Gavin Newsom and Larry Elder: A California Recall Story

I have to admit I have paid almost no attention to the recall of Gov. Newsom and consequent upcoming special election.

But I did sign the recall. Over a year ago I was biking along the boardwalk near the Ventura promenade when I spied two men sitting under an awning gathering signatures for the recall of California Governor Gavin Newsom. I happily biked over there and happily added my signature to the list of others.

I have substantial anger at the authorities in my home state over their handling of the COVID pandemic. Anger all the way from the governor to school boards and teacher unions and city politicians and police. I will never forget seeing a couple of Ventura cops at the beginning of the pandemic sound their siren as they rolled up on two five-year old boys on the playground. “Get off the monkey bars and stop spreading disease, you juvenile delinquents!” Such overreaction! The closing of the schools for months. The shuttering of the beaches. Taking the backboards off basketball hoops to stymie rebel basketball players. The placing of giant concrete blocks in local baseball fields to prevent an outbreak of baseball. Looking back, I can hardly believe it. For awhile almost every tennis court in Ventura County was closed.

And we now know COVID-19 is almost never spread outdoors.

Whether it was the public schools or youth sports, the adult world basically abandoned my daughters for a year and a half. For a long time, from stores and services down to even the local public parks, the world seemed to be “closed.” Everything was shut down, and my daughters struggled. I was enraged.

Our California authorities — almost all of them from the Democratic Party — seem to have given us the worst of both worlds: we had some of the strictest lockdown and mitigation mandates, but we still had some of the worst levels of infection anywhere, especially in Southern California.

In all fairness I have to admit that Gov. Newsom, the school authorities, and local politicos were navigating this emergency in uncharted waters. Nobody knew what they were doing; there was no blueprint for this; they were trying to figure it out as they went. They made a mess of things.

And if I am upset with Gov. Newsom for acting too harshly for shutting down the state, creating a massive mental health crisis among the young, causing countless bankruptcies, and losing trillions of dollars — well, there are other people who think Newsom did not lock the state down tightly enough. They think he should have shut us down more severely and for longer than he did.

Such is the difficulty of being in power. You have to make hard decisions. You are not choosing between the good and bad choices but between bad and worse. Which choice is bad and which is worse is often far from clear.

But if there had been no pandemic, there would have been no recall of Gavin Newsom. Someone like me who did not care too much about who is governor was eager to sign a paper for his recall several months into the lockdowns. I would almost vote for Lucifer for governor rather than Gavin. The ones that don’t like Newsom hate his guts and are energized.

Everyone tells me that it does not matter much. The Democratic Party reportedly has such a hold on California that no Republican can win. But at least a recall will be a shot across the bow of Gavin Newsom which might restrain his worst instincts to hold onto his “emergency powers” indefinitely. With much fanfare Newsom officially  “opened up” California last June. Without a protest action like the recall, Newsom might have been much slower to do so.

Who knows?

I have not yet paid any attention to Republican challengers. I seem to remember Caitlyn Jenner running on the Republican ballot? A transgender former Olympian and reality TV persona as a realistic candidate for senior political office? Was that a joke? Was he/she to be taken seriously? “They” sound something like a clown candidate.

I remember hearing about some guy named Cox. He sounded more like a prudent politician that the Republican Party in California would trot out to lose against the Democratic candidate for the governorship. There is the ex-mayor of San Diego Something Falcouner? Someone who has actually served as a politician? Uninspiring. Another anonymous Republican apparatchik to lose to the majority Democrats. I remain uninterested.

But I was interested in Larry Elder. I have never in my life listened to a whole segment of Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Jordan Peterson or any of the other conservative commentators which liberals love to hate. Larry Elder is as much a leftist bête noire as any of them.

But unlike that world-historical buffoon Donald Trump, Larry Elder seems informed and thoughtful. He has been around with his radio show saying the same things forever, unlike Trump who is as changeable in his affections as a ten dollar whore — chasing the attention and celebrityhood. In contrast, Larry Elder has always been Larry Elder. When nobody paid attention to him or his show, he was consistent in his message. Now that he is running for office and people are paying attention to him, Larry Elder is the same person. Donald Trump the demagogue was always milking whatever issue for the controversy, and he wanted to boost himself up by stoking the outrage. Elder never seemed like a fundamental fraud, like Trump. 

