The Butler Does It

Meet California's newest Senator, appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom: EMILY's List President and long-time labor activist Laphonza Butler. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom will appoint EMILY’s List President Laphonza Butler to fill the seat of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, elevating the head of a fundraising juggernaut that works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights, according to a person familiar with the decision.

Newsom is moving swiftly to name the next senator, two days after Feinstein’s death and just as a perilously split Congress narrowly averted a government shutdown. Senate Democrats are in need of every vote in the closely divided chamber.

The announcement was expected to come Monday, and an adviser to the governor, Anthony York, told POLITICO that Newsom is making his appointment without putting limitations or preconditions on his pick running for the seat in 2024. That means Butler could decide to join the sprawling and competitive field of Democratic contenders seeking to succeed Feinstein, with special elections now layered on top of the March primary and November runoff.

Butler is expected to be sworn-in to the U.S. Senate on Wednesday by Vice President Kamala Harris.

Newsom’s selection of Butler comes at a moment of immense change in California’s political establishment, with millions of people still mourning the death of Feinstein, the barrier-breaking Senate lioness. Meanwhile the California governor, who was mentored by Feinstein, has been grappling with his own personal grief and the political ramifications of his choice to succeed her.

The people who spoke with POLITICO ahead of the announcement were granted anonymity to disclose internal deliberations. Butler is registered to vote in Maryland but will switch her registration to California.

Newsom faced considerable pressure around the decision after first pledging to name a Black woman to the seat. Several potential nominees said publicly they were not interested. Some others privately expressed trepidation about accepting a short-term appointment and then having to immediately gear up for what would be a five-month campaign.

The swift nature of Newsom’s appointment cuts politicians and their allies off from mounting more sustained efforts to lobby the governor and his inner circle over his pick. And it halts interest groups that were starting to apply pressure on him, including over the question of whether he would require them to serve only temporarily. On Sunday, Congressional Black Caucus Chair Steven Horsford wrote to Newsom urging him to appoint Rep. Barbara Lee, a candidate for the Senate whom the governor recently ruled out over worries about giving someone a leg up.

 

I have to admit, Gavin Newsom got himself out of the jam he was in with expert efficiency. He kept his promise to appoint a Black woman to the seat and he's doing so without picking a side in the current primary contest. He's allowing Butler to decide herself if she wants to join the primary fray, and I'll bet on Butler having already decided that she'll go back to EMILY's List in 2025.

I'm rarely surprised by a display of attempted Democratic political adroitness that ends up crashing into the ground by being too clever by half, but if this goes like I think it will, Gavin Newsom may have just made one of he all time great political maneuvers.

Bravo to Laphonza Butler as well. Impeccable bona fides as a politically connected Black activist leader, clearly showing readiness for a national stage by running one of the Dems' most important fundraising networks with the upcoming election year all about the GOP trying to destroy women.

Newsom's preparations for the moment were kept secret as well all the way until the day before, too. This was planned for some time and yet it could have been blown weeks ago. It wasn't.

I like it when the Dems show this level of crafty confident competence. More of this, please.

California Senator Dianne Feinstein Passes At Age 90

News from California this morning that Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein passed away overnight, leaving behind a massive political legacy and an uncertain future for the state's Dems.

 

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a vocal advocate of gun control measures who was known for trying to find common ground with Republicans during her three decades in the Senate, has died, according to several sources familiar with the matter.

She was 90.

Feinstein, the oldest member of the Senate, the longest-serving female senator and the longest-serving senator from California, announced in February that she planned to retire at the end of her term. She had faced calls for her resignation over concerns about her health.

After she announced her retirement, President Joe Biden hailed his former Senate colleague, calling her “a passionate defender of civil liberties and a strong voice for national security policies that keep us safe while honoring our values.”

“I’ve served with more U.S. Senators than just about anyone,” he said in a statement at the time. “I can honestly say that Dianne Feinstein is one of the very best."

After Feinstein missed votes in late February, her spokesperson said on March 1: “The senator is in California this week dealing with a health matter," and "hopes to return to Washington soon.”

The California Democrat was a vocal advocate of gun control measures, championing the assault weapons ban that then-President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1994, and pushing for restrictive laws since the ban’s expiration in 2004.

s chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Feinstein led a multiyear review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program developed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which led to legislation barring the use of those methods of torture.

A centrist Democrat, she was known for trying to find common ground with Republicans, sometimes drawing criticism from her party’s liberal members. She parted from them on a number of issues, including opposing single-payer, government-run health care and the ambitious Green New Deal climate proposal, which she argued was politically and fiscally unfeasible.

 

The question now, because the most populous state in the union is now short on Senate representation at a critical juncture in American history, is who replaces her in the interim. The question that Gov. Gavin Newsom has been trying to slow walk around is now the most important decision he will make in this term.

 

We'll see what happens, but with a GOP-led shutdown in the House almost upon us, getting out of the mess they created will need every Democratic vote possible. Newsom will have to act quickly.

Erik Loomis over at LG&M dissects Feinstein's complicated legacy over the decades.

The New York Times covers the coming decision for Feinstein's seat, and how Newsom has maneuvered himself into a no-win situation.

Last Call For Old News From Newsom

As California's Democratic Governor, Gavin Newsom, has said on several occasions, he's absolutely not running for Joe Biden's job, and if he has to choose a successor for Dianne Feinstein between now and November of next year, it will be an interim choice from people not currently running for her seat in 2024.

 

As three high-profile California Democrats vie to replace retiring Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" that he would not appoint any of them to the seat, should it become vacant sooner than expected.

That decision could be a blow to Rep. Barbara Lee, since her allies had reason to believe she was Newsom’s first choice to fill a potential vacancy. But that was before she entered the Senate race, where she is currently trailing in polls behind better-known and better-funded fellow Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Katie Porter.

