom was elected with more than 60% of the vote in 2018, it would have seemed inconceivable that an effort to oust him would succeed in a state where Democrats have such a significant voter registration advantage and hold every statewide office. But the push to recall Newsom — which was launched early last year by a group of conservative activists who didn’t like his record on taxes, the death penalty, immigration and the state’s homelessness crisis — gained momentum late last year amid rising frustrations about his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Under the California Constitution, recall proponents were required to gather 1,495,709 valid signatures from voters to qualify the recall for the ballot — a figure equivalent to 12% of the votes cast in the prior gubernatorial election. Their efforts were bolstered by a California judge’s decision in November to extend the deadline for collecting those signatures by four months.
In an unforced error, Newsom attended the unmasked birthday dinner of a lobbyist friend at an elite Napa Valley restaurant at a time when he was urging Californians to stay home and avoid gatherings with large groups outside their households. His critics charged him with hypocrisy, and he apologized, but the national attention to what he called “a bad mistake” likely led many more voters to sign the signature petitions.
As the state was ramping up its Covid-19 vaccination program earlier this year, Newsom was still trying to swat away questions about what his team had framed as an attempted Republican takeover of state government by Trump loyalists. But there were some danger signs for Newsom. Polls repeatedly reflected high enthusiasm among Republican voters for recalling him, but relatively low interest in the election from Democratic voters, many of whom were not even aware of the recall.
Though the pro-recall forces turned in all their signatures in March, the gears of the state bureaucracy moved slowly and the September 14 date for the special election was not set until July.
Democrats and their many allied groups scrambled to educate voters about the unusual date of the election and the two-question ballot. In the end, Newsom raised more than $71 million through the committee that he created to fight the recall, which has no fundraising limits, far outpacing his rivals and the pro-recall campaigns.
This story has been updated.
Eric Bradner and Kyung Lah contributed to this report.