September 17: Midterm Implications of Big Recall Win Are Mixed
Pouring over the details of the gubernatorial recall election in California, some significant patterns emerged, as I noted at New York:
The overwhelming defeat of the effort to recall California governor Gavin Newsom was a big victory for a Democratic Party that has had its troubles lately. With the margin of victory for the “no on recall” campaign roughly doubling the already-robust advantage shown in pre-election polls, the earlier scare that the recall threw into the ranks of the Golden State’s dominant party dissipated entirely. With about three-fourths of the expected vote now counted, “no” leads “yes” by a 63.8 to 36.2 margin (which could get even larger if the usual pattern of last-cast mail ballots leaning Democratic manifests itself once again).
The “no” vote was remarkably close to Joe Biden’s performance in California in 2020 (he won 63.5 percent). Given the extreme partisan polarization that underlay the recall vote (exit polls showed 89 percent of self-identified Republicans voting “yes” and 94 percent of self-identified Democrats voting “no”), that means the partisan patterns of the presidential race were reduplicated to a remarkable extent in a non-presidential special election, where Democrats often experience a “falloff,” particularly when they control the White House (and in this case, the governorship). That’s great news for California Democrats, and not a bad sign for Democrats nationally, who are bracing for the midterm losses the “White House Party” typically suffers.
But in assessing the implications of the results, it’s important to look back at what happened down ballot in California in 2020, while looking ahead to the most critical 2022 battleground, the fight for control of the House. Of the 13 net House seats Republicans gained in 2020,
four were in deep-blue California. There is no likely path for Democrats to hang onto House control in 2022 without flipping some or all of those lost seats in one of their strongest states.
Precisely because of the reduplication of the 2020 patterns, there’s really nothing about the recall returns that suggests Democrats are sure to claw back some House seats in California. Two of the four seats Republicans flipped in 2020 (with Asian-American women Young Kim and Michelle Steele as candidates) were centered in Orange County. While “no” won in Orange, the recall race there was closer than the Biden-Trump contest of 2020. A third battleground seat was the one Republican David Valadao won in a very competitive section of the San Joaquin Valley. The recall improved on Trump’s 2020 performance in every county in his district (e.g., Trump won 55 percent in Kings County, but “yes” on recalling Newsom won 63 percent). These results could reflect an intensifying alienation of this heavily agricultural area from Sacramento’s environmental and water-supply policies. Or it could reflect a drop-off in Latino turnout that could spell disaster for Democrats in close 2022 races. Either way the recall numbers should give pause to Democratic optimism about midterm House races.
One study of 2020 returns in California showed Latino turnout trailing non-Latino turnout by about 10 percent. One mail-ballot tracker for the recall showed the turnout gap between Latinos and non-Latino white voters swelling to 20 percent. Youth turnout for the recall was also terrible, exit polls suggest. Yes, these are constituencies that are difficult to mobilize in special elections. But that’s also true of midterm elections, which is a problem Democrats in California and elsewhere need to solve.
The bottom line is that Newsom won the Democratic and Democratic-leaning elements of the California electorate by strongly encouraging partisan polarization via his lavishly funded campaign. This was the obvious smart strategy in this heavily Democratic state. It’s less clear the same strategy will work wonders downballot for Democrats in 2022, which they probably will not have a big financial advantage and shifts in public opinion away from the presidential winner may have settled in, as they did for the last three presidents. Even if Democrats hang onto their monopoly of statewide offices and their super-majorities in the state legislature, any failure to make progress in House races could contribute to the much-dreaded moment when Californian Nancy Pelosi hands over her gavel to Californian Kevin McCarthy, and the Democratic trifecta that gives Biden a chance to implement his agenda comes to an end.
Gerrymandering is a problem no matter whose ox is being gored. The way states handle redistricting is broken beyond repair.
There is one very easy solution: The states should combine their districts into big, three-member districts, open their general elections to the top three vote-getters from each party’s primary, and apportion seats to the top three vote-getters in the general election. This would make it much more difficult to gerrymander (because the states would essentially have fewer, bigger districts) and would be much more fair (because in most cases the districts would thereby elect two members from the most dominant party and one member from the lesser party, ensuring that the minority party still gets some say). There would have to be a few rules for the occasional one- or two-member district that would still come up in states whose congressional delegation was not a multiple of three, of course.
Of course, because this (a) makes sense, (b) provides the most meaningful way to elect centrists of both parties, and (c) threatens incumbents, Congress — which otherwise lets states handle redistricting however they want — has outlawed multi-member districts.
For many years the Southern Money Elite held the South in the grip of Fraud, Intimidation, and a wide variety of legality games and criminal enterprises.
The 1968 election overthrew that lock on the Democratic party, so the Southern Gang Of Pirates became Republican, but never lost their old ways. Rather they spread them across the country.
Now they need all the games to retain control, the loss of one could lose all. But Gerrymandering might be the biggest, and certainly the least understood.
By packing a few districts as 100% frequently voting Democrats (who are mostly black) into their own districts, they bleach the surrounding districts such that an area can vote 55% Democrat and still have that elect 4 Republicans and one Democrat to Congress. The Democrat wins by 95% without even trying and the Republicans win by 55%.
Until there are rules against Gerrymandering, or such voting districts are outlawed entirely, there will be little need to apply the other methods to House seats.
One of the reasons we will continue to have problems in South is that so many African-American males have been disenfranchised, in part because of crack vs. cocaine sentencing disparities and sentencing enhancements that were part of the Clinton 1994 Omnibus Crime bill.