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March 29, 2021 - Epoch Times
37:04
Can Gavin Newsom Redeem Himself From Looming Recall? | Don Wagner
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The public just got fed up with that sort of a tone-deaf and heavy-handed approach from the governor.
They decided, we need to find a new governor.
This thing is going to happen.
There's going to be a recall election late summer.
So the governor took all the power from the legislative body and how did that happen?
Frankly, the legislature gave him that power.
They passed a resolution that declared a state of emergency and transferred power to the governor and allowed him to make these rules to respond to COVID. Early on, it's okay to let the executive have those emergency powers, but the governor has held onto them for more than a year, and we aren't better off for it.
What should people think about when they're going to vote for the next person, if the recall goes through?
We are keeping watch, and we are not From all the way to the left, we need to get back to a more centrist, more collaborative governance model.
And the recall gives us the opportunity to say to everybody who's in office, if you don't respond to the people and what the people want, we're going to find somebody who will.
Over two million California residents from across the political spectrum signed the recall petition against Governor Gavin Newsom.
My guest today is Don Wagner.
He's a member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors.
Today he discusses the policies that led to the recall and the possibility of the governor redeeming himself to those that signed the petition.
Welcome to California Insider.
Don, it's great to have you on.
Welcome.
It's good to be back with you.
Thank you.
So we want to talk to you about the recall.
And there has been an effort to recall the governor and he's failed multiple times, but this time it gained a lot of momentum towards the end and got a lot of signatures.
Can you tell us more about why and how this recall gained the momentum that it did?
I think the recall gained momentum because the governor himself, for example, goes off to the French Laundry, where he completely ignores his own rules.
He takes with him the senior lobbyists for the California Medical Association.
Now, these are the folks that have been telling the governor, oh, we've got to shut down, we've got to mask up, we've got to keep our kids out of school.
And they're partying with the governor indoors, without masks, with multiple households there, completely ignoring the governor's own rules.
The public took a look at that and said, wait a minute, you governor and you medical association don't even believe this is serious or you wouldn't have done it.
And so they started taking a look around and saying, why are my kids suffering because they can't go to school and they can't play with their friends and they can't do their sports?
Why am I suffering because my employer laid me off or because I had to close my own business?
Why is this happening when you look around and realize that the governor doesn't believe his own rules and the science tells us who's at risk.
The science tells us it's overwhelmingly our 65 plus, it's overwhelmingly people with underlying medical conditions, and it's not our children.
So the governor's rules didn't apply to the governor, it seemed.
The governor's rules were arbitrary.
He would change them periodically.
The governor's rules didn't seem to be following the science because he wasn't focusing on where the problems were and allowing the rest of us to open up.
And I think the public just got fed up with that sort of a tone deaf and heavy handed approach from the governor.
They decided we need to find a new governor.
And the important thing to know is that although the recall started with a Republican effort, it quickly broadened once we ended up seeing these erratic COVID responses.
And folks then took a look at other things the governor had done that were not helpful in running the state.
For example, we had about $30 billion of unemployment funds get stolen from us.
There was fraud involved.
The governor isn't minding the store when it comes to that.
We have the highest poverty rate, the highest unemployment.
Other states are doing better on COVID. I think people just got fed up with his leadership and said, we need to look around.
And it wasn't just Republicans.
I was involved in the recall effort as one of the co-chairmen, and we were able to go out and get some Democrats, an awful lot of folks without party affiliation, and Republicans to say, we can do better.
That's what got the recall going, and we're now over, we turned in over two million signatures.
This thing is going to happen.
There's going to be a recall election late summer.
Now, do you think there are certain policies that people are looking to get them changed or do you think there's something else that these people want?
Certainly there are policies that the public is objecting to.
The COVID response is one example.
The governor gave us his tiered system and then he changed it and he gave us this watch list and then he changed it to these Colored maps.
And then he even changed that.
He added different rules.
Then he relaxed certain rules.
Then he lumped all of Southern California and a lot of Central California together and called it Southern California.
And we're all wondering why in the world, in Orange County, where we were ahead of the curve, where we were doing better in terms of Hospitalizations, deaths, ICU capacity.
We were doing better than some of our surrounding counties that had even fewer people in it.
Folks looked at those policies and said, there's no science, there's no rhyme or reason here.
Add to it the things I mentioned before, the fraud in the EDD, the poverty rate, the unemployment rate.
One of the things I point to is just we saw wildfires, mostly in Northern California because of failed forest management policies.
Those are things you lay at the feet of the governor.
Those are the things you lay at the feet of the administration that's currently in power.
