SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Californians opening their mail-in ballots for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recall election might recognize a handful of the 46 candidates vying to replace if voters choose to oust him.
Reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner and conservative talk radio host Larry Elder. So are former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and 2018 gubernatorial candidate John Cox.
But many of the names on the ballot are likely to be unfamiliar to most voters. They are ordinary people who decided to do something extraordinary — run for governor.
Newsom will be recalled if more than 50% of voters choose to remove him by voting yes on the recall. He’ll be succeeded by whoever gets the most votes on the ballot’s second question, which asks who should replace him.
More people ran in the 2003 recall, when Arnold Schwarzenegger unseated former Gov. Gray Davis. That ballot included 135 names, ranging from entrepreneur Arianna Huffington to politicians like Democrat Cruz Bustamante and Republican Tom McClintock.
The Newsom recall has fewer household names, but it includes a spectrum of people who want to use a spot on the statewide ballot to get a message across.
Take retired homicide detective, Steve Chavez Lodge. He’s running because he thinks Democratic lawmakers leading the state have been soft on criminals.
Daniel Watts, a free speech advocate, is making his second run for office on a California recall ballot. He’s one of two candidates on the ballot who also ran in 2003. The other two-time recall candidate is Angelyne, the Los Angeles billboard celebrity.
Other candidates are Los Angeles tour guide Adam Papagan, new age shaman Holly Baade and Cal Poly student John Drake.
Here’s a look at what what motivated them to put their names on the ballot.
A California cop’s perspective
Steve Chavez Lodge, a Republican, said he looked long and hard at the list of candidates running in the recall election, “and I wasn’t impressed by any of them.”
The retired homicide detective from Orange County said that what he saw were career politicians and lawyers, many of whom are “chasing the next elected position.”
“I thought long and hard to myself ... and I said I’m head and shoulders above these guys,” Lodge said.
After all, Lodge said, he’s a former police officer, a veteran, a small-business owner and a licensed insurance agent. He said no candidate running has a resume like his.
Given his law enforcement background, it’s perhaps unsurprising that crime and homelessness are Lodge’s top priority.
“This love affair Newsom has with the criminal, the violent felon, is bizarre at the very least,” he said.
Lodge has called for retrofitting state jails and prisons to accommodate alcohol and drug addicts, a model he said he saw while visiting Texas for work.
“Leaving them on the streets is not compassionate in the least,” Lodge said.
The Cal Poly student on the ballot
John Drake, the 20-year-old Democrat originally from Latvia is the youngest candidate in the race, but he said that age is just a number.
“I’m meeting a lot of younger people who are just really happy that they’re seeing someone so young running and representing them,” Drake said. “I think younger people, both Republican and Democrat, have different ideas about how the government should be compared to what the establishment says it should be.”
There’s one vote Drake’s not counting on: his mom.
She loaned him the $4,000 to enter the race, but he said she won’t be voting for him. Drake said that while he’s left-leaning, she’s a staunch conservative. Instead of voting for her son, Drake said she’s choosing a Republican candidate to support.
Drake, entering his junior year at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo as a government and policy-making major, said his interest in politics started in middle school. His main priority is to make education, housing and healthcare more affordable, a message he said resonates because of his college-aged experience.
“Having someone who’s a student dealing with real issues, like trying to afford housing, trying to afford health care, trying to afford education, I think, why not give them a shot?”
Free college, free speech
Eighteen years ago, Daniel Watts used his "Wheel of Fortune" earnings to enter the Davis recall election. This time around, he raised money from family and friends for the filing fee and ballot statement, but beyond that, he’s relying on social media to get his message out there.
“Social media was not an opportunity that was open to me in 2003, or many of the other candidates,” Watts said. “One of the downsides is that sometimes to go viral, you have to do something bonkers and crazy, and I’m not a crazy person. We have a dearth of crazy people running this year; I think most of the people running are fairly serious.”
Watts, a free speech attorney based in the San Diego area, is campaigning on two platforms alone: free speech and college affordability. Watts said he knows he won’t be winning the race, but that every vote helps promote his message.
“People can accomplish a goal without getting the most votes in an election,” Watts said. “By attracting votes, by getting social media attention, and showing that people care about this issue, that will convince the governor, whoever is the next governor, to pay attention to these issues and adopt these planks into their platform of free college and free speech. So you don’t have to win to make that happen.”
Watts said his campaign is just one of many hobbies to him. A play he wrote will be premiering in Oceanside at the end of August — at the same time voters across the state will receive their voter guides with his information as a candidate.
A shaman’s path
Baade is a first-time candidate. Having never run for local or state office, she came in blind to political campaigning with the hopes of “seeing the world flourish” as governor.
Unlike some other non-politicians running for governor who said they have no chance of winning, the shaman and medicine center director said she there’s “a path and a possibility for me to become the governor of the state of California.”
To get her name out to voters, Baade is planning a “40-day pilgrimage” across California to hear from voters.
As a business owner, Baade said she felt frustrated by business closures due to the pandemic, which is what inspired her to run.
“I feel that now more than ever, we need to move away from the model of the career politician and embrace our shared capacity for leadership to allow those that are ready now with new vision and new creativity to take this, that’s why I’m here,” Baade said. “And that’s why I feel that I’ll bring great pioneering spirit to the governor’s seat.”
‘A chance to be part of the story’
Adam Papagan, an entertainer and tour guide, said he wanted to run for governor because “I looked at it as a chance to be part of the story for once, instead of just telling the story.”
“When am I ever going to get the opportunity to run for governor?” he asked.
He wants to highlight the roadblocks that make running for office difficult or impossible for working people. Registrar’s offices are only open during business hours, so candidates working a full-time job can’t pick up paperwork, he noted.
“The voter information guide, $25 a word to put your statement in there. Now they’re going to be printing up this guide, no matter what, but I don’t know, it just seems like if a few $100 is a lot of money to you, this would be cost prohibitive,” Papagan said.
“You really have to be rich or have a lot of free time on your hands, or both, to be even able to access the system.”
