With the possible exception of the United States itself, there exists few, if any, places on planet earth with a mythos quite as alluring as California. Woodie Guthrie’s 1944 ballad This Land is Your Land is a song about many things, but at face value is about the beauty of America’s geography. In one of the most famous folk songs written about this nation, Guthrie spends much of his time alluding to the beauty of the regions in the once-Golden State. Almost 55 years since Guthrie’s passing, the ‘endless skyway’ he described is now clouded by the smoke of preventable wildfires. That ‘ribbon of highway’ he sang about now has more craters than the surface of the moon. California is my home; It is also, as California State University professor and historian Victor Davis Hanson puts it, ‘America’s First Third-World State.’
California, once the envy of the world and the crown jewel of America, is now a textbook example of failed governance. The price of electricity is 7x higher in California than the rest of the country. From 2011 to 2020, the average cost of power in California increased 42% while it fell 6% in every other state. There are more homeless people in the state of California than in any other state, and when accounting for population, there are 41 homeless people per every 10,000 California residents. Between 2008 and 2018, meth related overdoses in California increased 585%. Rattling off statistics like these is a largely useless endeavor, because California residents, at least the ones who are honest with themselves, can see it with their own eyes. You can see typhus-infested rats occupying L.A.’s seat of government. You can see used heroin needles lining the streets of most major California cities, many of which were distributed by those cities’ local governments. Reports of human excrement on the streets of San Francisco have hit their lowest levels in 3 years, but in classic San Francisco style, they are not prosecuted, along with almost every other crime that makes these cities basically unlivable.
Things are bad in California, very bad. But things are bad not because of Trump, or racism, or lack of funding, or whatever other waste-of-time non sequitur excuse Newsom apologists can muster up. Things in California are bad because Californians have lived under one-party rule since 1970. The Democratic party has either caused, or failed to stop, every single one of the, sometimes literal, plagues ailing the state. There is absolutely no room for excuse making, California democrats have everything they need to be successful: veto-proof supermajorities, the governor’s mansion, a dynamic and large economy, a budget larger than any other state in the Union, the list goes on and on. The longer we deny this reality and the longer we make excuses for failed leadership, the longer and more intensely millions of Californians will suffer.
There’s ultimately no way to know for certain whether the recall effort of California Gov. Gavin Newsom is the product of years’ worth of rage at Sacramento politics finally boiling over, or if Gov. Newsom is just a uniquely bad Governor. The case which I am more inclined to believe is that this is a groundswell of decades worth of frustration, and that Newsom is merely a catalyst, though I think both may be partially true. California State Assemblyman and candidate for Governor, Kevin Kiley, made a compelling case in his most recent book, which I helped research, that Newsom is uniquely bad, and is “America’s most corrupt governor.” Kiley’s book is the single best compilation of the grievances that many Californians, including Democrats, have with the Governor. It should come as no surprise to Newsom’s supporters that Californians who enjoyed the strictest restrictions on their day-to-day lives would be upset when the authors of those restrictions, their own governor and representatives, violate them. Whichever rationale motivated 2.1 million Californian’s to sign the petition to recall Newsom is ultimately irrelevant, because it’s here, and it’s very, very real.
Gavin Newsom knows this and began his four day campaign to squash the recall in San Francisco, the city he brutalized as Mayor and has returned to butcher as Governor. He is calling in every political IOU he has at his disposal, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren from the very-relevant-to-this-conversation state of Massachusetts. Warren and others have co-opted Newsom’s messaging, branding their efforts to oppose the recall with slogans like, “stop the Republican recall.” Newsom’s language gives Californian’s a surprisingly transparent look into his thinking. By branding a citizen-led referendum as a “Republican Recall,” he’s telling us that his political opponents have now garnered enough support to pose a serious threat to California’s one-party rule. It’s a nakedly partisan defense of his administration, but not on his merits, rather on the basis that nothing must be permitted that dares to obstruct the California democratic machine.
The utter destruction of the California Democratic Party’s 50-year rule will be perhaps the single most challenging endeavor in all of American politics, but it might just be successful. However, it certainly won’t be without the buy-in of moderate Democrats and independent Californians. On September 14th, Californians will make likely the single most politically consequential decision of their lifetimes. We may decide to embrace yet again a blind partisanship after 50 years of abject failure, or we can cast a radical vote in favor of hope. Hope that things in the Golden State can get better. Hope that we are not resigned to the fate of the cruel externalities of run-amok progressivism. That California leads the nation in all the wrong ways is a national tragedy, but it doesn’t need to be that way. Defying political tradition and voting against the status quo is never easy, but right now it's a necessary act of selflessness. The recall of Gavin Newsom is California’s last best chance to save itself, and it is going to require all hands-on deck. Take a chance on hope, what the hell have you got to lose?
Blayne Clegg is a politics major and sophomore at the Catholic University of America, where he served as the President of the Catholic University College Republicans from 2020-2021. During his college career he has worked on various campaigns, on Capitol Hill, and for a variety of D.C. think tanks. Originally from Sacramento, California, he served as a researcher for Assemblyman Kevin Kiley's 2021 book "Recall Newsom
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