Flanked by a bevy of political allies, California Gov. Gavin Newsom kicked off his “no on the recall” campaign tour in earnest Friday morning with a stop at Manny’s, a restaurant and event space in San Francisco, before heading out to rally voters in Southern California.
Election Day, technically on Sept. 14, “begins this week,” Newsom said, noting that ballots are already beginning to arrive in voters’ mailboxes across the state. “The stakes could not be higher.”
Calling out Republican Larry Elder, the leading contender on the pro-recall side, Newsom urged Democrats to fill out their ballots and acknowledged the election could have national consequences, affecting the judges the governor appoints and more.
“He’s to the right of Donald Trump,” Newsom said of Elder, casting the recall not as a local effort but one backed by Trump-loving national Republicans intent on shifting the Golden State to the right on everything from immigration to the pandemic response.
The governor is not the only one hitting the campaign trail. Elder, who appears to be his chief rival, held a rally Thursday at Calvary Church in San Jose, which racked up major fines for defying Santa Clara County’s COVID-19 orders last year. Elder has said he would oppose mask and vaccine mandates — a growing trend among businesses and state and local government throughout the Golden State.
Also in San Francisco on Friday was recall candidate Kevin Paffrath, a registered Democrat with no major political experience. The 29-year-old Ventura real estate investor, who surged to the front of one recent SurveyUSA poll as the candidate of choice to replace Newsom, was also set to campaign in Los Angeles and San Diego in the coming days.
Paffrath who has a massive YouTube following, turned up at Newsom’s event Friday, posting a photo of himself and trolling the governor’s team for not allowing him inside the event.
“**KICKED OUT**,” he wrote on Twitter. “(T)hey said it was a ‘private party.’ Apparently the Democratic Party is too exclusive for a JFK-style Democrat. We were very cordial; did not approach Newsom.”
In the coming weeks, voters could also see President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, an East Bay native, hit the campaign trail for the governor. Newsom said the teams are “comparing schedules right now,” and thanked Biden, who put out a statement Thursday urging voters to keep Newsom in office. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have already offered their support, with Warren cutting a video ad urging voters to vote no.
Republican hopefuls John Cox and Kevin Faulconer have also been hosting campaign events in recent days, as has reality star Caitlyn Jenner, fresh off a trip to Australia.
Inside Manny’s, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, state Sen. Scott Wiener and other Newsom supporters urged Democrats, who polling suggests are less enthusiastic than Republicans about voting in the recall election, to fill out their ballots.
San Francisco Democrats “have our challenges,” Breed said. But, she insisted, they are “united” when it comes to opposing the recall.
“This race is neck and neck,” warned Assemblymember David Chiu. “We’re here because the polls are close. They are too close.”
Chiu is not wrong. While the recall effort — the sixth attempt by opponents to oust Newsom — was initially seen as a long shot, polling suggests likely voters are almost evenly split when it comes to whether the governor should be removed from office. If a majority of voters vote to oust Newsom, the candidate who wins the most votes among 46 challengers would become governor.
To win, Newsom will need to mobilize a diverse electorate, including a large number of Black and Latino voters.
Malia Cohen, a former San Francisco supervisor who serves on the state’s Board of Equalization, urged the two communities to turn out, telling Latino voters they are “absolutely critical” to keeping Newsom in the job, and urging Black voters cast by cynics as “apathetic” to “beat that stereotype.”
Calling the recall election a matter of “life or death,” Cohen said she’d gotten to know Newsom well while working on his first campaign for mayor of San Francisco.
“You don’t know a person until you bring them a turkey sandwich,” she quipped. “We have a gem here.”
Newsom’s campaign team is taking what some political analysts warn is a risky strategy, one he doubled down on Friday — urging voters to mark “no” on the first ballot question and ignore the second. The first question asks whether Newsom should be removed while the second allows voters, even those who say no to removal, to choose a replacement candidate in case Newsom loses the first question.
When Arnold Schwarzenegger ousted Gray Davis in the 2003 recall, Democrats opted for a different strategy — running then Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante as a replacement contender and telling supporters to vote no on the recall but yes on Bustamante. The move confused some voters and critics said it split the Democratic vote.
In response to a question about the current strategy and whether it might backfire by effectively allowing Republicans to pick his successor should he lose, Newsom said he was focused on getting people to vote no and called the second question “moot” if people turn out.
The governor also demurred on another thorny issue — whether his friend and ally Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the 88-year-old senior senator from California, should retire if Newsom loses so he would have time to appoint a replacement in the 38 days he would have left in office. Some Democrats are worried about a Republican governor having the opportunity to appoint her replacement — which could flip control of the Senate to the GOP and threaten Biden’s agenda.
“We’re going to defeat the recall,” Newsom said, thanking Feinstein for all of her support over the years. “We’re going to win this race.”
