Rural California’s connection to the recall campaign (Part II)

This week, Hailey Branson-Potts wrote a piece in the Los Angeles Times on the recall campaign against Governor Gavin Newsom and its connection to rural California. There is another blog post here discussing the same article. The piece opens with a focus on Debbie and Guy Scott, the owners of Zephyr Books & Coffee in Yreka—a small town near the border of Oregon with just over 7,000 residents. In addition to its assortment of coffee and pastries, the shop provides customers with recall petitions to remove Governor Gavin Newsom from office. As the owners discuss, although they’ve lost a few customers due to the petitions, they feel the recall movement resonates particularly with residents in conservative Northern California counties. Debbie feels that “Sacramento has a different priority” than these rural communities. Rather than being family, ranch, ag, and small-business-oriented, she sees Sacramento as being “politically oriented.” Accordingly, the recall effort has become a rallying point for many rural Californians who feel the same way.

For context on the recall movement, California is one of just 19 other states that gives voters the power to remove elected officials from office before the end of their term. To have a recall election, organizers must collect enough valid petition signatures to equal 12% of the voters that voted in the election for that position. The last and only California governor to be recalled was Governor Gray Davis in 2003. Davis was recalled due to a substantial state deficit, high vehicle license fees, his handling of the historic electricity crisis, and the popularity of his opponent—former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The current recall movement against Governor Newsom started picking up speed last year amid the pandemic. The RecallGavin2020 Committee, the group organizing the recall, has collected more than 2 million signatures as of last week. For the special election to occur, state officials must confirm 1.5 million of those signatures by April 29.

As the Los Angeles Times article discusses, the popularity of this recall movement in rural California counties is not shocking considering tensions regarding Governor Newsom’s COVID policies. Small counties with fewer COVID cases are particularly upset with the state-wide nature of the governor’s policies, pointing out “that one size does not fit all” when it comes to the impacts they have on small businesses and rural communities. Local disapproval of these policies is evident in decisions to defy the governor’s orders; last summer, Yuba, Sutter, and Modoc Counties openly defied Governor Newsom’s statewide stay-at-home order and allowed businesses to re-open due to low case numbers. For more context, here is a blog from last July on Modoc County, which had yet to record a single case among its 9,000 residents.

Conversely, Governor Newsom feels the support for the recall movement is not motivated by the pandemic, but rather by partisan politics. He notes that Northern California in particular overwhelmingly supported former President Trump, who won over 6 million votes in the state as a whole. Republican State Assemblyman Kevin Kiley disagrees and speaks sentiment that mimics the concerns of Debbie Scott. Kiley believes “a very diverse group of people” are supporting the movement, potentially as a result of the political system in this state leaving “people feeling powerless and disenfranchised with so much of our lives and governance dictated from afar.”

A good portion of residents in Colusa County, where I have lived throughout the course of the pandemic, share Kiley’s views. Colusa is a USDA designated nonmetro county with a population of roughly 21,000 people. As a conservative agriculture community with fewer COVID cases than other California counties, the general statement here is that Sacramento’s decisions over the pandemic do not reflect the needs of this area. Many small businesses were already struggling before the pandemic. The added stress of major lockdowns have forced a number of them to close their doors for good. It has been hard to see friends and community members struggle, especially when case numbers in our area were relatively low. Most of the community has been willing to deal with the health implications of the virus in order to keep business as usual and everyday life as normal as possible.

Additionally, residents feel that the county was purposely put in more restrictive COVID tiers for long periods of time due to the county’s decision not to follow Governor Newsom’s orders. Last May, the County Board of Supervisors voted not to enforce state coronavirus policies. At the time, the county had only five reported cases. In the months that followed, some residents felt that the Newsom Administration placed the county in the state’s more restrictive tiers simply to respond to the county’s defiance. Consequently, even though the county was unwilling to enforce the restrictions, state entities like the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control could still impose penalties on businesses with state licenses.

In my experience, there is no question that this angst in rural communities toward the state’s approach to the pandemic has increased local support for the recall movement. The movement is certainly popular in my county, as the committee collected over 2,000 signatures here. Just this month, Assemblyman Kiley held a book and petition signing event for the recall campaign at a local restaurant in Colusa.

While the pandemic context has made the dispute more acute, rural communities have long felt that Sacramento is detached from their way of life. The pandemic policies have only added fuel to this fire. For many of these residents, this recall is a way to reestablish freedom from what they see as government overreach. To me, the popularity of the recall in little towns like mine emphasizes the need for our state to recognize and act on the unique and important distinctions between rural and urban communities.