THE CELEBRITY FACTOR IN RECALL ELECTIONS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 17, 2021, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
        “THE CELEBRITY FACTOR IN RECALL ELECTIONS”

 

        Many Californians laughed out loud back in 1998, when Minnesota voters by a wide margin elected longtime professional wrestler and sometime talk show host Jesse Ventura their governor.

 

        But almost exactly five years later, those same Californians by a wide margin made longtime movie muscleman Arnold Schwarzenegger their governator and then kept him and his cigars in office for seven years.

 

        Neither Ventura nor Schwarzenegger had an iota of administrative experience, but both had shown some interest in public affairs. Schwarzenegger, for one, campaigned hard five years before he became governor in the recall of ex-Gov. Gray Davis for an initiative that created today’s First Five pre-school education program and then helped promote it.

 

        So it was no shock that in the first two polls taken on candidates to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom in case he’s recalled, a celebrity with no government experience led the field.

 

 

        That’s Larry Elder, who polled 16 percent in one survey and 18 percent in another that appeared days later. In both surveys, Elder was 10 points ahead of political veterans John Cox and Kevin Faulconer in a field that includes no well-funded Democrats, largely because Newsom pushed his party to keep established figures out.

 

        There is one Democrat with political experience who’s running: Joel Ventresca, who took third in the 2019 San Francisco mayoral election and has run for office several times. Ventresca, a longtime administrative analyst for the San Francisco International Airport, has had several runs, never coming close to a win. In his mayoral attempt, he got about 10 percent as many votes as current Mayor London Breed.

 

        Ventresca, clearly, has no wide following. But Elder, a conservative Black man whose talk show has run for decades on Los Angeles radio station KABC-AM plainly does. When he was omitted from a column naming a few recall candidates last month, dozens of readers wrote to complain of “Elder abuse.”

 

        Should Newsom get around to trying to make the recall seem a contest between him and a bunch of Donald Trump acolytes, it would be easy to include Elder. He has long used his talk show to promote extreme conservatives, some of whom went on to become key aides to the former president. Trump adviser Steven Miller, said to be the author of most Trump immigration policy, began appearing with Elder while still in high school.

 

        But if celebrity is such a big advantage in politics, and especially recall elections, what about Caitlin Jenner? The transgender reality show star and former Olympic decathlon champion pulled only about 3 percent support in the same polls that Elder led.

 

        It might be her transgender identity, detested by many Republican politicians and much of the party’s rank and file. Or it might be her utter lack of civic involvement and her spotty voting record prior to declaring herself a replacement candidate. Or it might be that voters don’t care much for celebrities with unconventional lifestyles or conditions. The late actor Gary Coleman, who stopped growing at 4’8” and ran as a replacement candidate in 2003, drew very few votes, as Jenner seems likely to this time.

 

        There may be a lesson for Democrats in all this – especially if Newsom doesn’t survive the recall. Should that happen, the party does not now have any obvious candidates to step up and oust Elder or any other recall replacement in next year’s regular election. A lieutenant governor might often be the logical successor candidate. So might an attorney general.

 

        But Lt. Gov. Elena Kounalakis has not built a major following in three years as the state’s No. 2, while appointed Attorney General Rob Bonta struggles to make his ultra-left leaning views acceptable to voters.

 

        Yes, U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank created something of a following with his impeachment efforts against Trump. Orange County Rep. Katie Porter is widely admired among Democrats, too.

 

        But neither enjoys robust statewide support.

 

        So might Democrats take a leaf from the playbook of California Republicans, who have turned to celebrities like actors George Murphy, Ronald Reagan and Schwarzenegger when they didn’t have experienced officeholders to lead their tickets? If so, someone like George Clooney might be their man next year, since activist actor Warren Beatty’s political time likely has passed.     

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Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com

DE LEON AIMING FOR AN UPSET OF THE AGES

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, AUGUST 17, 2018, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
          “DE LEON AIMING FOR AN UPSET OF THE AGES”

          U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein had almost $10 million on hand after winning a 44.2 percent plurality of the June primary election vote; Kevin de Leon had far less than $1 million left over after finishing second with just over 12 percent, enough to get a spot in the November runoff election, but insufficient to scare anyone.

          Feinstein even won fellow Democrat de Leon’s own state Senate district in eastern Los Angeles County by a comfortable 10 percent margin.

          De Leon’s percentage of the primary vote was somewhat less than the 12.6 percent won by the previously little-known Sacramento area Republican activist Elizabeth Emken in 2012, the last time Feinstein stood for reelection. Feinstein won a 49.3 percent plurality in that primary, and beat Emken that fall by more than a 60-40 percent margin.

          Emken was a Republican, so very likely took almost all GOP votes in the runoff. But de Leon has positioned himself as far to the left of Feinstein as any Democrat could, and so won’t draw many Republican votes in November. One late-July poll indicated almost half of all Republican voters will leave the U.S. Senate category blank on their ballots.

Feinstein has never before run against a fellow Democrat, but two years ago, the moderate Democrat and former Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez of Orange County got 54 percent of Republican runoff votes.

          All these items give the more moderate Feinstein a huge advantage over de Leon this fall. They help explain why de Leon has trouble raising money from Democratic donors, who would rather put their dollars into congressional districts the party might flip from red to blue, and not make an enemy of the formidable Feinstein, a former mayor of San Francisco.

          Put it together and it’s clear de Leon may need an act of God to take over the Senate seat Feinstein has held since 1992.

          The primary vote also indicates it will probably turn out to be irrelevant that de Leon had a near-victory with 54 percent support at the California Democrats’ state party convention last spring, which easily topped Feinstein’s support, and later won an endorsement from the Democrats’ executive committee, which comes with some plugs on campaign slate mailers this fall, plus monetary and volunteer worker support.

          This happened because the bulk of both party convention delegates and executive board members today are far to the left of both Feinstein and mainstream Democratic voters, as made clear by the primary results. The current makeup of the party organization is the result of a big push by 2016 supporters of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders during local party caucuses early in 2017.

          In fact, exit polls in June showed Feinstein winning about 70 percent of all votes cast in the Senate race by Democrats.

          And yet, de Leon does not appear fazed by the difficulty of the task before him. “Once people make the connection with me, they say, ‘It’s time for a change, I’m with you,’” he told a reporter after the primary.

          But in this huge state, with population and geographic size similar to major nations like France and the United Kingdom, it’s difficult to connect directly with enough voters to overcome all Feinstein’s advantages.

          So de Leon often lapses into the “it’s time for a change” mantra, code words for “Feinstein is too old.” She turned 85 on June 22 and is the oldest member of the Senate. But not even de Leon suggests that makes her ineffective.

          “To say he has a message is a stretch,” said Feinstein’s longtime campaign consultant, Bill Carrick. “He’s trying to say ‘she’s not progressive and I am,’ but that gets shot down every day by what she’s doing in Congress.”

          Feinstein is known as the Senate’s leading gun-control advocate, is a strong abortion supporter and on those grounds was among the first Democrats to declare opposition to President Trump’s newest Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.

          The bottom line today is that Feinstein enjoys a lead of at least 22 points in recent public polling and even with a party endorsement, de Leon does not appear to have either the means or the money to overcome that margin.

         
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     Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net