San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Online at sfchronicle.com/opinion
Read additional commentary, including past pieces you may have missed.
California Democrats panicking over whether Gavin Newsom is the next Gray Davis should heed advice from an unlikely source: their enemies. After all, despite what looks like a prohibitive political head start for the governor’s party, the backers of what Newsom calls the “Republican recall” seem to be running circles around them.
Back in July, just after adult film star Mary Carey got out of the race and similarly qualified talk radio star Larry Elder got in, former Davis adviser Garry South dismissed the menagerie of would-be recallers in Politico as “a bunch of Lilliputians.” Perhaps he forgot that the miniature humanoids of “Gulliver’s Travels” imprisoned and nearly executed the full-size protagonist.
Meanwhile, the recall’s right-wing proponents were welcoming more candidates as merrier, arguing that each hopeful’s modest base added more tiny but collectively formidable Lilliputian ropes to the governor’s towering frame.
The polls bear that out. Elder, who apparently believes smoking is less dangerous than basic labor protections , is the putative front-runner to replace Newsom with about 20% of the vote. And yet the governor is uncomfortably close to an ouster at the hands of more than twice as many voters.
The recall works for politically disadvantaged Republicans partly because the first, pivotal question on the ballot, whether to recall Newsom, keeps them out of it. Unlike a regular election, the recall allows every voter to imagine his or her own ideal governor against the rough-hewn reality of the office’s current occupant.
For the same reason, the periodic outbursts of hand-wringing over
Gov. Gavin Newsom, the target of a recall drive, visited Greenville (Plumas County) as the Dixie Fire raged last weekend.
whether Democrats should have run their own replacement candidate or should now coalesce behind a write-in option — the only possibility still available now that the filing deadline has passed — are misguided. A viable Democrat would likely serve as the second coming of Cruz Bustamante, the lieutenant governor who came in second to Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first gubernatorial recall. Bustamante’s presence helped voters uncomfortable with electing “Kindergarten Cop” make their peace with deelecting Davis.
Newsom and his allies urge supporters to skip voting for a replacement entirely. That’s absurd from the perspective of individual voters, who shouldn’t relinquish their right to cast a ballot for a potential successor even if they oppose recalling the governor.
But the Newsom campaign’s posture makes sense as a matter of strategy because elevating any other candidate only contributes to the recall’s viability.
Despite second-guessing from some of their fellow Democrats, Newsom and company have therefore been right to resist any ostensibly reasonable alternative to the governor. So what are they getting wrong?
The trouble is that even as they have assiduously dismissed the opposition by telling voters not to consider another option, the rest of their message unintentionally magnifies their antagonists and diminishes Newsom.
The campaign’s preoccupation with a “Republican recall” populated by Trump supporters, albeit substantially true, is eerily reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s accurate but excessive focus on the danger of Donald Trump himself
five years ago — when, like Elder, he was still a mercifully untested political outsider running against an establishment figure. Focusing on the Republicans is even less suited to the recall ballot, which prevents Newsom from running against any particular opponent and forces him to run against himself.
Newsom has been repeatedly challenged and sometimes overwhelmed by crisis, increasing his temptation to dwell on disparaging the comparatively nonexistent record of his opponents. But in this context, it’s incumbent on the governor to run on his own achievements — Lilliputian, Brobdingnagian or, more likely, somewhere in between.