San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Joe Garofoli: D-list recall stars no threat to Newsom.
Reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner’s name is floating around as a possible recall challenger to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Some envision her as this year’s Arnold Schwarzenegger, another Republican celebrity and worldclass athlete, who overwhelmed a field of 135 candidates to win the 2003 recall election that ousted Gov. Gray Davis.
Jenner, whose manager denied in February that she would be a candidate, has suddenly gained a flurry of national attention, with reports that she’s considering the idea after all and is consulting with Republican strategists
including former Donald Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale.
Don’t buy into the hype. Jenner would not be the next Arnold. She’d be more like the next Gary Coleman, a Dlist celebrity who was among the Hollywood marginalia, performance artists, selfpromoters, thrillseekers and one porn star who were steamrolled by Schwarzenegger. There will be scores of these spotlighthungry people if the Newsom recall election qualifies.
Most important of all, Jenner would be no threat to Newsom.
Not all celebrity candidates are created equal. Schwarzenegger was much more than a buff action movie hero when he announced his candidacy on “The Tonight Show.” The selfmade Austrian immigrant had already become a credible player in California politics.
Schwarzenegger led the 2002 campaign that passed state Proposition 49, a momandapplepie measure setting aside up to $550 million for before and afterschool programs. It was supported by both the leftleaning teachers union and the taxcutting Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.
He campaigned for President George H.W. Bush, who appointed him chair of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports in 1990. And yes, he was then married to a Kennedy — TV journalist Maria Shriver.
And when Schwarzenegger jumped into the race, he enjoyed literally the same level of fame as the pope, recalled Rob Stutzman, a senior adviser to his campaign.
“Arnold was a megasuperstar,” said Stutzman, a GOP strategist. Jenner, he added, “is not.”
Jenner is more like Coleman, the “Diff ’rent Strokes” TV child actor of the 1980s who had fallen off the celebrity map. How far had he tumbled? In 2003, the East Bay Express gathered the signatures needed to get Coleman on the ballot as a joke candidate, with his consent. The punch line: He finished eighth out of the 135 candidates, right behind Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, as 14,242 of our fellow Californians voted for him.
Predicted Stutzman: “She would have a little more than Gary Coleman impact.”
In part that’s because Jenner doesn’t have much on her political resume other than an appearance near — but tellingly, not inside — the 2016 Republican National Convention after she came out as a transgender woman. She voted for Trump that year, but turned against him after she said he didn’t support the trans community as he promised.
Much of Jenner’s early celebrity — stemming from winning the 1976 Olympic decathlon when she was Bruce Jenner — is hazy to younger Californians who know her primarily as a reality TV star.
While there is a history of Republican entertainers who have won office, including Schwarzenegger, Trump and Ronald Reagan, Jenner’s type of celebrity doesn’t translate well into politics, said Eunji Kim, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University who studies the intersection of pop culture and politics. Schwarzenegger was an action movie hero. Trump was portrayed as a “a strong leader” in his reality TV show, “The Apprentice,” Kim said. “I don’t think that’s true of Caitlyn Jenner” in reality shows like “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”
“That show is more about showing off the celebrity lifestyle,” Kim said. “How is that relevant to a political identity?”
And then there’s the elephant in the elephant party’s room: Kim doesn’t think many Republican voters will embrace a transgender candidate. Not when Republicans are leading the charge to pass 101 antitransgender measures in 28 statehouses across the country, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy organization.
“She has to appeal to Republican voters,” Kim said. “But she is not a straight white male like Donald Trump or Arnold Schwarzenegger. How is that going to work?”
What is clear is that no matter what Jenner decides, it will be easy for other celebs to get on the ballot: All it will take is $3,916. If you’re not the caliber of celeb to be packing that kind of pocket change, you’ll have to submit at least 7,000 voter signatures.
If this recall qualifies, it will be even crazier than 2003, when the field included porn star Mary Carey (who listed her chest measurements in her campaign materials), a ferret advocate, a guy who never stopped talking in a fake Australian accent and the humorist Gallagher, whose “comedy” act climaxed with him smashing watermelons using a wooden mallet. He finished 16th, receiving votes from 5,466 Californians ... God love them all.
If 135 people ran for governor before social media boomed, imagine what the field will be like now. Every YouTuber and TikTokker and social media influencer west of Needles will pony up four grand for a cheap publicity grab.
Think we’re being overly cynical? Flynt admitted he had no interest in actually being governor. The day after he filed his papers to get on the ballot, he told me, he went on vacation to Hawaii. “I wasn’t shaking babies and kissing hands,” Flynt joked.
When he returned, Flynt, a casino owner in addition to his pornographer duties, used the hundreds of interviews he conducted to talk up his pet issue at the time — legalizing slot machines in California.
Flynt, who died in February, told me after the votes were counted in 2003 that he’d run again.
“This was a cheap buyin for me: 3,500 bucks?” Flynt said. “It was worth it. It was a platform.”
Democratic strategist Katie Merrill expects this tortured bit of California history to be repeated.
“In 2003, it was like a cast of characters from a Fellini movie. That’s what it’s gonna be again,” Merrill told the Sacramento Press Club.
Politically, Merrill said, this sort of circus sideshow is “good for the campaign that is fighting” the recall — at least as long as a Schwarzenegger type doesn’t jump in.
In other words, the bigger the circus, the better — for Gavin Newsom. And all those YouTubers and TikTokkers. And maybe Caitlyn Jenner.