Political Intrigue

Welcome, scheming reader, as this week I give you an insight into the shady, confusing and not-entirely-efficient world of Californian state politics. Yes folks, strap in, this is going to be a ranty one.

This week saw what is grandiosely known as the Gubernatorial Recall Election. Now, you can take issue with each of those three words: first up, "Gubernatorial". This is an archaic word, meaning of or pertaining to a Governor, rarely heard in English since the 1500s, yet here in the US it's thrown around with abandon in relation to this election. The word Gubernator might conjure up images of some kind of swamp-dwelling amphibian, which is sadly incorrect, although perhaps the analogy isn't an entirely bad one.

Secondly, recall. This is oddly prescient, because fans of sci fi or action movies will no doubt recall that the only previous successful gubernatorial recall resulted in the installation of Arnold Schwartzenegger as governor, and he'd previously starred in the movie Total Recall. The use of recall here is again an archaic usage of the word, meaning to revoke or annul a previous decision.

At this point you might be wondering what the hell is going on, and let's be honest reader, you're not alone in that. So let me get straight to the point: Republicans in California are unhappy with the idea that the state's Democrat governor, Gavin Newsom, had a bit of a flash dinner with some friends at a posh restaurant in the Napa Valley in the middle of last year, breaking the COVID restrictions which were in place at the time. This is not exactly Barnard Castle, but it's not far off. As a result of this, and the fact that they still can't really get over their guy losing the Presidential election, the Republicans want to get rid of Gavin.

The early political history of California as a state was dominated by powerful commercial interests, in particular the Southern Pacific railroad; in fact, Hiram W Johnson won the election for governor in 1910 under the slogan "Kick the Southern Pacific out of politics", or so Wikipedia tells me. Following his successful election, a number of constitutional measures were introduced which made California one of the most directly democratic places on Earth, and one of those things was the provision for the electorate to be able to get rid of the governor at any time if they so desired.

And that's how we get to the recall election. Any publicly-elected official here can be recalled if you can gather a petition of signatures, numbering more than 12% of the people that voted in the election via which they took office. In Gavin's case, that just meant that the Republicans had to collect 1.5 million signatures, which isn't that hard in a state of 40 million, about a third of which are Republicans.

Once this happens, the election must be held some time in the next 60-80 days. "Election" is again something of a misnomer: it's a combination of a referendum (the first question on the ballot is "Shall Gavin Newsom be recalled (removed) from the office of Governor?") and if the result from that referendum is Yes, the ballot also contains a selection of alternative candidates. Here there were over 40 alternative candidates.

Now, the flaws in this system are so obvious and undesirable that it's hard to comprehend that this is still how they do business here. The 12% means it's surprisingly easy to kick off this expensive process (the whole affair has cost the best part of half a billion dollars); as a result, every California governor since 1960 has had some sort of recall attempt started by their opposition. Furthermore, because of the referendum-followed-by-election format, it's possible (and in fact likely) that the existing governor is removed, and replaced by someone who wins fewer votes. They say democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time, but California's flavour is pretty special.

In the event, the recall was a non-event: about two-thirds of those who could be bothered to vote wanted to keep Gavin (the turnout was just 42%). As a result, we were spared the possibility of Trump-supporting Larry Elder, the leading alternative candidate, taking office. Given his well-documented views on 50% of the population, this can only be a good thing, reader.

I don't have an exciting picture with which to illustrate this, but we're getting into Autumn and the squashes are coming into season, and our local public garden is about to get into the spirit:

Another exciting feature of the electoral system here is the idea of the write-in candidate, where you can literally nominate whoever you like to become governor or even president. Obviously as a non-citizen I can't vote, but if I could, I'd be writing in the name of the Great Pumpkin.