For the second time in two decades, California will stage a special election to recall a Democratic governor. In 2003, voters dumped Gov. Gray Davis in favor of Arnold Schwarzenegger. This year, Gov. Gavin Newsom faces their wrath, thanks to his tyrannical handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the state’s deteriorating quality of life.

In response, Newsom’s supporters are doing anything they can to make sure their man survives Sept. 14’s recall election. In this case, “anything” extends to legal manipulation and outright criminality.

The Target

Out of the 46 candidates on the ballot, ranging from former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer to Caitlyn Jenner, California’s Democrats targeted one for their attacks. He’s Larry Elder, a conservative African-American radio host who earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Brown and a law degree from Michigan.

Elder’s mere existence destroys the “woke” narratives of “systemic racism” and “white supremacy.” If Elder wins, he’d be the only member of California’s executive branch who wouldn’t be a Democrat. Victory could provide momentum to dismantle the party’s dominance, since Democrats hold 90 of 120 seats in both houses of the legislature.

Elder has become so popular with the state’s exasperated residents that hundreds waited in line to see him an hour before a rally in Clovis, near Fresno. Despite the auditorium’s capacity of 750, Elder’s organizers said they expected 1,400 to attend.

Though Elder never held public office, the Southern California News Group, which includes the Los Angeles Daily News and the Orange County Register, endorsed him.

Elder understands the core challenges that California faces and has a knack for explaining issues in a way that can resonate with the general public, the endorsement stated. He has assembled a serious campaign and impressed us in our recent interview with his thoughtful answers, depth of policy understanding and compassion for the people he seeks to represent.

If editors understand that, how much more do influential Democrats?

The Tactics

The campaign against Elder effectively started before California’s secretary of state, Shirley Weber, announced which recall candidates qualified for the ballot. On July 17, Weber said Elder didn’t qualify because he failed to submit redacted tax returns. Newsom signed a law in 2019 mandating candidates for presidential or state office to release five years of returns.

But the law’s language doesn’t apply to recalls. Besides, state law only allows the secretary of state to prepare redacted returns, not to remove candidates arbitrarily.

Is California’s secretary of state involved in voter suppression by exercising political power not granted to her by California law and using this fictitious power to remove candidates? Right now, I am seeing more voter suppression coming out of the actions of the California secretary of state than any law that requires a voter to show ID, said Mark Meuser, an attorney who represents Elder and who previously ran for state office.

Meuser also accused Weber, an African-American, of racism:

This is causing me to wonder if her new imaginary powers are only being used against candidates that go against her political party’s narrative regarding race.

Elder immediately sued and won.

“I don’t find Mr. Elder was required to file a tax return at all,” Superior Court Judge Laurie Earl said. “I would find he substantially complied. I don’t find that the recall election is a direct primary election ballot.”

The Panic

With Elder’s eligibility ensured, Newsom focuses his campaign on the radio host.

Gov. Gavin Newsom talks about Larry Elder everywhere he goes, The Sacramento Bee’s Sophia Bollag wrote. During a conversation with Planned Parenthood on Wednesday, Newsom blasted the conservative talk show host for opposing abortion. On Monday, at a campaign event in San Jose, Newsom warned Democratic supporters that an Elder victory in the recall could result in a Republican takeover of Congress.

And when he rallied supporters in San Francisco earlier this month, Newsom described the leading Republican recall candidate in terms intended to scare Democrats. ‘He’s to the right of Donald Trump,’ Newsom said. ‘That’s what’s at stake in this election.’

When Newsom doesn’t spread propaganda, he relies on such columnists as the Los Angeles Times’ Erika D. Smith. On Aug. 20, Smith wrote a column calling Elder a “Trump fanboy Republican” and his candidacy “an insult to Blackness.” She also quoted such figures as Melina Abdullah, founder of Black Lives Matter’s Los Angeles chapter.

Anytime you put a Black face on white supremacy, which is what Larry Elder is, there are people who will utilize that as an opportunity to deny white supremacy, Abdullah said. They say, ‘How could this be white supremacy? This is a Black man.’ But everything that he’s pushing, everything that he stands for, he is advancing white supremacy.

Smith ends with a comment from State Sen. Sydney Kamlager: “I’m not interested in going back to Jim Crow because I want to have a Black person as governor.”

The Fix

Winning also means trying to rig the results. In Los Angeles, a video caught two women stealing mail-in ballots from mailboxes in an apartment complex. In nearby Torrance, police arrested a man with about 300 unmarked mail-in ballots, drivers’ licenses and credit cards, along with drugs and weapons.

A Riverside resident received five ballots, one for him, the others for voters who didn’t live at his address. Another voter received texts that said her ballot had been received and counted. But she hadn’t voted yet.

The Democrats used the pandemic as an excuse last year to promote mail-in voting heavily. But mail-in ballots increase the chances of fraud. So stated a survey prepared by Caltech and MIT in 2001. The previous year, voting confusion in Florida led the Supreme Court to award the 2000 presidential election to Texas Gov. George W. Bush over Vice President Al Gore.

Multiple Cases of Fraud

Democrats played major roles in cases of election fraud. Domenick DeMuro, a former election judge in Philadelphia, was convicted in May 2020 of committing fraud during three Democratic primaries.

“DeMuro fraudulently stuffed the ballot box over and over, as fast as he could, while he thought the coast was clear,” United States Attorney William McSwain said.

In Paterson, N.J., where 57 percent of registered voters are Democrats, four men were indicted in June 2020 on 16 counts of fraud during a special City Council election. The four included two Council members and a third man running for a Council seat.

The four allegedly used ballot harvesting, which is legal in California, to submit fraudulent ballots or ones not properly sealed. The accused also allegedly falsified the identities of those who gave the ballots to the election board. Postal investigators found hundreds of legitimate ballots in mailboxes in Paterson and surrounding communities.

As a result, 19 percent of all ballots for that election had to be disqualified and the election invalidated. The cases haven’t gone to trial yet.

The Template

Do you see the pattern? Elder’s opponents are behaving just as Trump’s opponents did last year. That means California’s recall could resemble last year’s presidential election, when millions of votes for Joe Biden mysteriously appeared in the middle of the night to nullify Trump’s advantages in several key counties.

One of those counties, Maricopa in Arizona, where Phoenix is the county seat, has been holding a forensic audit to discover potential fraud. Other counties and states either have similar audits planned or are undertaking them now.

The mere fact that Democrats mock and work against such audits should tell you one thing. Neither laws nor ethics nor truth will stop the Democrats’ lust for total power, whether in the White House in Washington or the governor’s mansion in Sacramento.

 

Joseph D’Hippolito has written commentaries for such outlets as the Jerusalem Post, the American Thinker and Front Page Magazine. He works as a free-lance writer.