Take Nothing for Granted: Vote NO on the Sept. 14 Recall to Stop COVID & Protect Democracy
Ballots will soon arrive in our mailboxes with the simple question: Should Governor Gavin Newsom be recalled on September 14?
It’s a simple question, but the process isn’t straightforward. Let’s break down the options: If the majority of Californians say “yes,” then the governorship gets awarded to the person receiving the most votes, no matter how few votes they actually receive. Confusingly, Californians may vote “yes” to protest Newsom without selecting someone to replace him; people don’t have to cast a vote for another candidate in order to unintentionally support one by voting for the recall. Newsom can be replaced by someone with a tiny fraction of the vote.
The state’s dangerously at risk of electing a Republican who would be beholden to Trumpism and drastically harm the wellbeing of our state. We cannot let September 14 become a dark day in the history of California and America.
Remember how in 2016, everyone thought there was no way Trump would win and that Hillary would be president? That’s exactly where we are on this recall.
To stop COVID-19 and save democracy, Californians must overcome a serious voter apathy problem and vote NO on the recall.
A great majority of Californians pride themselves on our state’s leftward political tilt, as lovers of multiracial democracy and science resisting Trump’s white nationalism. And yet here we are, seeing fellow Californians abuse our tools of direct democracy to destroy our state’s quest for a more equitable and just world.
Allowing Newsom’s recall to succeed will be catastrophic for all of us. Millions are alive and healthy today because we have a governor who knows that stopping and containing COVID’s spread, not pandering to a Trumpist base that doesn’t believe in science, ensures safety and economic growth. A decade of executive-legislative collaboration that sustained our state’s economic rebound from the Great Recession would be destroyed by a Republican governor expected by their base to come out swinging against Democrats in the state legislature. The repercussions for LGBTQ people, immigrants, women, low-income people, and youth are especially profound.
Despite the toxic politics of vaccines, Newsom’s latest requirement that all state-level employees get vaccinated or test weekly for COVID-19 broke into a new political paradigm to protect our public health and simultaneously remain economically open in the face of the Delta variant spreading. Newsom moved the politics of vaccines forward: the White House announced it would do the same for federal employees just days later.
(This paradigm-shifting move reminds me of Newsom’s bravery in 2004, when he issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples in San Francisco. That act, coupled with the 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Court decision, sparked the political movement that made my legal marriage today possible.)
Governor Newsom’s far from the menace to our state worthy of such risks to our democracy, economy, and public health. California’s roaring back from COVID-19. Despite serious challenges with the Delta variant, we’re performing much better than Florida and Texas. Our governor and legislature agreed on a massive surplus budget with unprecedented investments in healthcare and infrastructure, addressing homelessness and climate change, and ensuring equity-driven recovery from the pandemic.
As California goes, so goes the nation. We can’t risk setting a dangerous precedent.
Yes, we’re exhausted from four years of Trump, especially the 2020 election and the pandemic. But we can’t lull ourselves into complacency because we’re considered a deep blue state. We must vote no on the recall and get others to join us.
I remember California’s great crackup in 2003 when it recalled Governor Gray Davis. But we had safeguards back then: Arnold Schwarzenegger, for all of his many faults, wasn’t from today’s white nationalist, authoritarian GOP. The Voting Rights Act was still intact at that time.
And don’t you dare think that California’s smartened up as a blue state during and since those “Governator” years. Californians passed Prop. 8 in 2008, constitutionally removing marriage equality from the state, shocking the conscience of millions and the state’s LGBTQ residents alike. Despite the efforts of our best activists, the smugness of predominantly white liberal circles controlling the campaign against Prop. 8 and its surrounding political class did us in.
People thought there was no way California could possibly entrench bigotry in its state constitution a mere eight years after it passed a similar ballot initiative, Prop. 22, by a 61–39 margin. Joke’s on us.
And in my lifetime, 59% of California voters passed Prop. 187, seeking to deny access to non-emergency healthcare, K-12 public education, and public higher education to undocumented immigrants *and* their children, regardless of status. Though Prop. 187 was tossed out by the courts and inspired the renaissance of Latino political power in our state, its echoes were found in Trump’s repugnant anti-immigrant policies and fueled the national Republican Party’s white nativist turn.
Remember, California gave the world Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan in living memory.
Just imagine the tragic public health consequences alone of electing a Republican in Sacramento today. Even if it’s someone as “moderate” as Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, or Mitt Romney, it’s still someone beholden to a party largely taken over by white nationalists with a grassroots overwhelmingly opposed to vaccines, despite recent moves from GOP leaders.
Think I’m exaggerating? Polls show a continuous increase in support for the recall among likely voters. Apathy is our enemy. Don’t let history repeat itself.
In addition to voting NO on the recall upon receiving your ballot in the mail, consider the following actions:
- Sign up to volunteer, text bank, phone bank and/or write postcards to get out the vote
- Order a yard or window sign to Stop the Recall
- Sign up for updates from the Stop the Republican Recall campaign and the California Democratic Party
Recalls exist as a critical tool to be sparingly used to protect our democracy from the worst abusers elected in office. But if everyone who is fairly elected has to worry about immediately being recalled by their opponents, how can we expect our democracy to function?
Only 1,626,042 out of over 21 million registered voters in California had to sign petitions for the recall to qualify. Such a proportionally low number means that any aggrieved minority can gravely destabilize the entire political system.
This recall has national repercussions: Senator Dianne Feinstein is 88. If we have a Republican governor and she doesn’t serve her full term, we lose the U.S. Senate as it’s the governor’s job to appoint a successor. No wonder the GOP’s enthusiastically behind the recall.
The Senate aside, all about maximizing power: the GOP is weaponizing the ballot initiative process in states across the country to — ironically — increase voter suppression.
The current attack on voting, election administration, and democracy in the form of hundreds of state-level bills and ballot initiatives is, as President Biden said, the “greatest threat to our democracy since the Civil War.”
A whopping 32% of Americans don’t think Biden fairly won the Electoral College. Trump and the GOP continue to fuel their assaults on our democracy and our bodies with the “Big Lie” about the election and vaccines alike. If we in California remove our governor simply because a small minority doesn’t like him, that gives the GOP greater leverage to destabilize our politics nationwide.
I think of all the times I wish we could’ve recalled Trump. But we couldn’t and didn’t. We had to wait for his four-year term to end, barring impeachment (which he was, twice). At long last, we finally beat him in the 2020 election, and violent insurrection be damned, replaced him on January 20, 2021.
The general rule is if you don’t like who’s in office, you need to organize to influence them or stall their efforts until they’re up for reelection. That’s how democracy is supposed to work.
Take nothing for granted. Let’s get out there and save our state.