In his most direct comments on the matter yet, Newsom said in the interview with Chuck Todd for NBC News' "Meet the Press" that airs Sunday that he would instead make an “interim appointment” to replace Feinstein if necessary.

“Yes. Interim appointment. I don’t want to get involved in the primary,” Newsom said. “It would be completely unfair to the Democrats that have worked their tail off. That primary is just a matter of months away. I don’t want to tip the balance of that.”

Lee, Schiff and Porter are locked in a high-profile battle ahead of the March 5 all-party primary, when the top two vote-getters of any party will advance to the November general election. Both may end up being Democrats, given California’s partisan tilt.

A poll released Thursday from the Institute of Government Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, found Schiff and Porter running neck and neck at 20% and 17%, respectively, while Lee trailed at 7%. A third are still undecided.

Feinstein, 90, has resisted calls to resign and said she intends to serve out the remainder of her term, which ends in January 2025.

But her declining health and an ugly family dispute over her late husband’s multi-million-dollar estate has renewed questions about her ability to do her job.

Newsom is openly dreading the prospect of having to fill another Senate vacancy, having already hand-picked his state’s other senator, Alex Padilla, to fill the seat vacated by now-Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I don’t want to make another appointment, and I don’t think the people of California want me to make another appointment,” Newsom told Todd.

 

Newsom also reiterated that he has no 2024 plans for the presidency. It's so weird that literally the only people who think Newsom has designs on the Oval Office next year are Republicans who are 100% Newsom is lying and will stab Joe Biden in the front and the back, which I guess tells you everything you need to know about right-wing pundits.

 

Meanwhile, left-wing pundits like myself are telling everyone in blogshot, postshot, and earshot that Trump's going to win the 2024 GOP primary but nobody on the right wants to believe that for a second.

 

Now, do I expect Newsom has 2028 plans to run against Kamala Harris, absolutely. I think that's going to be wide open and messy as hell, not because VP Harris isn't qualified, but that history assures us that approximately every non-Black, non-female Democrat will figure they can do that job too.

 

That's a tale for another time, and five years in presidential politics is an eternity. But as for Newsom in 2024, that's not happening, and Republcians are in as much denial there as they are over the GOP being Trump's party of white Christian Dominionist supremacy.

Last Call For California Schemin'

California Democrats passed the FAST Recovery Act into law last year, which was designed to put wages for the state's hundreds of thousands of fast food workers before a council selected by Gov. Gavin Newsom that would determine fair wages for employees. But restaurant groups and fast food franchisees immediately challenged the law in January and now say they have enough signatures to send the law to voters in November 2024, almost three years after the law was supposed to take effect.

A restaurant business coalition announced on Monday that it has gathered enough signatures to challenge a new California law that would create a state-backed labor council to set pay and working conditions for the fast-food industry.

Save Local Restaurants, a coalition opposing the law, it filed more than 1 million signatures to postpone the law and place a referendum on the November 2024 ballot.

Counties will now have eight business days to provide a count to the secretary of state’s office. Opponents need roughly 623,000 valid signatures.

If the statewide total reaches the required amount, counties will have 30 business days to verify signatures through random sampling.

Sufficient valid voter signatures would place a question on the 2024 ballot asking voters whether the law should take effect.

It could also lead to a costly battle between organized labor and the fast food industry, with spending reaching hundreds of millions of dollars. Save Local Restaurants raised more than $13.7 million between last January and September.

The law, known as the FAST Recovery Act, would create a first-in-the-nation labor council to set wages and working standards for fast food workers. The council’s regulations would apply to any chain restaurant with at least 100 locations in the United States and could set minimum wages at $22 an hour for fast workers by next year.

The law was set to take effect Jan. 1 after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the legislation last September. But one day later, opponents filed a referendum to halt the formation of the council.

They argue the law would result in higher food prices and new regulatory burdens for franchise owners. “The FAST Act would have an enormous impact on Californians, and clearly voters want a say in whether it should stand...it is no surprise that over one million Californians have voiced their concerns with the legislation,” the coalition said in a statement. ”


Supporters say the law would give workers a voice in regulating a sector of the state economy that employs more than a half-million people.

Service Employees International Union, which has been supporting the fast-food workers, said companies are “trying to silence voices of half a million Black and Latino workers to increase their billion-dollar profits.”

“It is abhorrent that these corporations have already spent millions of dollars in an attempt to deliberately mislead California voters and stamp out the progress fast-food workers have won, said SEIU President Mary Kay Henry in a statement. “California’s referendum process has been completely taken over by corporations who think they can buy the right to overturn laws they don’t like and exempt themselves from accountability.”

 

Henry is right about this. Sending legislation to a ballot referendum is exactly how Uber and Lyft beat California's law turning rideshare drivers into full-time employees, meaning they would be eligible for benefits. The rideshare giants spent billions convincing Latino voters in the state they they would be fired first unless the law was defeated, and it worked.

Expect much of the same to follow in the years ahead.

Last Call For Gavin Takes a Texas Page

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is backing state legislation that would allow citizens to enforce gun restrictions on assault weapons, the same way Texas is allowing private bounties on abortion providers in the state.

A new bill in California would allow private citizens go after gun makers in the same way Texas lets them target abortion providers, though gun advocates immediately promised a court challenge if it becomes law.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday backed legislation that would let private citizens enforce the state’s ban on assault weapons. It’s modeled after a Texas law that lets private citizens enforce that state’s ban on abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected.

Newsom said he hopes the proposal forces the U.S. Supreme Court’s hand on the Texas abortion law. He said it will either expose their “hypocrisy” if they should block California’s proposal that affects the gun industry and not the Texas law on abortion, “or it’ll get them to reconsider the absurdity of their previous decision.”

