The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Newsom’s nightmare
How one November day fueled the recall
SACRAMENTO >> On a single day last November, two events helped set the course for just the second recall election against a governor in California history: Gov. Gavin Newsom dined with 11 friends and lobbyists at one of the country’s most expensive restaurants as he pleaded with Californians to stay home, while those looking to kick him out of office won four more months to qualify for the ballot.
Photos of the maskless dinner showed the Democratic governor going against what he had been urging for months to combat the coronavirus: don’t gather in groups, keep your distance, wear a mask. That it was happening at the French Laundry — where the cheapest meal is $350 — fueled the idea Newsom was out of touch. The dinner turned up the heat on the fledgling recall, and the extra time allowed it to reach full boil.
By March, organizers had more than the 1.5 million signatures they needed to force a vote on whether to remove the first-term Democratic governor in the nation’s biggest blue state.
“We had a perfect storm with the judge’s ruling, with the French Laundry incident, with the greater environment of COVID and the economic disaster,” said Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California.
Voters will have the final say next Tuesday. A majority of voters would need to mark “yes” to oust Newsom more than a year before his term ends.
If they do, they would chose from a list of 46 replacement candidates — many of them unknown, but others with some recognition, including conservative talk show host Larry Elder and former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer. Reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner also is running but has failed to gain traction.
Because so many people are running, the winner would likely become the next governor of the nation’s most populous state with 25% or less of the votes. That’s a far cry from the landslide that swept Newsom into office in 2018.
In California, a state where ballot initiatives thrive, many governors have faced recall drives under a century-old reform that created a mechanism for voters to remove them mid-term. But only one other effort tapped into enough frustration to make the ballot: Voters recalled Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in 2003 over an energy crisis and replaced him with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the last California Republican to win statewide.
A loss for Newsom, 53, would be a shocking twist in his relatively charmed political career and would almost certainly install a Republican governor in the nation’s chief laboratory for progressive policies. A slight majority approve of his job handling, according to a recent poll from the Public Policy Institute of California that also shows the recall failing.
The results will be picked apart for clues on how voters are feeling heading into the 2022 midterm elections, when control of Congress and more than half of governorships are up for grabs.
“The outcome of this election is going to be fuel for 2022, period,” Romero said.
Amateur political organizer Orrin Heatlie launched the recall in February 2020, before coronavirus became a full-fledged public health crisis in the United States. He was upset about Newsom’s support for immigrants in the country illegally and other liberal policies.
By the time he began collecting signatures, the coronavirus dominated.
Newsom was the first governor to issue a statewide stay-at-home order, and when he dined at the French Laundry eight months later, the state had gone through whipsaw reopenings and closings that left smallbusiness owners, parents of schoolchildren and others overwhelmed and confused.
California was facing an uptick in infections and hospitalizations, and Newsom’s administration was urging people not to gather with more than three households. While Napa County, where the French Laundry is located, allowed outdoor dining and limited indoor seating, the dinner party brought together a dozen people from more than three households.
News of the Nov. 6 dinner broke a week later, on a Friday when Newsom had no public appearances. In a statement, he said he and his wife “followed the restaurant’s health protocols and took safety precautions” but “should have modeled better behavior and not joined the dinner.” When he appeared in public that Monday, Newsom said it was an “outdoor restaurant” but acknowledged he made a “bad mistake.”