March 17, 2021

California's Newsom might actually be in trouble

Let me lead with there is 0% chance I'll be voting to recall Newsom. He's fine. But I was on Facebook this morning doing St. Patrick's Day things - like you do. I haven't been on in ages, so I was glancing around friends' pages. The antipathy for Newsom among my friends was unknown to me. One friend, who is the Democratiest Democrat who ever Democratted, posted just yesterday, "I have no coins to give to French Laundry right now shhhhhiiiiiit"

So I was wondering if there were any polls done. I hadn't been closely following the whole thing. This is . . . closer than I would've imagined.

There is currently an effort to recall Governor Newsom. Would you vote to recall, or to keep Governor Newsom?

Vote to Recall: 38%
Vote to Keep: 42%
Undecided: 13.9%
Would not Vote: 6.1%

And the campaign hasn't started in earnest. But this number really, really surprised me.

Regardless of the recall effort, would you vote to re-elect Governor Newsom in 2022, or do you think it is time for someone new?

Re-elect Governor Newsom: 41.7%
Time for Someone New: 58.3%

I think people really underestimated how much the French Laundry stunt pissed off people here. I mean, I was pretty pissed, but I wasn't at, "Recall the guy!" level pissed. Apparently this is a thing. We may have to gear up for this one. Sigh. Because we have nothing else going on in this state apparently.

https://www.kron4.com/news/california/exclusive-poll-californians-split-on-newsom-as-recall-looms/

March 15, 2021

Cuomo does not seem to be learning

What the heck is this?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cuomo-schwartz-vaccine-calls/2021/03/14/18f2e320-8448-11eb-9ca6-54e187ee4939_story.html

New York’s “vaccine czar” — a longtime adviser to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo — phoned county officials in the past two weeks in attempts to gauge their loyalty to the embattled governor amid an ongoing sexual harassment investigation, according to multiple officials.

One Democratic county executive was so unsettled by the outreach from Larry Schwartz, head of the state’s vaccine rollout, that the executive on Friday filed notice of an impending ethics complaint with the public integrity unit of the state attorney general’s office, the official told The Washington Post. The executive feared the county’s vaccine supply could suffer if Schwartz was not pleased with the executive’s response to his questions about support of the governor.

. . .

In interviews with The Post, several public officials who received the calls from Schwartz spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the conversations, saying they fear swift retribution from Cuomo if they speak out against him.

The officials said Schwartz appeared to be taking stock of where they stood on Cuomo and whether they would continue to support him, and said he emphasized the need to let the state investigation play out.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cuomo-schwartz-vaccine-calls/2021/03/14/18f2e320-8448-11eb-9ca6-54e187ee4939_story.html

There are other officials noted in the story who did not take the phone calls that way. But still. His vaccine guy is doing his political maneuvering? During this?

He needs to go at some point. I'm sorry. It's not just the harassment claims. It's the nursing home policy. It's threatening to destroy an Asian American representative in front of his family because he refused to (illegally) lie about the administration's actions. It's stuff like this.

It is not a good thing when we have politicians who feel like they don't have to answer to anybody. Cuomo behaves as if he has unlimited power. That's corrosive in a democracy. Enough is just about enough with this guy. New York has a deep Democratic bench. And conspiracy theories about it all aren't defenses at this point.