When Gavin Met Arnold

Recalling the recalls

Arnold Schwarzenegger is starring in ads against Gavin Newsom’s Proposition 50, which takes redistricting away from an independent citizens commission and gives it to legislators. In all the excitement over the November 4 vote, the people may have forgotten how Arnold became governor of the Golden State. Here’s one of them:

Back in 2002, Democrat Gray Davis won the governor’s race with 47.26 percent of the vote, running against Republican Bill Simon, and Peter Camejo of the Green Party. Gov. Davis had trouble keeping the lights on, to the point that one Sacramento band called itself the “Rolling Blackouts.” That wasn’t what the people voted for, so they launched a recall campaign for Davis. Enter Arnold Schwarzenegger (Conan the Barbarian, True Lies), an actor with no experience in politics.

In 2003 Schwarzenegger grabbed 55.4 percent of the vote to boot Davis, the first time a California governor had been recalled since 1921. In 2006, Schwarzenegger gained reelection with 56 percent of the vote, defeating Democrat Phil Angelides. Next came recurring governor Jerry Brown, followed by Gavin Newsom in 2018, with 61.9 percent of the vote. In 2020 along came Covid.

Newsom imposed rigid lockdowns and shutdowns, slapping restrictions on family gatherings and arresting a solitary paddleboarder at Malibu. Newsom spent $1 billion on masks with Build Your Dreams (BYD), a Chinese motor vehicle company that did not manufacture protective equipment. While demanding that Californians mask up between bites, Newsom partied sans mask at the upscale French Laundry. Gov. Newsom also presided over an unemployment scandal to the tune of more than $30 billion. With a record much worse than Davis, the people sought to recall the governor.

In 2021, Newsom prevailed with 61.9 percent of the vote, identical to the 2018 count. For coincidence theorists it was pure happenstance, with not a smidgeon of fraud. Nobody sought to reveal how many votes came from the millions of illegals registered to vote by the DMV when they got their driver’s license. Squads of politiqueros bribe and threaten the illegals to vote for Democrats, who promise health care, in-state tuition and so forth. When the vote was in Newsom said:

I want to focus on what we said yes to as a state. We said yes to science. We said yes to vaccines. We said yes to ending this pandemic. We said yes to the people’s right to vote without fear of fake fraud or voter suppression. We said yes to women’s fundamental constitutional right to decide for herself what she does with her body and her fate and future. We said yes to diversity. We said yes to inclusion. We said yes to pluralism. We said yes to all those things that we hold dear as Californians, and I would argue as Americans, economic justice, social justice, racial justice, environmental justice. Our values where California’s made so much progress. All of those things were on the ballot this evening.

And so on, heavy on the “we.” As Louis XIV put it, L’état, c’est moi, which brings up another contrast with the 2003 recall. Arnold Schwarzenegger became wealthy by making movies people wanted to see. Gavin Newsom boasts connections to the powerful Brown, Pelosi and Getty families, so he was ruling-class rich from the start. On the other hand, Newson has a lot in common with the semi-literate Joe Biden.

The Delaware Democrat brought in more than 10 million illegals, a bid to replicate California’s imported electorate nationwide. That’s why Newsom and other Democrats oppose the removal of illegals, even the violent criminals among them. As Arnold said in True Lies, “they were all bad,” but for Democrats, rats are comrades.

You are free to believe that Joe Biden was fairly elected president and that Gavin Newsom defeated the recall with the identical percentage of 2018 and no hint of fraud. You are also free to advocate voting by illegals, but don’t tell me you support the rule of law. As Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) said, it insults my intelligence and makes me very angry.