![\"California](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/california-gubernatorial-candidates-debate-san-120390438.jpg\")
Jason Henry for California Post<\/p>\nCalifornia Democrats know how to manipulate the field of candidates to produce the governor\u2019s race they want.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what I learned in the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election against Gov. Gavin Newsom.<\/p>\n
It is not a loss that gives me sleepless nights.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is, however, annoying that people, including veteran political analysts and pundits, get wrong exactly what happened.<\/p>\n
Jason Henry for California Post<\/p>\n
Why? Because the truth is instructive as to how Democrats maneuver, and what could be happening in the gubernatorial race in 2026.<\/p>\n
After the 2021 vote, post-recall critics said I ran a \u201cpro-Trumpian\u201d campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Others said I should not have accepted the endorsement of a \u201cpro-life extremist.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
A Los Angeles Times columnist called me \u201cthe black face of white supremacy\u201d because I supposedly downplayed racism.<\/p>\n
I was also vastly outspent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Los Angeles Times\u00a0editorial board opposed the recall, calling it \u201cundemocratic,\u201d and endorsed Newsom, as it did when Newsom first ran for governor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama, among other prominent Democrats, opposed the recall and supported Newsom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the primary reason the recall failed had little to nothing to do with any of this.<\/p>\n
Astute California observers will remember that a recall requires two steps.\u00a0<\/p>\n
First, the ballot asks voters: Do you want the governor recalled? Fifty percent plus one vote must answer \u201cyes.\u201d <\/p>\n
If that happens, the \u201creplacement candidate\u201d\u00a0who gets the most votes becomes governor.<\/p>\n
In 2003, California voters recalled the governor when a majority of voters said, \u201cYes, we want him recalled.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
There were two notable replacement candidates out of more than 100 replacement candidates \u2014 one a Republican, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the other a Democrat, Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante, who ran against his own boss.<\/p>\n
Some voters wanted Schwarzenegger to be governor \u2014 and voted for the recall to pass. Some voters wanted Bustamante \u2014 and voted for the recall to pass.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That combination made the first part of the recall vote \u2014 \u201cDo you want the governor recalled?\u201d \u2014 pass by 11 points.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Schwarzenegger, who won the most votes on the replacement side, became governor.<\/p>\n
That brings us to the 2021 recall election.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Democrats learned their lesson. They made sure there was no big-name Democrat on the replacement ballot to prompt voters to vote \u201cyes\u201d for a recall election.<\/p>\n
The popular former two-term mayor of LA, Antonio Villaraigosa, publicly expressed an interest in running as a replacement candidate.\u00a0He had lost to Newsom in the 2018 primary.<\/p>\n
But suddenly, he announced he would not run. (He is now running for governor again.)\u00a0<\/p>\n
Democrats pressured Villaraigosa to stay out of the recall in 2021, warning him that if \u201cpulled a Cruz\u201d and he got in, causing to Elder to win, his political career would be over.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He would become, as one article described it, \u201ca pariah.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2003, Schwarzenegger won 48.6% of the replacement vote. Bustamante received 31.5%.<\/p>\n
In 2021, I won 48.4%, almost the exact same percentage as Schwarzenegger.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But \u2014 and this is key \u2014 the next-highest replacement vote winner was a YouTube Democrat influencer who received just 9.6%.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Every other replacement candidate \u2014 and there were 45 \u2014 received single digits or a fraction of a single digit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bottom line: I did as well as Schwarzenegger \u2014 and arguably better, since he spent $4 million of his own money, and I did have his nearly 100% name recognition.<\/p>\n
But Democrats had learned how to set the field up to their advantage.<\/p>\n
During the recall, I obtained the personal cell phone number of former Gov. Jerry Brown. He picked up.<\/p>\n
Brown: How did you get my number?<\/p>\n
Elder: I know people. (He laughed.) I called to ask your advice about something I want to do if I win the election.<\/p>\n
Brown: You can ask, but you won\u2019t win. We\u2019re not going to make the same mistake we did before. No Democrat with a name will run, let alone the lieutenant governor.<\/p>\n
And that is precisely what happened. Again, there was no big-name Democrat on the replacement side to drive 50-percent-plus-one to vote to recall Newsom.<\/p>\n
So, no, I did not \u201chave my a\u2014 handed to me\u201d as one pundit put it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As they do with so many outcomes that circumvent the people, Democrats cleverly orchestrated their desired result.<\/p>\n
Larry Elder is a nationally syndicated talk radio host and author of seven books, including As Goes California: My Mission to Rescue the Golden State.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California Democrats know how to manipulate the field of candidates to produce the governor\u2019s race they want. That\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164638,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,1751,989,943,975,13,17970],"class_list":["post-164637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-democrats","tag-elections","tag-governor","tag-opinion","tag-politics","tag-recalls"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}