He has not left his mark on the state the way his predecessor Jerry Brown, or earlier California governors, such as Pat Brown or Ronald Reagan, did, but Newsom has not yet been in office three years. Newsom has not been a transformative governor. His record there has been considerably better than the coverage of California politics would suggest, but he has made missteps in his handling of the crisis and has become a target of voter anger seemingly driven as much by exhaustion and frustration with the pandemic itself than with anything specific that Newsom has done. Like all governors, whatever plans Newsom might have had were thrown off course by the Covid pandemic. He has generally supported positions and legislation consistent with the liberal majority in his state, but has not yet delivered on ambitious campaign promises such as bringing universal healthcare coverage to California or creating 3.5 million new housing units. On balance, Newsom’s term in office has been mixed. But, in fairness, failing to solve such massive issues in a few years’ time and against the backdrop of a global pandemic does not merit a recall. These include the housing crisis, forest fires and more. In addition to the Covid controversies, he has not solved any of the major problems that have dogged California for years. Newsom’s first two plus years as governor have not been perfect by any means. California is 19th out of 51 in the proportion of its population that has received at least one dose of the vaccine. Among all states, and Washington, DC, California’s cases per capita are 25th highest and deaths per capita are 33rd.ĭuring the last few months, another major Covid issue has been the distribution of vaccines – and Newsom has been on the receiving end of a substantial amount of criticism for how this has been done there. The truth is that California’s Covid response under Newsom has been, relative to other states, about the middle of the pack or slightly better. High-ranking officials ignore their own Covid-19 adviceīefore California voters rush to do that, it is worth looking at another side of the story – one that is driven by data, not media coverage. And if the state’s chief executive badly mishandles a crisis like Covid, maybe there is an urgency to replacing him. By now we have all heard the stories about how Covid has ravaged California and how the state’s early successes against the pandemic have been overshadowed.Ĭalifornia is the country’s most populous state and has often drawn a lot of attention from the national media, so it is not surprising that the bad Covid news there is a national story. The larger issue is Newsom’s mishandling of the Covid crisis. This minor scandal, however, is only a small part of the recall rationale. It would be reasonable, if not expected, for Newsom’s 2022 opponent to use the French Laundry scandal against him, but it is does not rise to the level of provoking a recall – a process that skirts regularly scheduled elections and should be limited only to urgent situations. This was an enormous misstep by Newsom, for which he offered a less than entirely convincing apology. The affluent liberal from San Francisco having an expensive dinner with a lobbyist and other friends while flouting Covid rules. This was a scandal tailor made for Newsom’s opponents. To make matters worse, the dinner was a birthday celebration for a lobbyist. This occurred while California was under a partial lockdown and gatherings of a dozen people like this were forbidden, even if held outdoors. On November 6, 2020, Newsom attended a dinner at the French Laundry, one of California’s most famous and best restaurants. It was the third category that gave initial energy to the recall effort. The case for recalling Newsom, a liberal Democrat, is centered on his alleged failures on Covid-19, the general state of California and Newsom’s personal foibles.
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