What Went Down At The California Recall Election: Live Results

One important aspect of COVID-19 policy debates is that they tend to be highly polarized by party, so Newsom may have been able to benefit just by taking positions aligned with the state’s Democratic-leaning electorate. On the other hand, issues like homelessness and housing affordability may not have such clear battle lines, giving Republicans an opening to challenge Newsom just on the basis that things aren’t going so well.

Something that hasn’t gotten a lot of coverage in national media is the scandal over unemployment benefits in California. When the pandemic hit and millions of Californians found themselves unemployed, scammers saw an opportunity to make money by filing fraudulent claims. Once the state wised up, though, they cracked down so hard that some eligible applicants didn’t receive the benefits they were entitled to. Apart from impacting the lives of thousands of Californians, the episode has been a massive headache for Newsom. The state is still struggling to dig out from at least $11 billion, and potentially as much as $31 billion, in fraudulent claims.

I wonder if Republican advertisers felt that voters had made up their mind about how Newsom handled COVID-19, and if that wasn’t enough to get them riled up and ready to vote for a recall, maybe pointing out some other perceived failings would be.