How Gavin Newsom Got His Groove Back
Source: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America,
By: Logan Phillips
Date: September 15th
In the early days of August, Gavin Newsom was staring down the barrel of a potential historic rebuke by the voters of California, in just the fifth governor recall election in American history. A string of polls showed voters supported him by just the thinnest of margins, with one of the top pollsters in the nation showing him actually losing by double digits. By election day, the state of the election had changed in dramatic fashion, and Gavin Newsom delivered what is at the very least going to be a double-digit victory against the recall effort.
That raises the question, how did Gavin Newsom transform this race from a nail-biter to a blowout? First and foremost, the Governor successfully redefined the contours of this election. Earlier in the recall campaign, many voters viewed this election as a straight up or down choice on Gavin Newsom, who had the lowest approval ratings in his governorship, as the state became roiled by historic wildfires and the fourth wave of COVID-19. Newsom’s campaign instead managed to successfully shift the narrative to that of a choice between himself and the leading Republican replacement candidate, Larry Elder.
California leans 25% towards the Democratic party compared to the nation at large, so Newsom was well-positioned to win if he could re-frame this as a partisan and nationalized contest. It’s a strategy that likely would have succeeded against even a liberal Republican, but it was particularly potent against radio host Larry Elder, who would have been one of the most conservative governors in the nation. His long history as a provocateur on conservative radio did him no favors in the general election, as it gave the Newsom campaign a cornucopia of lines to use against him, including his support for ending the minimum wage (an issue, to be fair, he did not run on in 2022).
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Newsom didn’t win because of California voter makeup alone, but also by persuasion, which played a decisive role in turning the race back in Newsom’s favor. Nowhere was this more evident than on the COVID issue. Newsom had been dogged by an incident in 2020, when he was seen dining at a fancy French restaurant without a mask despite having issued a statewide mask mandate. This was a decisive moment that supercharged the recall campaign’s efforts, which was previously on pace to fall short of getting enough signatures to even get the recall on the ballot.
However, over the course of the last month, Newsom effectively turned his performance on COVID-19 into the central argument for his candidacy. His campaign blanketed the airwaves with ads highlighting his bold and aggressive actions to combat the coronavirus, which arguably helped the state better weather the recent wave than most of the other states in the nation. This message was underscored, once again, by building a contrast with Larry Elder, who opposes mask and vaccine mandates. The Newsom campaign tied Larry Elder to the Republican governors from Florida and Texas, both of which vigorously oppose even local governments issuing mask or vaccine mandates, and both of which have seen their states be particularly hit hard in the fourth COVID-19 wave.
The message many Californians took home was that if they wanted California to move past the pandemic and contain it from raging out of control again, they would be best off to keep a steady course and keep Gavin Newsom in office. Among the 32% of voters that identified the coronavirus as their top issue, Newsom won the recall 81% to 19%.
Finally, Gavin Newsom successfully mobilized Democratic voters that were highly likely to support his candidacy but may not have planned on actually making their voices heard. Early polling suggested serious apathy among Democrats, many of whom didn’t realize that there was a recall, didn’t realize it was competitive, and weren’t too impressed with Newsom’s record. Part of Newsom’s challenge, as is the challenge for all politicians, is that these days voters tend to assume that government and politicians aren’t successfully delivering results. In many cases, this is true, but in his first three years, Gavin Newsom and the Democratic State Legislature have achieved a slew of major progressive policy goals that stands out as one of the more productive records in the nation. This includes the creation of universal Pre-K, extending paid family leave, and doubling the size of the state’s earned income tax credit. This received less focus than his attacks on Larry Elder, but it was still an important element to his campaign’s messaging.
It was crystal clear that the Republican party voters were far more tuned into the recall earlier on, which got central billing in conservative media long before it got anything like that level of intense interest in liberal and centrist news sources. By election day, Democrats were also focused and motivated, and they turned out in huge numbers for Newsom.
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The next two big elections in 2021 are in Virginia and in New Jersey, where both governors are up for re-election. We have created a full-page “California recall like” forecast for both elections, updated daily with the latest polls and projections. They feature interactive maps and polling breakdowns for every demographic. Virginia is likely to be the most competitive major general election of 2021. Democrat Terry McAuliffe is the modest favorite, with a 72% chance of victory, but Glenn Youngkin continues to have a very viable pathway to an upset.
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