Recall Turns Into a Choice

“Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.”

This has been one of Joe Biden’s favorite lines for most of his political career, but it also nicely summarizes the messaging strategy that most incumbent officeholders employ when running for re-election. They want voters to think about their decision as a choice between the available options rather than an up-or-down referendum, primarily because being seen as preferable to another candidate is a much lower bar for success than being judged against an imaginary and often unrealistically idealized option.

Gavin Newsom’s challenge is that the rules for a California recall election call for a referendum — literally. The first question on the recall ballot asks voters to make a binary decision on whether Newsom should or should not be removed from office. His potential successors are not even introduced into the equation until the ballot’s second question, which makes it more difficult for Newsom’s campaign to frame the election more advantageously as a choice.

Not that this setup has kept Newsom from attempting to convince Californians to view this race comparatively. The governor won his election in 2018 by a wide margin, but large portions of the Democrats’ progressive base has never been all that enthusiastic about a leader they see as a somewhat entitled and centrist establishment politician.

There are two ways for a campaign to motivate its base: tell voters exciting and inspiring things about their candidate, or tell them frightening things about the opposition. Last spring, when it appeared that the world was beginning to emerge from our pandemic-driven shutdown, Newsom’s team tried the first approach, sending the governor around the state to announce various funding and economic recovery projects. When that didn’t move the needle, they shifted to Plan B.

Being seen as preferable to another candidate is a much lower bar for success.

Newsom’s initial tactic was to present the recall as a campaign against Donald Trump. But Trump isn’t on the ballot, so the governor’s campaign moved on to the candidates who were running. In the recall’s early stages, most of Newsom’s opponents were fairly unknown, so alerting voters about the dangers of a multi-candidate amorphous conservative Republican blob was not a sufficiently tangible threat to alarm Democratic loyalists.

But that all changed when talk show host Larry Elder entered the race and quickly moved up in the polls. Newsom now had a living, breathing, talking opponent who says and does controversial things and could therefore serve as an ideal foil about whom he could warn progressive voters. Fueled by a massive funding advantage, Newsom has turned his guns on Elder and has aimed to portray him as a threat to deep-blue California. Not coincidentally, Newsom’s poll numbers appear to have improved over the course of this onslaught.

But Newsom’s efforts to cast the recall as a choice between the available options has been even more effective when he has established a contrast between California and other states. Unlike the shutdowns of 2020 and early 2021, when the governor’s COVID-related mandates caused immense economic and societal disruption, the widespread availability of vaccines in recent months has made Newsom’s cautious approach to the pandemic more palatable to many Californians. Mask mandates and vaccine restrictions are certainly an inconvenience, but create a less onerous set of constraints than those we’d faced during earlier stages of the virus’ spread.

At the same time, Republican governors in more conservative states have moved in the opposite directions, not only avoiding state mandates but often forbidding local governments from imposing such requirements in their own communities. The result has been an increase in the number of Covid hospitalizations and deaths in those states, which has allowed Newsom to warn Californians that they could suffer a similar fate if a Republican governor took office here.

In the campaign’s closing days, Newsom is relying on a number of leading national Democrats to inspire his state’s progressive voters. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have weighed in, and President Biden and Vice President Harris may be deployed as well. All that high-profile fire power may be enough to allow Newsom to survive, but if the recall is defeated, the governor’s first thank you cards should go to Elder and to the GOP governors of Texas and Florida, who helped California’s embattled chief executive turn this recall campaign from a referendum into a choice.

Dan Schnur is a Professor at the University of California – Berkeley, USC and Pepperdine. Join Dan for his weekly webinar “Politics in the Time of Coronavirus” (www/lawac.org) on Tuesdays at 5 PM.