San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Newsom defense sounds familiar in recall
Davis, in 2003, also called drive GOP power grab
A California governor takes the stage of a Los Angeles ballroom to denounce the recall election he faces. As supporters cheer him on, he warns that the drive to remove him from office is part of a national effort by Republicans to steal elections they cannot win.
“This rightwing power grab is something we won’t get over,” he says. “It would do lasting damage to our state, our environment and the very fabric of our democracy. This is a fight worth making.”
In August 2003, two months before he became the second governor in American history to be recalled, this scene kicked off Gray Davis’ crusade to save his job. It didn’t work, but nearly two decades later, the early weeks of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s own recall defense campaign have played out like a remake.
After months of publicly
ignoring the threat, the Democratic governor launched his Stop the Republican Recall committee last month with an ad that labeled it a “power grab” and linked the campaign to extremist groups that supported former President Donald Trump’s bid to overturn the results of the 2020 election. His fundraising missives consistently focus on national Republicans and Trump donors as recall instigators.
“I’m fighting for the values of this state, and there’s a lot at stake. Because in these elections, who knows what could happen?” Newsom said during a recent appearance in Alameda. “Just learn about who these folks are. It’s just anathema to who we are as Californians.”
Recall organizers characterize his strategy as condescending and dismissive of hundreds of thousands of Democratic and independent voters who they say signed their petition. But some veterans of the Davis campaign believe the message could be effective for Newsom in a state that has shifted dramatically to the left in the 18 years since the last recall election.
Democrats hold a 22point voter registration advantage over Republicans in California, nearly triple the gap leading into the 2003 election. In November, Trump received only 34% of the presidential vote.
“So why wouldn’t you go with a highly partisan argument in California? It would be insane not to,” said Garry South, a former adviser to Davis. “The whole idea of ‘stop the Republican recall’ is playing to the crowd.”
Mired in energy and budget crises that tanked his popularity, Davis also looked to national Republicans for a boogeyman in 2003. He portrayed the recall as a Bush administration ploy in line with the disputed vote count in Florida during the 2000 presidential election.
California was already trending Democratic — the party swept all the statewide offices in 2002 — and, while not as contentious as it would later be under Trump, its relationship with the White House was unfriendly. The Davis campaign believed that drawing the distinction would give Democratic voters something to rally around.
One consultant even told the New York Times that the state budget battles between Davis and Republican lawmakers were “nothing more than a conservative coup attempt” to rile voters up for the recall. (In an echo of that moment, California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks dismissed the recall drive in January as a “California coup” and attempted to link the organizers to the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters, stirring up a fierce backlash.)
But thenPresident George W. Bush refused to engage Davis, South said, and never endorsed the recall. The Republican National Committee also stayed out of the race, which made it hard to paint the election as a sinister GOP plot.
“Our strategy of trying to blame this on evil national Republican forces, including those in the White House, didn’t parse. It didn’t resonate,” South said.
With the Republican power grab argument a bust, the Davis campaign pivoted to what South acknowledged was a largely uninspiring case based on the cost of the election. Trump himself has yet to weigh in on whether Californians should dump their governor, but other recent developments play into Newsom’s hand. Prominent conservatives like former House Speaker Newt Gingrigh and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee have promoted the recall, the Republican National Committee donated $250,000 to help collect signatures and the Republican Governors Association plans to get involved in the campaign.
“It adds to the power of strategic messaging when it is unassailably true,” said Dan Newman, an adviser to Newsom.
He said that by turning the focus around on the organizers and what they stand for — Newsom has repeatedly highlighted a Facebook post one of them made about microchipping undocumented immigrants — the campaign was trying to flip the recall from a referendum on the governor to one on the values of California.
“It’s essentially patriotic to reject the recall and defend the progress that we’ve made,” Newman said.
Davis’ partisan case in 2003 was further undermined when Arnold Schwarzenegger jumped into the race. As a movie star entering the campaign from outside the political establishment — one married to a Kennedy, practically Democratic royalty — his image did not match Davis’ rhetoric. Schwarzenegger had also sponsored a successful state ballot
initiative the previous year setting aside funding for afterschool programs, a classically bipartisan cause.
“If you spend all your time saying the other guy is X and he turns out not to be X, then you’ve lost real credibility,” said Duf Sundheim, who was chair of the California Republican Party at the time.
Sundheim said it’s understandable that Newsom is pursuing a similar strategy, because “it’s the easiest argument to make.” But he said it shows the lack of a strong message, which could allow an opponent to capitalize on frustration and anger in the electorate, something Schwarzenegger managed to do in his victorious 2003 campaign.
“They really are leaving the door wide open for a candidate who has wide support to come in and be that alternative,” Sundheim said.
Dave Gilliard, a strategist for the campaign to recall Newsom who also worked on the 2003 recall, said Newsom was resorting to scare tactics about Republicans taking over California to generate enthusiasm among Democrats because “nothing gets their base more upset than
Trump.” But he said the governor would have to come up with a better message to reach the broad swath of voters that will decide the election, expected to take place late this fall. “When you don’t have a great defense for what happened over the past year, you’ve got to turn to guilt by association,” Gilliard said.
That’s especially true if a fellow Democrat ultimately runs, as thenLt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante did in 2003, shattering any illusion that it was all a Republican conspiracy. Democrats still blame Bustamante for giving liberal voters a reason to support the Davis recall, and they have worked hard this year to discourage a repeat.
But with only a parade of Republicans signaling their intention to challenge him for now, Newsom is taking the right approach, said Roger Salazar, who served as a spokesperson for Davis’ reelection and recall campaigns — and made the “conservative coup attempt” comment. None of Newsom’s potential replacements so far — including his 2018 gubernatorial opponent John Cox, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and former Rep. Doug Ose — is as well known as Schwarzenegger, providing Newsom more of an opportunity to define them for voters.
“Elections are about choices. If you’re going to have a recall, while the recall is a referendum on the incumbent, you’ve got to be able to show what the alternative is,” Salazar said. “If you look across the field and see Kevin Faulconer and John Cox, I’d absolutely play this card.”