California wastes over $250m on a pointless election in the middle of a pandemic

Caitlyn Jenner is angry this morning. As well she may be. The reality TV star-cum-wannabe politician won just 1.1 per cent of the vote in a recall election that saw incumbent Gavin Newsom retain his role as California governor.

Her main source of annoyance is that so many people voted to keep Newsom in his job: “I can’t believe that this many people actually voted to keep him in office. It’s a shame, honestly, it’s a shame. You kind of get the government you deserve.”

Yes, Caitlyn, you kind of do.

For I, too, am annoyed this morning. Not for the same reasons as Jenner – whose campaign highlight appeared to be the lament that her fellow private aircraft owners were (quelle horreur) thinking of moving their hangars out of California to avoid homeless people – but instead at the amount of money wasted on the inevitably pointless election.

California’s governor may have successfully fended off the recall effort, but the state’s residents are $276m out of pocket, thanks in large part to a group of Trumpian conservatives who filed the recall petition targeting Newsom on issues ranging from immigration policy to high tax rates.

It may be a traditionally blue state, but the number of Republicans in California is not insignificant. Among the registered voters in the state, around a quarter are Republican. And it is those voters who, fresh off the back of Trump’s 2018 defeat, were targeted by Trump loyalists to back a recall effort against Newsom.

And why not? Democrat governors have long been a target for recall efforts by Republicans – indeed, although California has only had only one other recall election (ushering in the era of Arnold Schwarzenegger), there have been a staggering 179 attempts to recall politicians in the state.

Newsom, with his refusal to bow to Trump immigration edicts, backing of sanctuary cities and sanctioning of same-sex marriage licences, was an obvious target for Republicans looking to claw back some of the ground and face lost to the Democrats following Trump’s defeat.

And while there later came genuine reasons for gripes with the governor – not least among them his decision to attend a gathering while it was prohibited under the state’s coronavirus rules – the initial recall effort was a politically motivated one.

Was it worth the $276m? One of the issues raised on the recall petition was homelessness in the state. Perhaps the money spent on the recall election could have been used for housing or support programmes, or to tackle crime, improve schooling, or build more affordable housing.

To some degree, $276m is a drop in the ocean for California’s economy – the fifth largest in the world – but can anyone afford to throw away this kind of money during a global pandemic, particularly on a partisan vanity project to prove the GOP can easily cause problems for incumbent Democrats (as if a wafer-thin Senate majority didn’t already prove this point)?

Caitlyn Jenner is right. People do get the politicians they deserve – in this case, the one who didn’t happily back a pointless recall effort that cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars.

Yours,

Harriet Sinclair

US news editor (west coast)