Radical remedy for a rocky tenure
Gov. Gavin Newsom looks likely to become only the fourth American governor to face a recall election, and it’s not because he is one of the four worst governors in U.S. history. It’s for the same reason half those governors are Californians and the current effort to trigger a recall is the sixth against Newsom alone: The state makes it too easy.
Not that Newsom is one of the best governors ever to grace the office, either: His term has been marred by an unevenly managed crisis, and the likelihood of a recall election is a sign of Californians’ dissatisfaction with the state of the state. But with just a year and change left until the general election when voters would and should have their say on the governor’s tenure in any case, a recall would be a radical and disruptive remedy.
Whether Newsom should be de-elected will probably be up to the voters. Recall organizers submitted petitions with over 2 million signatures by Wednesday’s deadline, which should be more than enough to put the question to the electorate later this year.
State law requires a relatively small number of signatures to trigger a recall, and a judge gave the organizers of this attempt an extraordinarily long time to collect them on the grounds that the pandemic presented unusual obstacles. The governor also presents a convenient target for Republicans who have endured a string of losses at the national level.
But the antiNewsom campaign’s success also reflects broader discontent with the governor. One recent poll showed California voters divided on his performance and only narrowly opposed to a recall.
The governor’s greatest political burden is his handling of the pandemic. Newsom followed Bay Area officials with a nationleading shelterinplace order a year ago this week, a wise decision that saved lives. But he has repeatedly reopened the economy too hastily while endlessly tinkering with his own rules, contributing to surges in infections and deaths. The result is that he not only angered business owners and others who opposed the shutdowns but also reaped less of a public health benefit from the economic sacrifice, with a COVID death rate only incrementally better than the national average.
The Newsom administration has also struggled with the logistical challenges of the crisis, from testing capacity to unemployment claims to the vaccine rollout, often turning to megacontracts that yielded mixed results. And the governor handed his opponents a potent occasion for outrage by taking part in a pandemicincorrect gathering for a lobbyist friend at a fancy Wine Country restaurant.
On the state’s most pressing pre and postcoronavirus problem, the housing crisis, the governor has failed to make a dent despite lofty promises. Construction has slumped during his term, and the state’s outsize homeless population has grown.
None of this amounts to an enviable record, but the governor’s opponents have to reach the high bar of convincing voters that he is so unfit for office that he should be expelled from it immediately. And his handling of a onceinacentury public health disaster unfolded in the context of a thoroughly botched national response. That is one of many ways in which Newsom has benefited from the contrast with former President Donald Trump, who made California a frequent political target.
Judging by the messaging of Newsom and his fellow Democrats, which has portrayed the recall as a project of partisan extremists, they hope to weather the threat by reviving some of that old antiTrump magic. The governor and the state will fare better if he meets the moment, to use a Newsomism, by demonstrating capable and decisive leadership in his own right.