California's Sept. 14 Recall Election Offers Insight Into 2022 Midterms

California's Sept. 14 recall election could remove first-term Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom from office, and is being closely watched nationally as a barometer of the public mood heading toward the 2022 elections when a closely divided Congress again will be in play.

Republicans are hoping for an upset in a heavily Democratic state, where the GOP hasn't won a statewide election since 2006.

Just over 5 million mail-in ballots — the form of voting most Californians use — already have been returned out of 22 million sent to registered voters.

Mindy Romero, a political sociologist at the University of Southern California, said voters are being asked two separate questions of the certified ballot, which has 46 candidates, including 24 Republicans, who are vying to replace Newsom, and could do so by earning just a fraction of the overall votes.

"It's all about whether Newsom is going to be recalled or not. 50 percent plus one of those that are voting have to recall him," Romero said. "Once he's recalled that second question kicks in. If the governor is recalled, who do you want to select? And that's just a plurality of the vote. The person that has, the individual that has the most votes, period."

Statistics compiled by Political Data Inc., a firm that gathers voting information for Democrats, independents, and academics, found that just over 5 million voters have returned mail-in ballots, which would equal about a 23% turnout rate with voting continuing through Sept. 14. Senior citizens are voting in their usual high numbers, while younger voters are mostly ignoring the contest so far.

Still, Newsom has an advantage over his GOP foes — California is one of the country's most heavily Democratic states. Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by nearly 2-to-1, and the party controls every statewide office and dominates the Legislature and congressional delegation.

"If it's a Republican, they'll be facing a Democratically controlled legislature," Romero said. "Now, as governor, that individual would still have a lot of power in our state, but it would be for a very short amount of time. And when the gubernatorial race for 2022 comes around, it's a done deal that it's going to be a Democrat. That Republican is not going to get reelected."

With no votes to spare in the evenly split 50-50 U.S. Senate and a slim margin in Democratically controlled U.S. House, any single senator or a few representatives could deny President Joe Biden the majority to pass any of his legislative priorities, like the infrastructure and budget bills.

Both major political parties see the 2022 midterm elections as a potential turning point, and Romero said the dialogue around the California recall will be 'part of that larger narrative.'

"It doesn't have to be the Republicans kicked out the Democratic governor. It's the Republicans almost kicked out the Democratic governor in a deep blue state," Romero said. "If it's close or if he's indeed recalled, it will fuel and encourage potentially other recall efforts, certainly fundraising."

The California recall election also comes on the heels of former President Donald Trump's discredited allegations that the 2020 general election was fraudulent, when courtrooms high and low, state governments and ultimately Congress — meeting in the chaos of an insurrection powered by his grievances — affirmed the legitimacy of his defeat and the honesty of the process that led to it.

"There's going to be all kinds of other efforts to really fuel kind of the misinformation, the fraud narratives, those sorts of things, I think that are going to be really dangerous and are not going to put us in the right direction in terms of shoring up our democracy," Romero said.

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