And the public looks at all of those and says, I think, to themselves, to their neighbors, A lot of folks were circulating petitions for us.
We can do better.
Now, do you think these policies, does it come from the party or does it come from certain groups of people?
I heard that there was some communication between the Democrats in the legislative body that actually they were frustrated with some of these communications that the governor...
What's doing with them?
There's no question that the Democrats, a number of the Democrats in elected office up in the state legislature are also very frustrated with the governor.
He shut them out completely.
The legislatures had virtually no role in any governance over the course of the last year.
And that's something that even the Democrats up in Sacramento have fortunately and thankfully and finally started to push against.
I've got friends.
I served in the legislature for six years.
I've got friends on both sides of the aisle up there still.
And I know from the people I've talked to up there that there is widespread dissatisfaction with the governor and sort of his my way or the highway approach No collegiality, no involvement in the legislative branch in making the laws.
And that's not the way we do things in America.
At least we're not supposed to do things by allowing one person to have such unilateral power and make all the rules.
There is pushback from the state legislature.
Unfortunately, there hasn't been enough yet.
I am hopeful that the recall effort will show to the leadership in Sacramento that the public is paying attention and the public is pushing back also on some of these policies and that their job in the legislature is to reassert themselves.
I did a Zoom call a couple of days ago with Assembly members James Gallagher and Kevin Kiley up in Sacramento They've introduced a resolution that does in fact call for the legislature to end the emergency powers and for the governor to get back to governing in a collegial style and governing as one expects in the United States with the executive and the legislature working together,
sharing decision-making and respecting the separation of powers.
I don't know what the future holds for that piece of legislation.
I'm certainly hopeful that it passes, but it is a sign that the legislature is beginning to chafe under this one-man rule from the governor.
The recall is another sign of that.
So if you can explain this a little bit more, so the governor took all the power from the legislative body and how did that happen?
That happened because frankly the legislature gave him that power.
They passed a resolution that declared a state of emergency and transferred power to the governor and allowed him to make these rules to respond to COVID. To be fair to both the governor and to the legislature, that was probably the right thing to do early in the COVID pandemic.
And the truth is, C-Mac, that neither I nor a lot of my friends on the other side of the aisle actually pushed back against the governor way back then.
Because it was a novel virus.
Nobody knew.
We were hearing medical experts telling us we could be looking at millions of deaths here in California.
Nobody knew how bad this was going to be.
And so giving the executive power up front to respond quickly to an emergency was the right thing to do.
Remember though, he initially said it's two weeks to flatten the curve.
And especially in Orange County, but truly throughout California, we did a pretty good job of flattening the curve early on.
But it also became clear to me and to many others early on that the governor's emergency powers were in fact making things worse than they needed to be and that the governor was not responsibly exercising those powers.
What do I mean by that?
When you look at the science, as I said earlier, that medical professionals could tell us who was at risk and who wasn't at risk.
And we were seeing massive infusions of cash from the federal government to the states, down to the counties and to the cities, but it came with all sorts of restrictions.
Instead of the governor allowing the locals, allowing us, for example, on a county board of supervisors or members of the city council and the mayors to respond to their own communities, the governor came up with these one-size-fits-all rules, for example, the lockdowns.
Closing the schools that the science didn't support.
And so early on, it was okay.
It made sense to allow the executive additional power so that the executive could respond quickly to the emergency.
When the governor demonstrated that he wasn't following the science, that he had a Sacramento-based, one-size-fits-all solution, and the science was saying we need to be a little bit more targeted in our response, The Governor didn't adjust.
If he had, he wouldn't be facing this recall right now.
But he didn't.
And some of us in local offices were saying way back in April and May of last year, Governor, allow us to make the rules.
Allow us.
Because we want to protect our constituents.
We want to protect our friends and neighbors.
We want to protect our communities every bit as much as you do, Governor.
But we know them better.
We know where the problems are.
Instead of locking everybody down and trying and failing because of the EDD mismanagement, but trying to prop up the economy with these infusions of cash, instead, let's target our response.
We can take some of that money and help the most vulnerable and allow the rest of us to get back to business.
That would have been the targeted and right approach.
So, long answer to your question, but early on it's okay to let the executive have those emergency powers.
But the governor has held on to them for more than a year and we aren't better off for it.
We're seeing lockdowns here in California, and yet we are no better.
In fact, we're a little bit worse than some of the states around this country that have allowed for more freedom, Florida being an obvious example.
So it might have worked to begin with, but long about April, May, the legislature should have stepped back, said, we're really going to follow the science and started asserting its own legal authority.
It Didn't do that.
