Then and now
Joe Garofoli: This recall election campaign is lacking the buzz of the one in 2003, and that could be bad for Gov. Gavin Newsom if bored Democrats don’t vote. A look at how the two recalls are different.
Now that the list of certified candidates seeking to replace Gavin Newsom in a recall election is nearly final, we can safely report that one thing is missing that was in abundance the last time Californians were asked if they wanted to boot their governor in 2003: Buzz.
“Where’s the buzz? There’s not much buzz,” said Larry Gerston, a San Jose State University political science professor emeritus who wrote a book about the successful 2003 recall and is planning another about the current one.
Low buzz, Gertson said, could portend low turnout — and that could slow Gov. Gavin Newsom’s thusfar gilded path toward surviving the Sept. 14 recall. While polls show that a majority of likely voters oppose the recall, they also show that Republicans are twice as enthused about voting as Newsom’s fellow Democrats.
Many blame the blahs on the lack of sizzle in the lineup of candidates that Secretary of State Shirley Weber was set to officially certify on Wednesday.
In 2003, a roster of 135 replacement candidates included a movie star with nearuniversal name recognition (Arnold Schwarzenegger); a widely known former TV child actor (Gary Coleman); an internationally known pornographer (Hustler magazine publisher
Larry Flynt); a Republicanturnedindependent media commentator (Arianna Huffington), a former Los Angeles Olympics czar (independent Peter Ueberroth); and a parade of candidates touting pet causes from marijuana legalization to ferret ownership.
One candidate (Los Angeles artist Trek Thunder Kelly) spent every day of the 2003 campaign wearing something blue. Another (Los Angeles actor Todd Richard Lewis) spent every day talking in a fake Australian accent. The Game Show Network held a debate for the Dlist candidates.
Why wouldn’t they? The audience was there. As Flynt told me in 2003, “This was a cheap buyin for me: thirtyfive hundred bucks? It was worth it. It was a platform.”
The cost of buyin this time was about the same: Around $4,200. Gathering 7,000 signatures waived the filing fee. Unlike in 2003, however, candidates were required to file five years of recent tax returns — and that may have been too high a cost for some.
This time, even former adult film star Mary Carey — who listed her chest measurements in her doubleentendreladen campaign promotional materials in 2003 — decided last week not to run. There wasn’t enough time, she told TMZ, to file the necessary paperwork.
Some largely unknown candidates like Napa’s Jacqueline McGowan, however, are taking the leap. She is a cannabis activist who wants to focus her campaign on how legalization has not fulfilled the promises made to California voters before they greenlit it in 2016 — with Newsom leading the charge.
“We knew there was going to be a microphone (in the recall campaign),” said Sean Donahoe, a veteran political consultant and cannabis industry expert who is advising McGowan. “And we want to get our message out.”
Still, the field isn’t just thinner on candidates, but also thinner on characters.
“This is the reboot — and with many reboots, it is kind of disappointing for many people,” said Joshua Spivak, a senior fellow at the Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform at Wagner College in New York and the founder of the Recall Elections Blog.
“Instead of the world’s biggest action star — you have a mediocre reality TV star,” Spivak said, referring to Republican Caitlyn Jenner. “The characters aren’t the same.”
Instead of buzz, this time there is just zzzzz.
“Everybody talked about the circus atmosphere (in 2003.) This time all you got is a guy going around the state campaigning with a bear,” said Mark Baldassare, president of the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, referring to Republican businessman John Cox.
The organization’s May polling found that only 21% of likely voters were “very” closely following the recall and 41% were “fairly” closely following it.
That’s a lot less enthusiastic than voters felt at a similar point in 2003. Then, nearly 9 in 10 likely voters were closely following the race, according to the organization’s polling.
Sure, the circus lineup made California an international punch line during the late summer and fall of 2003. But it also got more people interested. More voters turned out for the October 2003 recall than did for the regularly scheduled 2002 gubernatorial campaign.
The hardcore partisans on the left and the right will turn out no matter when the election is held. But the buzz “creates interest for all the people in the middle,” Baldassare said. “If the media doesn’t find the candidates and what they’re talking about to be newsworthy, then you’re not going to have that level of interest.”
“It’s a serious issue,” he said. “The effect is going to be a depressed voter turnout.”
Even though there are roughly twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans in California, Newsom needs them to show up in order to keep his job. So his camp, which has a massive financial advantage over his GOP competitors, is trying to wake its base supporters with a multiplatform media blitz.
It is running TV ads in expensive, highprofile time slots — including Tuesday’s NBA Finals game — portraying the recall as the work of national Republicans who supported Donald Trump, like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. It is sending 2 million texts a week to Democratic allies, a number that the campaign says will soon grow.
On July 24, the campaign is planning a statewide “day of action” featuring phone banking and other voter outreach.
“Our biggest challenge is going to be breaking through the day to day (news cycle) — we have a pretty chaotic news cycle,” said antirecall spokesman Nathan Click. “We’re going to be organizing events very aggressively in Democratic communities. Everybody will be touched by this.”
Republican candidates have been crisscrossing the state for weeks. On Saturday, Assembly Member Kevin Kiley plans a rally at Crissy Field in San Francisco. On Wednesday, he held a news conference focused on education and school choice.
The lack of a circus in this recall could allow for a more substantive discussion of issues where Newsom can be challenged, such as homelessness, wildfires and crime, said Tim Rosales, a political consultant who is advising Kiley and was a senior strategist for Cox’s losing 2018 campaign against Newsom. He also worked on Schwarzenegger’s 2003 winning run.
“It’s less about personality in 2021 than it was in 2003 where you had the hugeness of the Schwarzenegger personality,” Rosales said. “It’s more about who are the people you trust to take the state forward — and whether the voters are ready to switch.”