If You Like Your Health, Vote No in California’s Recall Election

[mithriltabby]

The GOP have given up on being a competitive party in California and are now simply attempting to disrupt the state as much as possible. Due to our state having the most permissive recall law in the nation, their third attempt to get it on the ballot has finally succeeded and now they’re wasting $276m of our tax dollars in hopes of installing someone who is not competent to handle the state’s challenges and will very likely try to turn us into another Florida with regard to COVID-19. The San Francisco Chronicle isn’t even considering candidates for endorsement. The LA Times says “Hell, no!” Beyond the COVID response, consider what happens if Dianne Feinstein has to step down and gets replaced by an extremist like Kevin McCarthy or Darrell Issa. Even Faulconer, a rare Republican who acknowledges Biden’s victory, used to lobby for climate deniers even though he claims to have changed his spots. Even the California GOP won’t endorse a candidate because they have no solutions, only more problems to heap on our shoulders. The state has plenty of real problems, and we don’t need a bout of chaos engineering between now and January 2023. Please vote no.

Newsom is telling people to not even bother with the second question. Strategically, this makes no sense, but rhetorically, it does: any effort to enthuse people to vote for a particular candidate in the recall will also enthuse them to vote Yes on the recall.

So how to vote strategically to mitigate possible damage? The LA Times suggests Faulconer as the least-bad viable option. The Sacramento Bee produced a voter guide, but it’s paywalled. Fortunately, Ballotpedia is following this. I’ll be voting for Joel Ventresca, who is a progressive Democrat with actual public service experience, just to bring down the percentages for the chaos candidates.