That's what Gallagher and Kylie are trying to do with their piece of legislation.
It's ACR 30, I believe.
But they're trying now.
The legislature should have done it nine, ten months ago.
Now, do you think that, so if he would have given authority to the counties, you guys would have used that and you guys would have...
You've done it your own way.
Correct.
What about the other places like this counties like LA County and San Francisco?
Do you think they think the same way or do you think they were like pro this?
Lock everything down.
Well, I think that a lot of other jurisdictions would have agreed with us in terms of being allowed flexibility.
No question, though, that there are other places, and you mentioned LA County, that might have been more willing to go along with the governor.
And I think the difference is simply the government mindset that the elected officials bring to the office.
Here in Orange County, the My prevailing attitude was that we as local elected officials are more responsive to our community and ought to have more flexibility.
There are, to be honest, in other jurisdictions, folks who are closer to the governor's mindset.
The progressive, prevailing view in California that would have been fine with the shutdown.
The dirty little secret of the untold story of the governor's shutdown is that he ended up in about April of last year Creating an 80-person committee under the leadership of Tom Steyer,
who had just run for president, and Steyer was the chairman of this committee that frankly said, and it's in the documents they published on the state's own website, their blueprint for reopening California, and they say unmistakably, What they're trying to do is get California open in a greener, more socially just, basically more progressive way.
The goal was not reopen California.
It was reopen California the right way, meaning the leftist prevailing progressive view that frankly a majority in the legislature and the governor share.
That was Frankly, what was driving a lot, I think a lot, of the decisions that were coming out of Sacramento.
We can't just reopen until we've re-engineered.
Here in Orange County, we didn't want to be re-engineered.
We wanted to get people back to work.
We wanted to get kids back to school.
We wanted to get back to as close a normal situation as we possibly could.
We always said also, though, that it can be done safely.
One of the few things the governor said that I frankly completely agreed with early on in this, in this pandemic, at a press conference, the governor says, I can open all day long, but if people don't feel safe, they're not going to come out.
He was right.
And we in Orange County, certainly I, agreed completely with that.
We wanted to reopen in a safe way.
That's why the Board of Supervisors back in late April or May passed our own business reopening guidelines.
And what they say is that if you're in an industry that has got its own industry guidelines for opening safely, follow those guidelines.
Because the governor's right.
The customers aren't coming out.
Parents aren't sending their kids back to school if they don't feel safe.
So follow the industry guidelines.
Don't let Sacramento write those guidelines.
Sacramento doesn't know what the widget industry to pick one needs and can do to open safely.
The governor in Sacramento don't know what works in Orange County versus what might work in other communities.
A good example is the mask mandate.
The governor did not declare a mask mandate early on in this pandemic.
And when the medical Director here in Orange County tried to do that.
Against my advice, she got pushback from residents here in Orange County.
It wasn't a pushback against masks.
In fact, Orange County at that very time was well ahead of the curve in terms of taking safety precautions.
It was the mandate, the heavy hand of government.
Because you don't need that.
People are going to be able to protect themselves.
People are smart enough.
We should trust them to make their own decisions to keep themselves and their families safe.
The governor was having none of it.
The governor was having a I'm-in-charge, top-down approach because the governor didn't want us reopened Business as usual, he wanted us, reopened in a greener, more progressive way.
And that's what people pushed back on.
That's what ultimately, I think, fueled the recall.
So you think it became political, this whole virus?
It absolutely became political.
It absolutely became political because what you see now with the governor, Is large changes to his, now what is his current plan?
We got purple tiers, we got red tiers, we got orange and yellow.
And the rules to be in purple or red or orange or yellow are changing.
The science isn't changing.
The science hasn't changed.
We know who's at risk.
We know who's not at risk.
We know how to protect people.
We're learning more.
More and more people, even during the last surge, were going into the hospitals.
But their stays were shorter and the proportion of folks who ended up in ICUs and who ended up dying, although those numbers were large, the proportions were better and better and better than they had been earlier in the pandemic because we were learning how to respond to the pandemic.
The governor wasn't following the science.
He was following the political science Because he saw this recall coming at him and he knew he needed to try to do something to stem that tide.
And so it became political, very unfortunately, because If we had opened up and we had allowed people to protect themselves, we wouldn't be facing the economic devastation we're facing.
We wouldn't be facing the mental health and physical health problems that we are facing overwhelmingly with our children.
A quick example of how bad it is.
Back in October, the Journal of American Pediatrics, I think that's the name of it, National Journal, very well-respected pediatric physicians, runs a study that says lockdowns in the United States, back in October, now we've had six months since then of some form of shutdown.