“There is no principled way the U.S. Supreme Court cannot uphold this California law. None. Period full stop. It is quite literally modeled after the law they just upheld in Texas,” Newsom said.

The Firearms Policy Coalition, an advocacy group, pledged a court challenge should the California bill become law.

The proposed firearm restrictions are “really just modern-day Jim Crow laws designed to suppress the exercise of human rights the tyrants who run California don’t like,” the group said, promising to “litigate wherever needed to protect the rights and property of peaceable gun owners in California.”

The group and Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher, a Republican, said Newsom is trying to distract from failing policies elsewhere that recently have prompted falling polling numbers.

“California already has the strictest gun laws in the nation, so it’s not clear what Governor Newsom is hoping to accomplish here besides a sad publicity stunt,” Gallagher said in a statement.

Texas and other conservative-led states have tried for years to ban abortions once a heartbeat is detected, at around six weeks of pregnancy, which is sometimes before the person knows they are pregnant. But the states’ attempts have been blocked by the courts.

But Texas’ new abortion law is unique in that it bars the government from enforcing the law. The idea is if the government can’t enforce the law, it can’t be sued to block it in court. That hasn’t stopped abortion providers from trying to block the law. But so far, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority has allowed the abortion law to stay in place pending a legal challenge.

That decision incensed Newsom and his Democratic allies in the state Legislature. California has banned the manufacture and sale of assault weapons for decades. But last year, a federal judge overturned that ban. The law is still in place while the state appeals the decision.

But the decision inspired Newsom and Democrats in the state Legislature to copy Texas’ abortion law, but make it apply to gun makers instead of abortion providers.

“Our message to the United States Supreme Court is as follows: What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” said Democratic state Sen. Bob Hertzberg, the author of the proposal. “I look forward to rushing a new bill to the governor’s desk to take advantage of that United States Supreme Court guidance.”

 

Personally this is a great idea, and I'd like to see states like New York and Illinois follow up with similar proposals.  Democrats?

More of this, please.

The Big Lie, Golden State Edition

Of course California Republicans are going to drown the state in lawsuits and "citizen investigations" of the "corrupt" recall election as the polls show Democratic Gov. pulling away and keeping his job. The point was never actually getting rid of Newsom, it was justifying the violence coming after the recall and to lat the groundwork to terrorize Democrats in the biggest blue state of them all.

Looking to oust the governor? Ed Brown has just the right merch for you.

Camouflage Recall Newsom hats and Recall Newsom masks. He’s got Recall Newsom yard signs. A stack of Recall Newsom pamphlets.

But just days before California voters decide whether to push Democrat Gavin Newsom from office, the trailer off Golden Chain Highway was mostly a shrine to former President Trump.

“As far as I’m concerned, Trump is the president,” said Brown, 67.

And as for the recall election?

“They’ll probably do something to cheat,” he said of Newsom’s supporters, adding that he will vote for Larry Elder because “he’s more like Trump; he’s for the people.”

The Republican-backed recall election could not be more consequential for California. Set amid a deadly wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, with record-breaking wildfires and a relentless drought drying fields and faucets, it gives the GOP its best shot in over a decade at governing the nation’s most populous state.

And if there’s a symbolic heart of recall mania, it may be here in Amador County in the Sierra foothills, where about 1 in 5 registered voters signed petitions to give Newsom the boot. That’s the highest concentration in California.

The most fervent support for the recall has come from Northern California, where rural conservatives say that their voices are drowned out in Sacramento by urban Democrats and that they would be better off seceding to form their own state called Jefferson.

And yet, in many ways, this election is still about a man named Donald J. Trump.

Conservatives talk about the recall effort through the lens of Trump’s lies that he won the 2020 election. By and large, they refuse to cast their ballots by mail, believing his false claims that mail-in voting leads to rampant voter fraud. If Newsom prevails, many won’t trust the results — just as they didn’t after Trump lost.

In Newsom, they have found an avatar for the Democratic Party and everything they hate about it — a political entity in opposition to many of the things they hold dear, including (and sometimes especially) Trump.

“In many ways, the recall was never really about Gavin Newsom in particular,” said Kim Nalder, a political science professor at Cal State Sacramento.

Rather, she said, recall supporters are fueled by a “laundry list of complaints that Republicans had about liberals.”

“If you’re a Republican, especially a Trump-supporting Republican, in California, it’s a rough time in state politics,” Nalder said. “You feel really disenfranchised, and [if] you combine that with the high anxiety we all have about the fires and the pandemic and homelessness, you get a high level of motivation to do something about it.”

 

The "something" is violence, deadly, mass political terrorism. It's coming.  The recall is the excuse. "We tried the ballot box. Now we use the bullet box."

From the Bluest state to the reddest state, Republicans simply don't believe elections where Democrats win are legitimate, and this illegitimacy will absolutely be used to fuel violence against Democrats and their voters.

We've already seen it.

More is coming, and it will be a lot worse.

I Recall Gavin, Con't

After polls for the recall of California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom narrowed to even this time last month, Democrats in the Golden State have gotten on the ball and the numbers are looking at lot better ahead of the September 14 special election.

Fewer than 4 in 10 California voters support removing Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) from office in this month’s recall election, according to a new poll of likely voters released just over a week before ballots are due to be returned.

Just 39 percent of likely voters told pollsters at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) they would vote to recall Newsom, while 58 percent said they would vote against the recall. Those figures are in line with earlier PPIC polls in March and May, which showed Newsom surviving by roughly the same margin.

About 4 in 5 Republicans will vote to recall Newsom. But the overwhelming majority of Democrats, 90 percent, say they will vote to keep him — and so do a plurality, 49 percent, of independent voters.

