Tackling Newsom Starts with Crime and His Appointees
Posted on January. 12. 2022
By Mihran Kalaydjian
VP of Strategy for Global Services;
Advocate on Neighborhood Councils for civic engagement and higher education.
As the 2022 election season quickly approaches, the House and the Senate races will certainly be a focus; not to be overlooked, though, are the 36 states facing elections for governor. Yet for California, the 2021 Recall Election might have been the sneak peak of what to expect – unless there are some big changes made.
While blaming and finger pointing for this dismal failure is unlikely to be productive, a proper acknowledgment of responsibility and accountability is crucial if results are not to be repeated. In the aftermath of the recall election, Public Opinion Strategies conducted a survey that found the talk of voter fraud (before a single vote was counted) created a pessimism stripping the enthusiasm from those wanting the governor recalled and diminishing the support for increasing the turnout among them.
Such a failure in narrative messaging directly rests with the political consultants from Venture Strategic, who ran the Larry Elder campaign and ultimately the gubernatorial recall, utterly aground by pushing such flawed and detrimental communication to voters.
After Newsom’s hypocritical dinner at the French Laundry, the shine of his golden boy image began to tarnish. Then, he released 76,000 inmates from prison, made deceptive claims of action taken to prevent wildfires, did nothing to prevent billions of dollars in EDD fraud, issued the numerous draconian executive orders on which both the legislature and judiciary threw warning flags, and Californians were fed up.
Yet, instead of capitalizing on these gifts given by Newsom, the consultants at Venture Strategic steered headlong into policies of a “California Trump” despite the 2020 election results conclusively showing such a strategy would be fatal.
Now, as we approach 2022, there are new opportunities on the horizon. As one Republican campaign consultant recently made the metaphorical comparison in a LA Times article, Newsom might be the equivalent of taking on an 800-pound gorilla. However, his team of appointees may not be as formidable a foe.
Two such candidates that could be challenged and defeated are Attorney General Rob Bonta and Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon. Bonta received his appointment after Xavier Becerra was tapped by the Biden Administration to be the Health and Human Services Secretary. Gascon won his 2020 election, but only after having begun his career as a District Attorney in San Francisco after Newsom appointed him to the position.
In the Attorney General race, it would be wise to consider the last statewide candidate to have had the best results against a Democrat opponent, and that was Steve Poizner in the 2018 Insurance Commissioner race. He ran as a No Party Preference candidate, a wise choice where Democrat party registration is almost twice Republican registration.
For Gascon, the opportunity to unseat him could see a return to the recall election stage. Much like Newsom, Gascon gave his opponents a gift in the press conference he held attempting to tout the achievements of his first year in office. After asserting that his policies bore no responsibility for the crime wave sweeping the county, claiming Los Angeles was safe, and comparing his disagreement with Sheriff Villanueva to “wrestling a pig,” the one thing that was clear was that his opponents had a solidified case for his recall.
In light of such an opportunity and the devastatingly tragic crime wave sweeping Los Angeles, it is essential that any second chance for his recall not just be haphazardly left to the last team of consultants. For not only did Venture Strategic unquestionably fail in their gubernatorial recall efforts, but they also failed in the first-round recall attempt for Gascon.
While the District Attorney race is non-partisan, it would be naïve to ignore the voter demographics of a county that has a three to one Democrat advantage especially when Gascon already alleged that the first attempt to recall him was purely partisan. Instead, the wisest course of action is to ensure that the recall election is not aligned to a November 2022 General election that will see high voter turnout along extremely charged partisan lines.
Yet, Venture Strategic is being anything but strategic or wise. Rather, in an unnecessarily risky venture, they are trying to push the recall election onto the November General Election ballot. This poor tactical decision-making is evidence of why this should not be entrusted to a firm with such a poor track record of successful recall messaging, of managing the effort, or of making it a reality… and we need to let the recall committees know that.