Gavin Newsom’s Weakness: The Hidden Latino Vote for Recall in California

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is ramping up the fear factor as he fights to retain his position in the ongoing recall election.

Newsom and his party are warning that recalling him could put a Trump-loving, Capitol riot-backing, climate change-denying, anti-vaccine, anti-abortion fanatic in the White House. (In other words: Democrats’ idea of a Republican.)

The media have played along with a series of racially-tinged attacks on conservative talk radio host Larry Elder, who leads polls to replace Newsom. Elder could be the state’s first black governor; the media are trying to make his race a negative.

There is some evidence that the Democrats’ strategy is working. The “yes” vote to recall Newsom surged in several polls, but a recent poll by Change Research showed the “no” vote prevailing by double digits.

Curiously, the poll did not show a breakdown among racial groups, though the poll questionnaire did ask respondents to indicate their racial identities.

Monday marks the voter registration deadline, for those wishing to vote by mail in the Sep. 14 election, and Newsom is hoping the Democrats’ mail-in strategy is as useful in 2021 as it was in 2020.

Newsom signed an extension of the state’s emergency voting rules in February — long after it was clear in-person voting posed no major public health threat.

But the universal vote-by-mail strategy could backfire, if there are enough “shy” recall voters, i.e. low-propensity voters who might not fit pollsters’ models.

Several polls have shown a consistent majority of Latino voters want to recall Newsom. Latino voters are typically a Democratic bloc, but Republicans made gains in 2020, and that trend may have continued.

Democrats like mail-in voting because it reaches more low-propensity voters. But they may regret sending ballots to every registered voter, if a key bloc that has borne the brunt of Newsom’s pandemic policies decides it is tired of being taken for granted.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.