Some lessons for the right in California

Gov. Gavin Newsom will keep his job, at least for another year. On Tuesday, California voters decisively rejected the attempt to recall the governor. Given the scale of the victory — as of this writing, 63.9% voted down the recall — it’s clear that Californians not only didn’t buy the argument that Newsom was so bad he needed to go right now; they definitely weren’t persuaded by a GOP with a greatly tarnished brand in California.

In context, the recall was always a long shot.

Back in February, the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies released the findings of its survey finding that just 36% of Californians intended to support the recall of Newsom. Over the next several months, subsequent polling by IGS and the Public Policy Institute of California reiterated that support for the recall was quite low. The end result mirrors those polls from earlier in the year.

Party registration data alone explains much of the reason for this. According to the PPIC, nearly 47% of registered California voters are Democrats, versus 24% who are Republicans and 23% who are independents.

While there are certainly plenty of people willing to break from their political parties, most people identifying with a political party do so for a reason and tend to vote accordingly.

This sets a built-in advantage for Democratic candidates and politicians across the state, and obviously a strong defense against efforts to recall statewide officials in particular. But, as noted, this isn’t impermeable. In 2020, Californians rejected top-tier progressive agenda items including split roll, affirmative action and rent control, while also passing a carve-out for companies such as Uber and Lyft despite union campaigns against such carve-outs.

Which brings us to the recall. Clearly, the recall failed to resonate with most outside of Republican and Republican-leaning voters.

Part of the reason undoubtedly is the simple but effective strategy of the Democrats to reduce the recall to merely a “Republican recall” with links to Donald Trump and Trumpism.

Plenty of moderate independents and Democrats can get on board with GOP policy items or even candidates in close districts, but in this post-Trump era, all it took was invoking Trump and the GOP name to stifle the momentum of the recall and tap into the built-in advantages for the Democrats.

For the California GOP, this should spark some soul-searching. The state GOP is, practically, the only vehicle for creating political competition in California. A GOP that can’t draw support outside of its party is doomed to fail and in turn condemns the state to one-party rule, with all the problems that causes.

Alas, with Larry Elder emerging as the top vote-getter among replacement candidates, it’s hard to imagine where the California GOP will go from here.

There will almost certainly be an intensified fight between populists who support candidates such as Elder and the more moderate wing of the GOP backing candidates such as former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer.

One thing is for certain:

What makes the GOP base enthusiastic is what drives away people in the middle.

While this editorial board endorsed Elder for governor, we were disappointed that he chose to run as if he were running in a Republican primary and even more disappointed by his tendency to pander to the fringe on matters such as vaccinations and supposed election fraud.

That’s not how you win elections here, and that’s certainly not how you alter the course of politics in California.

With this outcome, we hope the right in California gets an overdue reality check.

Californians might not be as far to the left as California’s politicians, but they won’t accept just any alternative.