Way back then, they were saying, we have lost five million years of life.
Overwhelmingly in our young people because they've lost education, they've lost opportunities, and we know that poverty follows and there are very real consequences to life expectancy with poverty.
That's the Journal of American Pediatrics saying, Governor, you and your mindset have cost five million years of life to our young people.
And how much more has it been since then?
It's a tragedy.
And we will be living with it in this country for years because the governor wouldn't follow the science.
He made it political.
Now, if he's able to turn, is there a chance for him to turn these policies around quickly?
Well, there is a chance for him to turn the policies around quickly.
Whether he will or not is a political question that he and his advisors have to decide for themselves.
Could he?
Yes.
He could, in fact, start tailoring the response.
He can start opening up more folks, more sectors, and allow the folks who are at risk to stay home.
A good example are the schools.
The governor has made, to my mind, a Just silly decision to start opening up vaccines to teachers so that they can get vaccinated and they can go back to school.
But wait a minute.
It isn't teachers who are suffering from this disease.
It isn't children who are suffering from this disease.
That's pandering to the teachers union.
The governor, since there is a limit to how many vaccines are available, by saying, I'm going to open it up over here to the teachers.
I'm going to give something to the teachers union so they can go back to school when the science says they can go to school anyway.
How many of our elderly who are at risk now aren't getting vaccines or need to wait even longer because the vaccine supply is finite?
That's a political choice made by the governor.
Could he reverse that policy?
Absolutely he could.
Could he take some of that money that he's giving in excess unemployment benefits and instead use it to keep our nursing homes clean?
To make sure that we have appropriate staffing for our ICUs, he absolutely could make those decisions.
So far, he hasn't made them.
I urge him to do that.
And if he does that, do you think the people that have signed these recall petitions, he can win them back?
There is a possibility he could win them back, but I don't believe that, number one, he'll make that decision because the left to which he is a member is pushing back against those kinds of changes.
But he could do it.
I do believe, though, that there are other reasons to recall the governor besides his handling of COVID. That was just the most recent catalyst.
There are things like our poverty rates.
There are things like our homeless rates.
There are things like unemployment that enough people are saying, hey, wait a minute, we can do better.
Could he?
Yes.
He could still beat this recall.
Will he?
Balls in the governor's court.
Now, he has actually mentioned that the people that are behind the recall, this is a complete political movement.
Do you think people are going to get tired of these people blaming each other over politics while a lot of people have been impacted by the pandemic?
It's interesting when you say it's a political movement, and there's no question it started out as a Republican effort.
But as I said, we saw, and I saw very closely as one of the co-chairs of the committee, that we were getting some Democrats and we were getting a lot of independents.
Whose interest was not political, whose interest was a responsible governance, and they weren't getting that out of Gavin Newsom.
And so, though there is clearly a political overlay to it, the bottom line is, I believe it's gone, it's certainly gone beyond just a Republican-Democrat issue at this point.
But let's even back up.
When you say, is it just political, realize that Politics and policy have the same root word.
They come from the same ideas.
And it is policy choices made by the governor and the folks that believe as he does about the proper Very large, very heavy-handed role of government versus the policy choices that would be made by people like me to lessen the hand of government and allow more individual autonomy.
So when you say it's politics, yes, because the policies coming out of Sacramento are out of step with the way a lot of people live their lives, a lot of Democrats included.
Live their lives and want their government to act.
What about the execution?
Do you think there is an issue with execution?
Because when I hear there is no communication between different government departments and we didn't hear a lot from the EDD. Is there an issue there as well or is it just the policies?
Well, it's clearly a matter of administration.
The governor is the chief executive and he is supposed to execute the policies.
And his administration has done a very poor job of executing the policies, for example, of getting unemployment benefits to the people who need them.
They need them because he shut them down, but they do need them.
And what we're seeing is an employment development department mishandle those funds to the tune of about $30 billion.
So there is a problem with execution.
When I talk about, I mentioned FIRE. Uh, wildfires up in, up in the northern, uh, California, uh, northern part of the state, you're seeing execution.
They are not properly managing the forests.
They're not clearing the tinder, clearing the brush that when there is a lightning strike, when there are winds in a dry condition, End up sparking a fire that then ravages a community rather than responsibly managing your forests so that you can responsibly handle the fires that inevitably do come.
Clearly there's an execution issue with this administration.
You see, for example, one thing we haven't touched on, but if you remember AB5 from a couple of years ago, Which absolutely decimated the independent contractor market such as it is throughout the state of California.
We fixed it a little bit with one of our propositions on the November ballot last year dealing with Ubers and Lyfts and the gig economy.