Newsom’s campaign has long staked its fortunes on labeling the recall a naked power grab fueled by Republicans and supporters of former President Trump. The poll offers a data point to back up what Democratic strategists around the state have been saying for weeks: that Newsom’s message has woken up Democratic voters to the prospects that a Republican who receives just a tiny fraction of the vote could replace their governor.

Three-quarters of likely Democratic voters say the outcome of the recall election is very important to them, higher than the 67 percent of Republican voters who said the same.

Republican voters remain more enthusiastic about voting in the recall election than their Democratic counterparts, but the sheer advantage Democrats have in a state where their party’s voters outnumber the GOP by a nearly two-to-one margin may be sufficient to overcome any kind of enthusiasm gap.

A survey of ballots that have actually been returned shows a similarly strong turnout among Democratic voters: Of the more than 4.6 million ballots that have been returned, Democrats account for 2.5 million, or 54 percent — a higher share than the 47 percent they make up on the voter rolls, according to Political Data Inc., a California-based firm.

 

Dems still need to press through the entire election period on this, but I feel a lot better about Newsom keeping his job than I did a month ago.

Last Call For I Recall Gavin, Con't

With only weeks to go to California's recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom, the polls remain distressingly tight.

 

Earlier this month, results from a SurveyUSA poll showed that 51% of likely voters in California’s upcoming recall election would vote to remove Gov. Gavin Newsom from office. It was the first poll to show a majority favoring his removal and led to a dramatic shift in polling averages.

Before these results, polling averages calculated by the politics and data website FiveThirtyEight showed a seven-point margin favoring keeping Newsom in office. But with SurveyUSA’s data, the margin narrowed to less than one point. As of Aug. 17, the latest date for which FiveThirtyEight has data, the margin inched up to 1.2 points, with 48.8% for keeping Newsom in office and 47.6% for removing him.


FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages are perhaps the most sophisticated data-based method of assessing the state of the recall race. The numbers come from a statistical model that aggregates individual poll results into two averages — one for keeping Newsom in office and another for removing him. The website has been producing these averages since mid-July but incorporates polls that go as far back as January.

FiveThirtyEight also tracks averages for whom Californians would choose as a replacement if Newsom is recalled. In their latest numbers, Larry Elder leads with an average of 19%, followed by Kevin Paffrath at 9% and John Cox at 6%. The other 43 candidates on the ballot have averages below 5%.

 

In other words, there's a 50/50 shot that odious grifter Larry Elder ends up governor.

Nobody in California seems to think that there's much alacrity needed, either.

It's a disaster in the making.

 

Last Call For I Recall Gavin, Con't

Californians overwhelmingly support vaccine mandates in the latest CBS News poll, and there's every reason to believe that Gov. Gavin Newsom will soon make them a reality. The question is whether or not Newsom's recall vote next month will send the Golden State back to GOP control.

As Californians express widespread concern about the Delta variant, they overwhelmingly say the state's recent rise in cases was preventable, had more people gotten vaccinated and taken more precautions.

California's vaccinated voice a lot of judgment toward the unvaccinated: "They're putting people like me at risk" is a top way the fully vaccinated pick to describe those who won't get the shot, with many others outright "upset or angry" with those unwilling to get it. From a policy standpoint, there's strong support for vaccine mandates, too.

Meanwhile, as the effort to recall Governor Gavin Newsom heads into its final month, Newsom faces what looks like a turnout challenge: while voters would marginally prefer to keep him in office at the moment, it looks like that will heavily depend on whether Democrats in his party get more motivated about it.

When California's vaccinated describe people unwilling to get the vaccine, another phrase they select is that "they're being misled by false information," in addition to the emotional response of being upset. Far fewer of the fully vaccinated say they respect the decision of those who won't.

Behind some of those sentiments, we also see that while unvaccinated Californians tend to describe the decision to get the shot as a "personal health choice," the vaccinated are more likely to call it both a personal choice and public health responsibility.

Californians' list of what may have prevented rising cases is dominated by more vaccinations and taking masking precautions, while far fewer point to other measures like more travel and border restrictions. Nor do they cast any blame on scientists and medical professionals for the recent rise in infections. (Though on this, we do see more partisan differences: Republicans are notable for singling out limiting of border crossings as one top way to have prevented it, more so than more vaccinations or policy measures.)

So, given all that, vaccine mandates find wide support across California. A large majority support allowing employers to mandate vaccines for employees. And it's not all that partisan: four in 10 Republicans are OK with this idea, too. There is strong support for making vaccines mandatory for health care workers, and a lot of support for letting businesses that draw crowds also mandate that their customers be vaccinated. Moreover, many people would be more willing to use or visit such a business.

 

 

Indeed, we're looking at nearly two-thirds support for vaccine mandates in California. This should be a winner for Newsom in his recall vote, for the people of California to vote NO on recall.

All the GOP candidates have said they will remove all mask ordinances and mandates if they are elected.

Your choice, folks. Make the clearly correct one.

Recalling Gavin, Con't

The latest LA Times/UC Berkeley poll shows California Gov. Gavin Newsom is in real trouble of being recalled by voters in September as delta variant COVID, local mask ordinances, and parents just thrilled to go through another round of school lockdowns this fall all threaten to put a Republican in charge of the state again.

 

Californians who say they expect to vote in the September recall election are almost evenly divided over whether to remove Gov. Gavin Newsom from office, evidence of how pivotal voter turnout will be in deciding the governor’s political fate, according to a new UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.

The findings dispel the notion that California’s solid Democratic voter majority will provide an impenetrable shield for Newsom, and reveal a vulnerability created by a recall effort that has energized Republicans and been met with indifference by many Democrats and independent voters.

The poll found that 47% of likely California voters supported recalling the Democratic governor, compared with 50% who opposed removing Newsom from office — a difference just shy of the survey’s margin of error.

