California Republicans saw few silver linings after Gov. Gavin Newsom soundly defeated the campaign to recall him this month. He raised tens of millions of dollars and motivated Democratic turnout to squash the recall by some 20 percentage points.
But if the recall is any indication of what Californians want in next year’s midterm election, there could be a glimmer of hope for Republicans angling to unseat Democrats in of pair congressional districts where voters favored ousting Newsom.
Significant portions of District 3, held by Rep. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove, and District 10, held by Rep. Josh Harder, D-Turlock, showed strong support for removing the state’s top Democrat.
Garamendi’s district encompasses Colusa, Sutter and Yuba counties, all areas that voted to remove Newsom by margins of more than 20 points. It also includes most of Glenn County, where more than 71% voted to recall Newsom. His district also includes parts of Lake, Solano, Yolo and Sacramento counties, which rejected the recall.
Harder’s district includes all of Stanislaus County, which currently shows a 54% “yes” on the recall vote. The Republican Party identified his district as one it wants to flip, but it doesn’t yet have a candidate to challenge Harder.
Tamika Hamilton, the Dixon Republican who is challenging Garamendi, is one of the candidates who says the recall gives her run for an office a boost.
Hamilton, a U.S. Navy Veteran, first ran for Congress in 2020 and few took her race seriously, including her own party.
She had aimed to unseat Garamendi, a four-term Democrat who won by a nearly 20 point margin in the prior election. Republicans in the district made up less than a third of voters, a slightly higher rate than the statewide registration, but still less than the 40% of voters who registered as Democrats in 2020.
Hamilton won 46% of the vote that year: not enough to oust Garamendi, but enough to get some attention.
This time around, things are different, she said.
She has the support of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which listed District 3 as a target in 2022, she raised more money than Garamendi in the second quarter, and, she says, Republican voters are fired up after spending much of the last year working to recall Newsom.
“I think that the recall opened people’s eyes to what’s at stake and how important your government is to our everyday lives,” she said. “So I think it’s given my race, actually, a boost.
The Garamendi and Harder districts are exceptions to an election that generally gave Republicans a bleak outlook for next year. Two of the other California districts the GOP wants to flip, those in southern California held by Rep. Katie Porter, D-Irvine, and Rep. Mike Levin, D-Vista, voted to keep Newsom in office.
At a statewide convention in San Diego last weekend, California Republican Party Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson lamented the loss of the recall battle, but pointed to the smaller victories: the recall allowed the party to set up ground game operations ahead of the midterms, she said, and forced Democrats into a serious campaign to defend Newsom.
Republicans gained ground in Congress last year when they flipped four California seats, shaving the margin of Democratic control in the House of Representatives.
The following February, the National Republican Congressional Committee announced four new target districts in California for 2022: Garamendi, Harder, Porter and Levin.
Geographic boundaries for those races might change before the election through the state’s once-a-decade redistricting. Post-census redistricting is set to finish up at the end of December, and California will lose one of its seats due to a decade of slow population growth.
The lost seat is likely to come from the Los Angeles area, demographic experts say, but small adjustments to district boundaries elsewhere could make certain seats more or less favorable to Republicans.
Anne Dunsmore, a Republican political consultant and campaign manager for Rescue California, the committee that led the charge to unseat Newsom, noted that inland regions of the state were more likely to vote in favor of the recall compared to the coastal regions, which make up most of Porter and Levin’s districts.
Regardless, Dunsmore said, the redistricting process is likely to change Republican targets going into the midterms.
The responsibility of the California Republican party is to take the races seriously, she said.
“No more ‘King Newsom’ s---,” Dunsmore said, referencing the party’s widely used meme of the governor as a tyrannical monarch.
“They can’t create a cartoon around the challenges we’re facing in California.”
Republican party leaders say they don’t expect voter attitudes in targeted districts to be influenced much by the recall. It anticipates inflation and tax hikes could motivate Republicans to oust sitting Democrats.
“The recall election won’t have any impact on the midterms and anyone who claims otherwise doesn’t have a clue what they are talking about,” Torunn Sinclair, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a statement to McClatchy following the recall election.
In an interview, California Republican Party Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson said the party’s approach to the midterms likely will change based on final recall counts and redistricting, but right now, the party feels good about its chances in the targeted Congressional districts.
“I think generally speaking, when we’re looking at the overall county data, we feel pretty good about the places that we’re playing,” she said.
