Was this the most frivolous waste of time in California election history?
He was a serious aspirant, for sure.
“I would say it was primarily a waste of time because it never referred to the big issues California faces,” Rob Stutzman said.
“Lots of noise for nothing,” Mike Madrid said.
And who are Stutzman and Madrid? They’re not left-wing apologists, if that’s what you were thinking. They are longtime Republican consultants. And the memory, of course, was a Republican-inspired attempted withdrawal, with the marginal support of Democrats and independent voters.
The problem is that the Republican Party, in California and the rest of the nation, is not a political party, but a saber-wielding support group.
“No one can tell you anymore what Republicanism means or what it means,” Madrid told me when the withdrawal began this spring. “They can only tell you against what they are against … And you can’t create a movement based on what you’re against.”
In this withdrawal, they were against Governor Gavin Newsom, so much so that they thought we should have a withdrawal election a year before Newsom’s term ended. Madrid said it was clear to him at first that Newsom would survive because taking him out of office would have required “a massive democratic defection.”
It was a long plan, but a conceivable possibility, and a survey in August made it look like a release. But the missing ingredient was a strong candidate who could attract some Democrats.
The cast of challengers included tired clown suitors and returnees. The only one who got strong – radio presenter Larry Elder – was so out of step with the great California, the Newsom camp must have thought it was Christmas in September.
I mean, think about it. The main candidate for the presidency of the Republic was a Donald Trump cheerleader who opposes the minimum wage, loves to blame the victims, has been a skeptic of climate change, once it was said that women are not so good informed as the men and promised to end the mandates of the mask and the vaccine.
You can wave these flags whatever you want and a small part of the voter will stand up and greet you. Unless looking like a Texas gubernatorial candidate doesn’t take you very far to California.
But will the state Republican Party receive the message? Don’t bet on it. Democratic leaders of the state can tear whatever they want, with good reason in many cases, because the problems of the state and leadership failures are overwhelming, as I set out in my Sunday column.
But guess what. There’s a reason the Dems are in charge. It’s that the Republican Party has had no winning idea or viable candidates in years and this recovery campaign can only push the party back even further.
“I do not see it [the state] advancing a moderate [Republican] in the second round of the general election next year, ”Stutzman said. “I don’t know who he would be.”
He could have been the former mayor of San Diego and remembered candidate Kevin Faulconer. But “he decided not to embrace that kind of candidacy and didn’t have the funding to open up even if he did,” Stutzman said.
The only feature in the upcoming election could be for a self-proclaimed GOP candidate, Stutzman said. But that didn’t work for Silicon Valley mogul Meg Whitman, who spent $ 144 million of her own money on a 2010 race to rule but lost to Jerry Brown.
The winning ideas have simply not been on the side of the Republican Party, Madrid said. He recalled conversations with a GOP state leader who would say, “California has the worst homelessness problem in the United States, the worst housing crisis, the worst income division, with human feces and hypodermic needles on the streets. And my answer to that is yes, and people still don’t see the Republican party as a viable alternative and people would rather live with all of that than vote for a Republican. And that’s a Republican problem. “
Madrid, born in Ventura County and raised by Mexican parents, is still considered a proud old-school Republican. But he is frustrated by what he called the white identity policy that dominates the Republican Party and alienates millions of people of color at a time when the country is increasingly diverse.
Madrid is also frustrated that the California Republican Party is not taking signs from Massachusetts, Maryland and Vermont, all blue states led by Republican governors.
“One thing [those governors] what they have in common is that they have spoken out against Trump and the nationalism that the Republican party has consumed, “said Madrid, who accused Faulconer of cowardice because he was” anti-Trump for three years as mayor of San Diego before to climb on her lap to run to the retreat “.
Madrid said it believes Newsom has mismanaged the pandemic in some way and that deep issues such as income inequality and inaccessible housing have not improved or worsened in the last three years, leaving a big gap. for honest conversations about solutions.
“But this is no longer a debate we are having. The debate we are having now is whether we should overthrow everything or protect and persevere it, as flawed as it is, ”said Madrid. “Is it worth having this American experiment? The Republican Party says no, if it’s not our way, the elections are called and let’s overthrow them … Let’s destroy the institutions because this is not our America. “
Ready, the day before the election, Trump resurrected his guilt game.
“Does anyone really think the California recall election isn’t ready?” Trump asked, saying we were in a “scam” like the one that stole his re-election last fall.
After a waste of months, it was the perfect exclamation point.