Conservative talk radio host Larry Elder, who last week won a court battle to appear on the Sept. 14 recall ballot, leads in the race to replace Newsom among the dozens of candidates in the running, while support for reality television star Caitlyn Jenner remains low, the survey found. Forty percent of likely voters remain undecided on a replacement candidate, providing ample opportunity for other gubernatorial hopefuls to rise in the ranks before the Sept. 14 special election.

Even though Democratic voters far outnumber Republicans in California, the GOP’s enthusiasm over the recall promises to inflate the potency of the anti-Newsom vote in September, said Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll. Nearly 90% of Republicans expressed a high level of interest in the recall election while just 58% of Democrats and 53% of independent voters were as interested, the poll found.

“Democrats, at least in the middle of July, almost unanimously believed that Newsom will defeat the recall. I think that may be contributing to some complacency among those voters. Republicans, on the other hand, are confident that they can turn out the governor,” DiCamillo said. “I think the Newsom campaign really has to light a fire among the Democrats and say, ‘Look, the outcome is in jeopardy unless you get out there and vote.’”

Though Republicans account for only about a quarter of all registered voters in California, the poll found that they account for 33% of those most likely to cast ballots in the recall election. Democrats make up 46% of the state’s 22 million voters and “no party preference” voters 24%, but their share of the likely recall voters drops to 42% and 18% respectively, DiCamillo said.

“Gavin Newsom is in serious trouble at this time because his base of voters is not motivated to come out and support him,” said Dave Gilliard, one of the political strategists leading the effort to oust Newsom.

Gilliard said Newsom doesn’t have much time to correct that, or voter discontent over the homeless crisis and crime in California, since elections officials will begin mailing ballots to all registered voters starting Aug. 16.

 

Hey California, you'd better start giving a damn, or your next governor is going to be a right-wing minstrel asshole who will end the state's affirmative action, climate change, health care, and social services programs by decree. If you think Newsom's making you miserable now, wait until Larry Elder gets done with the place and turns California into Alabama...with Alabama's GDP.

I Can't Recall Gavin, Con't

It looks increasingly likely that California Republicans have gotten enough signatures to recall Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, but Newsom still has a lot of time before any election could take place.

 

Newsom's popularity has tumbled in recent months as public unrest spread over long-running school and business closures, a still-unfolding unemployment benefits scandal and his decision to attend a party with friends and lobbyists at an opulent restaurant while telling residents to stay home.

In a shopping plaza parking lot in the Sacramento suburb of Rocklin, Shannon Hile and Celeste Montgomery collected signatures earlier this month, operating from under a small white folding tent with bright yellow and red signs saying “Recall Gavin Newsom.”

Around lunch hour, more than a dozen people walked or drove up to sign. The two women and another volunteer gave detailed instructions to signers, reminding them to use the address where they are registered to vote and to be careful to write within the lines.

Neither woman voted for Newsom in 2018, when the former San Francisco mayor was elected in a landslide. They’re both outraged over school closings.

Hile moved from San Diego to the Sacramento area to be closer to family after she struggled to simultaneously take care of her 1-year-old while helping her 7-year-old navigate virtual learning at home. Montgomery, 31, also a mother of two, put her 5-year-old son in a private school so he could attend in-person classes, straining the family budget.

Newsom “gave nobody any options to survive this," Hile lamented. "He cut you off from everything and it literally was like sink or swim.”

Two Republicans have announced their candidacies: Kevin Faulconer, the former Republican mayor of San Diego, and Republican businessman John Cox, who was defeated by Newsom in 2018.

Another name being discussed in GOP circles is former President Donald Trump’s then-acting director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell, who has not responded to requests for comment on a possible candidacy.

 

The election could cost California taxpayers $80 million, which is the entire point. Even if Newsom survives, he'll just face voters again next year, and he'll have to defend himself again.

Newsom loses either way, and so does California.

Last Call For I Can't Seem To Recall Gavin, Con't

Republicans trying to get rid of California GOP Gov. Gavin Newsom say they already have the 1.5 million signatures they need to force a recall ballot initiative this year, meaning Newsom is now in the fight of his political life.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom faces a possible recall election as the nation's most populous state struggles to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic.

Organizers for "Recall Gavin 2020" said Friday they have surpassed the 1.5 million signatures required to place the proposal on this year’s ballot. The signatures still need to be verified. Once verified and approved, the recall election would happen sometime over the summer.

Earlier this week, President Joe Biden said he opposes the effort to recall Governor Gavin Newsom. In a tweet, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki noted that Biden and Newsom share interests in addressing the climate crisis and the coronavirus pandemic.

Recall adviser Randy Economy says interest is higher since it was revealed Newsom dined with friends at an opulent restaurant while telling state residents to stay home and not socialize.

Several previous attempts to recall the governor faded, but the current effort has been gaining momentum with more Californians upset over health orders that have closed school campuses and businesses.

Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer responded on Twitter. "Gavin Newsom won’t listen to our struggles, so he will have to deal with our signatures, all 1.5 million of them. A recall is on the verge of happening, and better days are coming" Faulconer said.

The California Republican Party is giving $125,000 to the campaign aimed at recalling Governor Newsom. The funds will go toward hiring workers to gather signatures. So far, that work has fallen largely on volunteers.

Expect Democrats to have to spend a lot of money to defend Newsom here, which is exactly what California Republicans want heading into 2022. It's arguably the best weapon they have to get control of the Governor's mansion back, as well as to gain US House seats.

Keep an eye on this fight heading into the summer.  It's going to be an ugly one, especially if vaccination in California runs into trouble. It'll also put tremendous pressure on Newsom to reopen schools and businesses early, which could be catastrophic.

I have a bad feeling about this.

California Goes Viral, Con't

Under heavy pressure from industry and tourism groups, and facing a growing recall movement, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has not renewed the state's stay-at-home COVID orders even as new strains of the virus are now ravaging the state.

