The power of political polarization

With California likely headed for another election to recall its governor, one question is on the minds of voters and pundits: Will Gavin Newsom be the next Gray Davis?

But maybe they should be asking: Will Newsom be the next Scott Walker?

The Republican former governor of Wisconsin is pretty much the political opposite of Newsom, who positions himself as the leader of a progressive “nation-state.” But the unsuccessful attempt by Democrats and labor unions to recall Walker in 2012 now looks like a mirror image of the push to oust Newsom — and shares more in common with the present-day recall than the one that cost Democrat Davis his job as the Golden State’s governor in 2003.

A single issue has largely driven both the Newsom and Walker recall campaigns: In California it’s Newsom’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, while in Wisconsin it was legislation Walker championed that decimated the collective bargaining power of public employee unions.

Both targeted first-term governors who were rising stars in their own parties, which meant they could each tap deeppocketed donors to help them fend off the recall challenge.

And both reflected the power of polarization. Walker’s moves outraged Democrats and unions, who branded his bargaining law an attack on working families. Republicans are furious over what they call tyrannical pandemic restrictions from Newsom.

Those voters in each state were able to force their governors into a fight for their political lives, though in Walker’s case, he survived the challenge with relative ease and it did little to disrupt his conservative agenda.

“The opposition to Walker here was incredibly intense,” said Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette University

Law School Poll, a respected survey of Wisconsin voters.

But Walker had a bedrock of support among Republicans, Franklin said, and most independents sided with him in the special election — either because they approved of his policies or didn’t think a recall was warranted. Walker won the 2012 recall in the narrowly divided swing state of Wisconsin by 53% to 46%, a slightly bigger margin than in his first race for governor two years earlier.

That path to victory will likely be even easier for Newsom to follow in the California of 2021, where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 2-to-1.

Just 40% of California registered voters are in favor of recalling Newsom, according to a poll released Wednesday from the nonpartisan firm Probolsky Research, while 46.7% are opposed. The anti-recall side has an even bigger advantage among likely voters, 52.5% of whom said they want to keep Newsom compared with 34.6% who would vote him out.

“A highly mobilized minority can in certain circumstances generate those recall signatures and spark the recall,” Franklin said, but “that intensely mobilized minority may not in fact overwhelm the majority.”

Plenty of Wisconsin Democrats now believe their recall attempt of Walker backfired.

“Not only did he win the recall, not only did he then go on to win reelection,” said Paul Maslin, a Madison political consultant, “but it ended up giving him a pretense for becoming a national figure.”

The race became a defining moment in Walker’s political career, and helped propel him to enter the 2016 presidential race as a leading contender for the Republican nomination.

“The recall was the gift that kept giving for Scott Walker,” Maslin said.

It was only with his run for president that Walker faltered — his campaign unraveled within a few months and he lost his bid for a third term as Wisconsin governor in 2018.

A veteran of California and Wisconsin politics, Maslin had an up-close view of both of this century’s recalls: He was Davis’ top pollster through the 2003 race, then moved to the Badger State, where years later he joined the campaign of one of the Democrats who sought to unseat Walker.

He and other California political experts see few similarities, other than geography, between the Davis recall and the one targeting Newsom.

For one, none of the Republican candidates who say they will challenge Newsom have the gamechanging celebrity status of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Businessman John Cox lost by nearly 3 million votes when he ran against Newsom in the 2018 governor’s race, and former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer lacks name recognition in much of the state.

“So far, there is no Arnold Schwarzenegger waiting in the wings,” USC professor and political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe said, “and the Republicans don’t have much of a chance without someone like that.”

And most crucially, Newsom is far more popular than Davis was.

Davis had won reelection to his second term in 2002 with less than 50% of the vote. By the following year, a long list of problems — including an energy crisis that led to rolling blackouts, an unpopular car tax and a massive budget deficit — had sent Davis’ disapproval ratings soaring above 70%. Even most Democrats said they disapproved of him.

Newsom has seen his poll numbers dip in recent months, but 52% of California voters still approved of the job he was doing as governor in a January Public Policy Institute of California poll, with 43% disapproving.

Those approval ratings offer another similarity with Walker. As that recall began in early 2012, Marquette polls showed Walker’s support hovered around 50%, with disapproval in the mid-40s. Each governor was equally loathed by his opposition, with 82% of California Republicans disapproving of Newsom, while 83% of Wisconsin Democrats felt that way about Walker.

Maslin said COVID-19 will be the bottom-line issue for Newsom when voters go to the polls — the same issue that sparked the recall. Newsom seems to be on track to tout a postpandemic future with reopened schools and recovering businesses, Maslin said, but with its unpredictable surges and variants, the pandemic could upend those expectations.

“What has gotten him into this mess is hydraheaded: Some people are upset about their jobs, some people are upset about their businesses, some people are upset about the schools, some people don’t like him personally and are upset that he went to a restaurant in Napa,” Maslin said, referring to Newsom’s ill-timed dinner with friends at the French Laundry. “He’s going to have to be very precise in how he runs his campaign.”

“Is (Newsom) better off than Gray Davis was at this stage? Is he more strong from a partisan standpoint than Walker was? Yes,” Maslin added. “But that doesn’t mean he’s out of the woods yet.”