But alas, Elder has no practical experience in politics. Trump was also a total amateur, making a mess of things as president. Would Governor Larry Elder the tyro politician be any better?

I don’t know.

After thirty-five years I stopped subscribing to the Los Angeles Times as it had become a predictable liberal rag that did not even pretend to take an objective role in reporting the news. It was unapologetically “advocacy journalism.” So I was not able to get past the paywall to read the article:

“Larry Elder’s Outspoken Conservative Radio Rhetoric is Under Scrutiny in Recall Election”
August 10, 2021

But I can see what a particular kind of California “progressive” liberal is hunting for objectionable passages to decry Elder as “unacceptable.” Self-professed “social justice warriors” are often preoccupied with language and the drawing of lines about what is acceptable and unacceptable in public discourse. I suspect they will find plenty of what Elder has said in his countless hours of radio show dialogue to be, at the very least, “problematic.” Many will proclaim Elder “beyond the pale.” They will seek to “cancel” him.

I don’t think it will work. Elder is smart and well informed. He is African American, articulate in his conservative beliefs, and lives relatively near to me — similar to my Internet friend Mike Bowen. I have not yet listened to more than 30 seconds of Larry Elder, but I can tell he is nobody’s fool.

And what California “progressive” liberals don’t understand is that many Californians, like me, will vote for Elder precisely because we agree with him. What they find “cancellable” in his views is what others generally find appealing.

Or at least I think so, having never really listened to Elder further than a few sound bites. In particular, I remember seeing billboards for the “Sage from South Central” on the sides of freeways when I was driving past them decades ago.

I don’t know if Larry Elder would make a good Governor of California. Maybe he is just a protest vote in an unwinnable election. Maybe he is a political commentator posing as a working politician, like Gore Vidal or William F. Buckley Jr. running for New York office back in the 1960s.

But I like Larry Elder. I just looked over his election website and agreed with almost everything I read after quickly perusing his campaign platform.

And I hope to vote for him for Governor of California on August 16th, 2021.

I might even donate some money to his campaign — the first time I have ever done such a thing.

But no, if I give them money and my email address they will never stop asking me for more. And they will give my email to other conservative causes and the emails will never stop. I will be spammed forever. No, thank you.

And I did go and listen to a Larry Elder political segment on Youtube this evening. It was fifteen minutes long but I only lasted five. Elder was contentious and tendentious, and he showed his opponents selectively and in the worst possible light; it all had the air of a “gotcha” hit piece. It was “red meat” for true believers. These political podcasts are almost exactly the same whether they are produced by liberals or conservatives. The problem is not so much with Larry Elder as with the genre of political podcasts, which begin to smell unhealthily of propaganda.

I am far from being a political “true believer,” and so I think such media will never be attractive to me. How can anyone listen to hundreds and hundreds of hours of Ben Shapiro conservative podcasts? Or similar stretches of Rachel McMaddow liberal media? Is it not tedious, predictable, and therefore boring? “Hurrah for our political team! Boo for their political team!” All that cheerleading. All that vitriol. How exhausting! Rush Limbaugh and his conservative radio show was the worst thing to happen to the Republican Party in the past thirty years, and Donald Trump that monster is the natural extension of it. American politics currently is the marketing of anger and resentment, and both sides of the political spectrum are selling it.

And millions of Americans, liberal and conservative, are buying what they are selling.

But not me.

So what did I do tonight after I closed out Youtube and Larry Elder’s political pleadings?

I went to where my heart really lies. I came back to what is really important to me. I listened for two hours to this audiobook:

The asshole politicians will make a mess and do whatever they will do. I will only give them so much of my precious time and attention. The COVID-19 mess will resolve itself one way or another. Gov. Newsom might be replaced, or not.

But my daughters, their upbringings, and possible futures, that is what I really care about. 

That is real.

And they will be off to college in a few brisk years.

Pay attention. Be present. Do what you can as a father.

Focus on what is most important, Richard, and let slip that which is less important.

Amen.