California officials lifted regional coronavirus stay-at-home orders across the state on Monday, a change that could allow restaurants and businesses in many counties to reopen outdoor dining and other services.

All counties will return to the colored tier system that assigns local risk levels based on case numbers and rates of positive test results for coronavirus infections.

Most counties will be classified under the “widespread” risk tier, which permits hair salons to offer limited services indoors but restricts many other nonessential indoor business operations.

The change, which takes effect immediately, could lessen restrictions in in the Southern California, Bay Area and San Joaquin Valley regions, which were still under stay-at-home orders, unless local officials adopt stronger restrictions. Throughout the pandemic, local leaders have been allowed to go beyond the state’s rules, approve their own stay-at-home orders or shut down additional activities they deem too risky for their areas.

“California is slowly starting to emerge from the most dangerous surge of this pandemic yet, which is the light at the end of the tunnel we’ve been hoping for,” said California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly. “Seven weeks ago, our hospitals and frontline medical workers were stretched to their limits, but Californians heard the urgent message to stay home when possible and our surge after the December holidays did not overwhelm the healthcare system to the degree we had feared.”

It’s far from clear whether the decision will lead to easing stay-at-home rules in Los Angeles County, which has become a national hotbed of the coronavirus, with hospitals overwhelmed by patients. In less than one month, more than 5,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the county alone.

Still, the outdoor dining ban has been highly controversial, with some elected officials and the restaurant industry fighting in and out of court to overturn it. Officials in some other Southern California counties have been even more critical of the state-imposed rules, and had urged Newsom to give them more local control.

The governor announced the regional stay-at-home orders on Dec. 3 in an effort to reduce the strain on hospitals as case numbers surged. Although state data show hospital systems in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley remain strained, the Newsom administration said models project ICU capacity in those regions and the Bay Area will exceed 15% — a threshold for lifting the regional shutdowns — over the next four weeks.

By delaying his final decision until late last night, Newsom gets to punt everything over to California local and county governments as far as remaining operational, and he can claim victory for keeping hospitals from being overwhelmed.

Except he can't really do that as hospitals are continuing to be overwhelmed, especially in Los Angeles County, home to some nine million Americans.

Newsom is betting county officials will be able to handle things, which they weren't in December.

It's going to be bad in California for a long time, folks. And this time, we can't put the blame entirely on Trump.

I Can't Seem To Recall Gavin

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is almost certainly headed for a recall fight under the state's relatively generous recall vote rules, and while Newsom remains broadly popular, as Politico's Carla Marinucci points out, the recall could be very plausible in a post-Trump "How come he hasn't fixed everything yet?" flood of impatience.

 

A recall by Republicans, who still have the albatross of Donald Trump, an unpopular president in solidly blue California, around their necks, remains a long shot. And Democrat Newsom still enjoys the strong approval of the majority of Caifornians, the latest Public Policy Institute of California poll showed.

But here are five key takeaways on why the Newsom recall attempt shouldn’t be dismissed:

1. THE GOP ESTABLISHMENT IS BACKING IT: The California Republican Party and its chair, Jessica Milan Patterson have endorsed it. So has the entire CA GOP House caucus, according to Rep. Devin Nunes, who said as much last week — and said the party is helping to fire up the recall push. “We're encouraging people to sign the petitions,’’ Nunes told KMJ host Ray Appleton. “The California delegation as we sit today is … in favor of it.’’

Newly reelected Rep. David Valadao confirmed the move. “We all support it,” he said. “Our campaign offices all had the petitions there. A lot of our events had folks there gathering signatures.’’ And conservative darlings like Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee are also on board, with Gingrich agreeing to do Zoom calls and fundraising. Which leads us to...

2. THEY’VE GOT FUNDRAISING MUSCLE: Anne Dunsmore, a veteran GOP fundraiser based in Irvine whose fundraising work helped elect Rep. Mike Garcia in CA-25, told POLITICO she’s now a recall campaign manager and lead fundraiser, and is working her proverbial Rolodex hard. So far, Gingrich’s efforts and online fundraising have only produced small donations. But what concerns Democrats is the notion that all the GOP needs is a couple of wealthy political types, party insiders or business moguls — even from another state — to sign on; after all, dropping $1 million into this effort could be a bargain price for an avalanche of national publicity on Fox, OAN and Newsmax, which are already covering Newsom heavily...

3. THE BAR IS INCREDIBLY LOW: “California’s governor faces one of the easiest recall requirements in the country,’’ said Joshua Spivak, a senior fellow at Wagner College’s Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform. “Voters only need to gather the signatures of 12 percent of voter turnout in the 2018 election – in this case, 1,495,709 signatures. California also grants 160 days to gather them. In other states, the signature percentage requirement is more than double and the time to gather is less than half.” And, he said, “thanks to the use of initiatives, California has a well-developed signature-gathering industry that can get a recall on the ballot.”

Plus, the California GOP has one more advantage, as compared to backers of the failed recall of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. “Wisconsin law requires the elected official to face off in a new election — where he was facing a clear opponent. In California, Newsom would not face an opponent. The vote is simply a yes or no as to whether he should stay in office, with the replacement race further down the ballot.” Which means...

4. THE EAGER HORDES AWAIT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: There will be publicity-seekers, true, but some legitimate office-holders who see a gubernatorial recall as an easy opportunity to get on the ballot will do their best to push for it. And don’t think Democrats won’t consider undermining Newsom if it comes to that. “We’ve gotten calls from Democrats who are already kicking the tires,’’ said one Sacramento insider aligned with a major special interest group.

