Some big news today out of California:
President Joe Biden will head to California on Monday to campaign for Gov. Gavin Newsom a day before the state's recall election, when voters could throw the Democrat out of the governorship and replace him with a Republican.
Biden and Newsom will appear together in Long Beach, just outside of Los Angeles, at the governor's final rally on the eve of the election to urge Californians to vote to keep Newsom in office.
The rally will be part of a multi-stop trip to the West by Biden, including events in Idaho and Colorado.
Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1 in California, but Republicans have been far more motivated to vote, so Newsom could use all the help he can get in reminding his party's voters to return their ballots.
Every registered voter in California has been mailed a ballot, but polls show many voters are not even aware of the unusual off-year election, though awareness has grown as the election nears.
But he will be Sacramento first:
President Joe Biden will visit Sacramento on Monday to survey wildfire damage and then travel to Long Beach to campaign with Gov. Gavin Newsom against the recall election, the White House and Newsom’s campaign said Thursday.
Biden will start his trip to the West on Monday in Boise, where he will visit the National Interagency Fire Center, according to the White House.
After his Long Beach stop, he will travel to Denver for an event to promote his national “Build Back Better” agenda.
Biden plans to highlight that climate change is making wildfire seasons last all year and emphasize that severe weather events like fires are hurting Americans economically. He plans to advocate for his proposals to build infrastructure that is resilient in the face of climate change.
Although no major wildfires have burned in Sacramento this year, the state runs its emergency firefighting operations out of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services in Sacramento County. Newsom’s office said Newsom will accompany the president during his visit to Sacramento.
Now here’s the latest polling released today on the recall:
With less than a week away from California's gubernatorial recall election, a new statewide survey shows voters are in favor of keeping Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom in office.
The ABC 10News/Survey USA poll of 1,300 registered and likely voters indicated that 54% of likely recall-election voters want to keep the Governor, compared to 41% who seek to have him removed from office before his first term is up.
In a state that is heavily Democratic, just 11% of Democrats defect. 85% of Democrats march in party solidarity, which is enough to give Newsom a cushion.
The gubernatorial recall election on September 14 will determine if Gov. Newsom will remain in his seat or be removed from office.
When voters were asked if they would turn in their ballots in time for the election, 36% said they already returned their ballots, 33% said they were 100% certain to vote, 14% said they were likely to vote, 7% said they were 50/50, 5% said they were not likely to vote, 4% said they were certainly not voting, and 1% said they were not sure.
But we should not get complacent. Data has been provided to give us an idea about where in the state ballots have been returned:
Sierra County, which has favored Republican candidates by more than 20 percentage points in the last two statewide elections, has the highest turnout so far with 47.9% of ballots returned. The county with the lowest turnout is Imperial County (10.5% of ballots returned), a typically blue county where over 80% of residents are Latino.
Low Latino turnout has been one of the major storylines in the recall election so far, and in all three California counties where Latinos make up more than 56% of the population — San Benito, Tulare and Imperial — voter turnout is below the statewide figure of 28.3%.
Every county in the highly Democratic San Francisco Bay Area exceeds the statewide 28.3% figure with the exception of Solano County, which has a returned ballot rate so far of 27.8%.
In the COVID-19 era, Democrats have been more likely to vote by mail while Republicans are likelier to vote in person on Election Day, and this pattern seems to be borne out a bit by the Bay Area's high returned ballot rate contrasted with the Central Valley's low rate. Kern County, which was the most highly populated California county to vote for Trump in 2020, has a paltry 21.1% return to this point. That's suggestive of an upcoming large election day turnout from pro-recall voters.
The exact size of that Election Day turnout and the question of whether Democrats can engage more voters in the campaign's final days will determine Newsom's fate.
Ronald Brownstein’s piece in The Atlantic makes a compelling case that Newsom’s ability to turn out voters could be key for next year’s midterm elections:
One key reason the president’s party historically fares so poorly in midterm elections is that its supporters turn out at lower rates than voters of the party not in the White House. Polling earlier this summer showed that Newsom faced an especially acute version of that challenge; California Democrats displayed far less interest in, or even awareness of, the recall than did Republicans.
But the large number of mail ballots already returned by Democratic voters, as well as the latest poll results, signal that Newsom has mostly closed that enthusiasm gap, placing himself in a strong position to defeat the recall when balloting concludes next Tuesday. And he has done so in a manner that could provide a crucial template for Democrats nationwide in 2022: Newsom has focused less on selling his accomplishments than on raising alarms that his Republican opponents will exacerbate the coronavirus pandemic by repealing the public-health protections, such as vaccine and mask mandates, that he has imposed to fight it. He’s linked the GOP candidates running to replace him not only to Donald Trump but also to Republican governors such as Ron DeSantis in Florida and Greg Abbott in Texas, who have blocked mandates and other measures to combat the disease.
“People are rightfully freaked out at the Delta variant. They are angry at people who refuse to get vaccinated, and extremely angry at leaders who enable anti-vaxxers to endanger everyone else,” says Nathan Click, the spokesperson for the anti-recall campaign. “They see what’s going on in Texas, they see what’s going on in Florida, and they don’t want that happening here.”
Across the country, Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee in Virginia’s November governor race, is hitting similar notes in his campaign against the Republican Glenn Youngkin. “Like Donald Trump,” McAuliffe’s latest ad insists, “Glenn Youngkin refuses to take coronavirus seriously.” In this November’s other gubernatorial contest, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat, has criticized his Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, for opposing the governor’s mandates requiring masks in schools and vaccines for teachers.
These strategies show that Democratic candidates—albeit in blue-leaning states that all rank near the top in vaccination rates—are moving more forcefully than President Joe Biden to pressure the remaining roughly one-fourth of American adults who have refused to get vaccinated. The emphatic embrace of mask and vaccine mandates by Newsom, McAuliffe, and Murphy reflects a growing consensus in the party that the majority of Americans who have received at least one shot are receptive to tougher measures on those who have not. By contrast, in each of these states, the leading Republicans are stressing the “rights” and “choice” of the unvaccinated. “When I win I will fight any and all vaccine and mask [government] mandates at state and local level,” Larry Elder, a conservative talk-radio host who has surged to the top of the GOP field vying to replace Newsom in California, tweeted recently.
For Democrats, pushing for tougher mandates “is not just good policy; it’s good politics right now, and Republicans seem to have opted for bumper-sticker phrasing in order to rile up their base,” says David Turner, the communications director for the Democratic Governors Association. “Doing what DeSantis did in Florida, taking away salaries from superintendents [who require masks for students], voters view that as crazy, and rightfully so.”
Health and Democracy are on the ballot on September 14th and we need to crush the Republican Recall.
Click here to help contact voters to urge them to vote No on their ballots.
Click here to find your ballot drop off location.