But AB5 had a wide impact beyond just the gig economy.
And the governor has executed the policies behind AB5 in a way that has been absolutely a disaster.
livelihoods as a result of that.
So clearly there's an execution problem as well as simply a bad policy choice made or choices made by our governor.
This election will come up.
As it sounds like, there's high chances of the election happening.
There's going to be a number of people that are going to jump in.
What are your thoughts on that?
What should people think about when they're going to vote for the next person or if the recall goes through?
So the way it'll work is that the recall almost certainly would go on the ballot.
I am convinced we have enough signatures.
So the recall will go on the ballot.
The election will be late summer, early fall, and the public will have two questions.
Question one, should we recall the governor, yes or no?
And then, if the answer to that question is yes, by a simple majority, then the next question on the ballot, and it's all done at the same time, is who replaces Gavin Newsom?
Gavin Newsom cannot be on the ballot to replace himself.
So there will then be a list of candidates to choose from.
Now, when we recalled Governor Gray Davis back in the early 2000s, there were 135 candidates on that ballot.
One of them was Arnold Schwarzenegger, and of course, he ended up winning.
I don't know that we'll get 135 candidates this time around, but there will be a lot of candidates on the ballot, most likely.
The two most interesting questions are, will someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger surface and run and kind of get the public's imagination?
Or not?
And secondly, will a Democrat, a big-name Democrat, run in that recall?
Those are the two questions that we just don't have answers to right now.
My expectation, frankly, is that the governor has done such a poor job And that the public is so dissatisfied with the performance of the governor in office that other Democrats will think, you know, he's going to get recalled and rather than leave it at the Republican, we need at least one good Democrat on the ballot.
I don't know who that'll be.
Not my party, not my call, but it would not surprise me at all if there are one or two well-known Democrats that are also in this race.
And then, who runs on the Republican side?
There are a couple of candidates who've already surfaced.
John Cox, who ran against Gavin Newsom back in the last gubernatorial election, and Kevin Faulkner, who used to be the mayor of San Diego.
Those are the two frontrunners right now on the Republican side.
But it's early.
I'm expecting more to get into the race.
So it could be a free-for-all in that second question.
If Newsom's recalled, who do you support?
And we'll see what the public says.
It's, again, it's not even a majority.
It is win or take all.
You can win that race, depending on how many candidates there are, with well less than 50% of the vote.
And do you have any other thoughts for our audience?
Well, that's such a broad question.
The answer is yes.
The answer is that the governor and the mindset of governance that he has brought to Sacramento and frankly has been the majority thinking in Sacramento for years has revealed itself ultimately to be a failure.
We need the pendulum to swing back.
Whether this state is going to elect a Republican or not is an open question at this point.
And the recall does give us a chance to elect a Republican.
But either way, whoever takes office after Gavin Newsom needs to take office in the shadow of the public saying, We are keeping watch, and we are not happy with the full swing of the pendulum all the way to the left.
We need to get back to a more centrist, more collaborative governance model.
I was in Sacramento for six years with Jerry Brown as the governor, and there was an awful lot with which I disagreed with Jerry Brown.
But he would say And he would actually practice this a little bit, that his governance style was in the canoe, he'll paddle a little bit to the left and then he'll paddle a little bit to the right and keep a steady course.
He tended to go to the left.
But nowhere near where the current administration and the current legislature is taking the governor, governance in California, and this state.
We need to bring it back a little bit more towards the center as at least Jerry Brown was trying to do.
And frankly, Jerry Brown vetoed some bills that really deserved to be vetoed.
I'll give you a last quick story.
Gavin was the lieutenant governor when I was in the legislature.
And Gavin and I found ourselves, curiously, we were in Mexico City at an event.
I was the mayor of Irvine.
He was the governor-elect.
And we were the only two from California in the room at the time, the only two who knew each other.
And I went up to him.
And I said, you know, congratulations, Mr.
Governor-elect.
He's a good guy.
As I said, I've known him, worked with him.
But I said, you've got to be careful.
Because you have a surplus.
And I am worried that your party will spend that surplus and then some.
And he basically said, Don, I am aware of that.
I know that.
I'm going to be watching.
Well...
When he got into office, and this is pre-COVID, he immediately allowed the majority party in Sacramento to start spending down that surplus to the point where we were spending money that We didn't have.
And that is the mindset that needs to be changed.
We need more fiscal responsibility in Sacramento, and the recall gives us the opportunity to get that responsibility and to say to everybody who's in office, if you don't respond to the people and what the people want, we're going to find somebody who will.
Well, thank you.
Seymour, my pleasure.
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