Secretary of State Alex Padila’s office confirmed this week the requirements to get on the ballot for the recall would be 65 to 100 nomination signatures and a filing fee of $4,194.94, or 7,000 signatures in lieu of the filing fee. Those minimal requirements have essentially not changed since the recall of Gov. Gray Davis in 2003; back then, 135 candidates made the ballot — and that was before the age of Facebook and Twitter. Social media could multiply that number by 100 or more. Our heads hurt.

5. THE PANDEMIC ISN’T GOING AWAY: At least not before March 2021, when the proponents need to turn in 1.5 million valid signatures. That deadline will come after months of business shutdowns, bad news and economic turmoil, over which Newsom may not have control. But he’ll be in charge — and anger at him could get people signing, including the nearly 30 percent of California voters who don’t belong to a major political party.

 

In other words, this is a mess that California Republicans hope will paralyze and consume Newsom in 2021, so they can keep yelling "Well if the largest blue state in the nation can't handle things under a failed Biden administration, why are you still voting Democrat?" 

It only works of course if Newsom blows things so badly that this becomes an issue, but if he sails through this, and California continues on a post-vaccine path to economic recovery, then things will be looking good for Team Blue in 2022.

California Goes Viral, Con't

Even if Joe Biden is eventually declared President after all the Trump legal tomfoolery, even after another two-and-a-half months of Trump doing scorched earth damage in the wake of a loss, if California is any example, Trump's federal judges (and Supreme Court!) will be blocking Democratic state and national executive orders for years, making getting anything done to fix the mess we're in almost impossible.

A Northern California county judge on Monday preliminarily ordered Gov. Gavin Newsom to stop issuing directives related to the coronavirus that might interfere with state law.

Sutter County Superior Court Judge Sarah Heckman tentatively ruled that one of the dozens of executive orders Newsom has issued overstepped his authority and impinged on the state Legislature.

She more broadly barred him “from exercising any power under the California Emergency Services Act which amends, alters, or changes existing statutory law or makes new statutory law or legislative policy.”

It’s the second time a judge in the same county has reached the same conclusion, which runs counter to other state and federal court decisions backing the governor’s emergency powers. An appeals court quickly stayed the earlier order in June.

Heckman’s decision will become final in 10 days unless Newsom’s attorneys can raise new challenges. Newsom did not immediately comment or say if he will appeal.

The case centers on a single Newsom executive order in June requiring election officials to establish hundreds of locations statewide where voters can cast ballots in the November election. But lawmakers subsequently approved the same requirement, and the judge’s decision will have no effect on Tuesday’s election.

She acted in a lawsuit brought by Republican Assemblymen James Gallagher and Kevin Kiley, who said Newsom, a Democrat, was single-handedly overriding state laws in the name of keeping Californians safe.

“This is a victory for separation of powers,” the lawmakers said in a joint statement. Newsom “has continued to create and change state law without public input and without the deliberative process provided by the Legislature.”

Heckman wrote in a nine-page decision that the California Emergency Services Act “does not permit the Governor to amend statutes or make new statutes. The Governor does not have the power or authority to assume the Legislature’s role of creating legislative policy and enactments.”

Newsom used his emergency powers to virtually shut down the state and its economy in the early weeks of the pandemic.

“Nobody disputes that there are actions that should be taken to keep people safe during an emergency,” the lawmakers said. “But that doesn’t mean that we put our Constitution and free society on hold by centralizing all power in the hands of one man.”

 

After decades of the "unitary executive" legal principle, Republicans are now arguing that Governors have no powers, and that everything rests with state legislatures...which happened to be controlled by Republicans in many cases.  California's is not, but blocking Newsom's orders, as was the attempted case here in Kentucky a few months ago, is the point. 

Even if they are temporary, it disrupts the process and undermines authority. If Republicans cannot rule, Trump's judges will make sure the country remains ungovernable, even in deep blue California.

 

Last Call For It Backfired On Them

How I know the Trump regime's internal polling numbers out in Western states are abysmal? It took less than 24 hours for the White House to completely reverse its position on denying California federal disaster declaration for the state's record-setting wildfires this fall. See if you can spot the giveaway.

The federal government has reversed course on California's request for a disaster declaration for wildfires that have burned swathes of land across the U.S. state since early September.

The Trump administration had initially ruled against delivering the aid, before later approving it on Friday.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday afternoon he had spoken to President Donald Trump by phone and said he had approved the request. "Grateful for his quick response," Newsom said.

"The Governor and [House Minority] Leader [Kevin] McCarthy spoke and presented a convincing case and additional on-the-ground perspective for reconsideration leading the President to approve the declaration," deputy press secretary Judd Deere said in a statement.

Gonna stop you right there as you have all the info you need as to why the lightning-fast turnaround happened. 

The answer is Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy, the House GOP minority leader and Representative of California's 23rd district, which includes Bakersfield and the San Joaquin Valley, some of the areas hardest-hit in this year's wildfires. In particular, CA-23 contains Sequoia National Park and the Sequoia National Forest, both ravaged by flames earlier this year in the Castle fire in September.

CA-23 may be the reddest district not only in California but on the entire West Coast at R+17 by Cook Political Report reckoning, a capital reason as to why Kevin McCarthy is an elected in a state like California, but even his ass would be toast if he went along with Trump denying McCarthy's own constituents disaster money after the fall wildfires that California just had. Rural California is pretty red, and they got hit the hardest by the blazes. It wasn't downtown LA that burned down, folks, as much as the Trumpies would like to believe.

McCarthy and what's left of the California GOP would have been completely vaporized at the polls in a couple of weeks if this hold-up held up, so yes, McCarthy almost certainly made the pitch to Trump, and Gavin Newsom is smart enough to go with it to help his state.

Remember, it's not hard to appeal to Trump if you play to his ego, and McCarthy bringing Newsom to Trump, hat in hand? Yeah, Trump will take that and gloat, the idiot. Newsom will suck it up, and McCarthy might actually keep his seat and his job.

