San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Elder promises to remove virus mandates
SACRAMENTO — Conservative radio host Larry Elder pledged Friday that he would move swiftly to rescind all state-imposed mask and vaccine mandates across California if he’s elected to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom in the Sept. 14 recall election.
“When I become governor, assuming there are mandates for masks and statewide mandates for vaccines, they will be suspended right away,” Elder said during a Zoom news conference. “This is America. We have freedom in America.”
Elder’s comments came days after Newsom ordered all teachers and other school staff to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or submit to regular testing. The Democratic governor required all state employees and health care workers to do the same last month, as new infections began to rapidly climb due to the highly infectious delta variant.
Elder, 69, said while he believes “vaccines work,” he doesn’t want the state to mandate immunization for people who are still skeptical. He said he has personally received the vaccine, at his doctor’s urging, because he faces a higher
Talk show host Larry Elder is polling ahead of other Republican candidates challenging Gov. Gavin Newsom in the Sept. 14 recall election.
risk of becoming seriously ill due to a blood disorder and his advanced age.
Recent polls show Elder is the Republican front-runner in the race to replace Newsom, should he be recalled. California’s recall ballot will contain two questions: Should Newsom
be removed, and who should replace him? If a majority of voters chooses to recall Newsom, then the top votegetter among the replacements wins, even if the total share of the electorate is well below a majority.
That means Elder could win the governor’s
office with a plurality of voters, though polling suggests a majority of likely voters in deepblue California support Newsom’s response to the pandemic.
Since entering the recall race last month, days before the July 16 filing deadline, Elder has surged to the front of the pack of the 46candidate field. Through his nationally syndicated radio show, he has strong name recognition and support from his million-plus broadcast listeners.
While Elder has said he believes vaccines are effective, he has also promoted vaccine skeptics. Last month, he interviewed a caller on his radio show, who purported to be a gynecologist in Texas and suggested billionaire Bill Gates wants people to get vaccinated and “wants population control.” Elder didn’t object as he listened, as HuffPost first reported, and later promoted the interview on his website under the headline “You’ll Want to Hear This Physician’s Take on the Vaccines.”
The California Department of Public Health has repeatedly warned in recent weeks that coronavirus infections are increasing statewide, mostly among unvaccinated people. Health professionals say the vaccine is safe and protects against severe COVID-19 illness and death.
On Friday, Elder said he would remove the state’s vaccine requirement for teachers or state workers. He didn’t specify whether he would support lifting the requirement that those who aren’t vaccinated be regularly tested. He also said he would eliminate any mask requirements for schoolchildren.
“At the state level, I’m not going to require any kind of public worker to wear masks, any kind of public worker to have a vaccine,” he said during an hour-long news conference, in which he didn’t take questions from any major media outlets. “I think that’s an assault on freedom.”
But Elder said he would not try to prevent private companies from requiring their workers to be vaccinated, as numerous large corporations and small business have done in recent weeks.
During the news conference, Elder also criticized Newsom for supporting Proposition 16, last year’s failed ballot initiative, which would have repealed California’s prohibition on affirmative action in public universities and government agencies. Elder portrayed Newsom’s stance as antiAsian.
As he spoke, Newsom kicked off a weekend of “vote no” campaign events at a news conference with phone bank volunteers at Manny’s, a cafe and political hangout in San Francisco’s Mission District. The governor repeatedly took aim at what he called Elder’s extreme views.
“The stakes are profound,” Newsom said. “I know we always say, ‘The stakes could not be higher.’ But the stakes could not be higher in the state of California.” On the campaign trail, Elder has reiterated some controversial views, including that he doesn’t believe racism is a major problem in American today, that police are less likely to use force against Black people than white suspects and that the minimum wage should be abolished.