Would be a shame if Republicans in California lost seats anyway though.

Last Call For California Goes Viral

It's not just red states who are showing massive incompetence at handling COVID-19. The difference is when the blue state public health officials screw up, they resign.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s director of the California Department of Public Health resigned on Sunday, an abrupt departure of a key advisor in the state’s coronavirus battle just days after the discovery of a computer system failure that resulted in the undercounting of COVID-19 cases.

Dr. Sonia Angell, who held the position for less than a year, announced her resignation in an email sent to department staff that was released by the California Health and Human Services Agency.

“Since January, when we got word of repatriation flights arriving from Wuhan, China, our department has been front and center in what has become an all-of-government response of unprecedented proportions to COVID-19,” Angell wrote in the email to public health staff members. “In the final calculation, all of our work, in aggregate, makes the difference.”

Angell’s decision to step aside comes at a crucial moment in California’s battle against the spread of the virus. More than 10,000 Californians have died from the disease, and 38 of the state’s 58 counties are on a watchlist that has required the closure of businesses that had briefly reopened in the early summer and K-12 schools as the academic year begins. Angell, who frequently has appeared alongside Newsom in his public briefings on the state’s efforts to combat the pandemic, was considered a key player in the coordination with local public health departments across the state.

“I want to thank Dr. Angell for her service to the state and her work to help steer our public health system during this global pandemic, while never losing sight of the importance of health equity,” the governor said in a written statement Sunday night.

Dr. Angell had to go.

Last week, state officials confirmed that as many as 300,000 records had not been processed by the computer clearinghouse system relied upon to provide to local officials the COVID-19 test results reported by labs on a daily basis. Two separate errors were identified — one related to a computer server outage, the other to the expiration of an electronic certificate for data to be transferred from Quest Laboratories.
Administration officials insisted they did not know the extent of the problem until after Newsom’s public event on Aug. 3 in which he expressed optimism that current case numbers — lower than some had expected — meant some progress in the state’s efforts. But some local officials were sent communications the week before from the state Department of Public Health acknowledging a problem with the CalREDIE computer system.

Dr. Mark Ghaly, the secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, said on Friday that a full investigation was underway to determine what happened. And although he said that he had become aware of the “magnitude” of the problem only after Newsom’s public statements, some state officials had information on the problem earlier.

“We are aware that individuals there were knowledgeable of some of these challenges,” Ghaly said in discussing both the state Public Health Department and his agency, which oversees those operations.
A spokeswoman for the state health agency would not comment Sunday on whether Angell’s sudden resignation was related to, or prompted by, the database errors.

In other words, the 21% drop in California cases announced by Newsom on Monday was complete garbage. A head had to roll, and it was Dr. Angell's head.

California definitely screwed up, with tens of thousands of unreported cases now being added to the count. But as I said, the difference between California and say, Texas, Florida, or Georgia is that health officials in California get canned for making mistakes.

Health officials in red states get fired for being honest about the numbers.

The Country Goes Viral, Con't

As I've been warning for months now, "re-opening the economy" in states and the effective end of social distancing, especially in red states, has led directly to a massive spike in COVID-19 cases, which will translate very soon into a massive spike in COVID-19 deaths.

The coronavirus pandemic is getting dramatically worse in almost every corner of the U.S.

The big picture: The U.S. today is getting closer to the worst-case scenario envisioned in the spring — a nationwide crisis, made worse by a vacuum of political leadership, threatening to overwhelm hospitals and spread out of control. 

Nationwide, cases are up 30% compared to the beginning of this month, and dramatically worsening outbreaks in several states are beginning to strain hospital capacity — the same concern that prompted the nationwide lockdown in the first place. 

This is the grimmest map in the eight weeks since Axios began tracking the change in new cases in every state.

By the numbers: Over half the country — 26 states — have seen their coronavirus caseloads increase over the past week. 

New cases are up 77% in Arizona, 75% in Michigan, 70% in Texas and 66% in Florida. 

California, which has seen steady increases for weeks, recorded a 47% jump in new infections over the past week. 

These steep increases come after weeks of steadily climbing cases or back-and-forth results across the South, Midwest and West Coast. Only the New York region and parts of New England — the earliest hotspots — have consistently managed to get their caseloads down throughout May and June.

Increased testing does not explain away these numbers. Other data points make clear that we’re seeing a worsening outbreak, not simply getting better data. 

Seven states, including Arizona, have set records for the number of people hospitalized with coronavirus, and the percentage of all tests that come back positive is also increasing. 

The whole point of the national lockdown was to buy time to improve testing and give infection levels a chance to level off without overwhelming hospitals. That worked in New York, but as other parts of the country begin to see their outbreaks intensify later, the same risks are back at the forefront.

Again, we're now approaching the worst-case scenario, where hospitals in multiple states, in multiple areas of the country, are inundated with COVID-19 ICU patients, and the death rate skyrockets because there are no additional resources to treat people.

We're literally coming up on instances where treatable patients will instead die on gurneys in hospital hallways, and it will happen all across the country.

States are scrambling to try to stave off a preventable apocalypse.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott paused any further phases to reopen the state on Thursday and issued an order to ensure hospital beds be available for Covid-19 patients. 

Abbott's moves came as his state, California and Florida -- the three-most populous -- set records for new coronavirus cases daily amid fears of "apocalyptic" surges in major Texas cities if the trend continues.  

California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a budget emergency to free up $16 billion to fight the pandemic, according to a release from his office. 

And the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the US has only counted about 10% of coronavirus infections. That might mean as many as 20 million Americans have been infected. 

Officially, coronavirus has killed at least 122,238 people and infected almost 2.4 million nationwide, according to Johns Hopkins.

 July is going to be horrific.  August and September may be even worse.