By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Desperation about elections figured prominently in California and Arizona as September began.
The possibility that black conservative Republican Larry Elder might replace white leftist Democrat and bad Catholic Gavin Newsom as governor in a recall election in politically left-wing, multiracial California set off alarm bells for Democrats who would do anything to defeat Elder.
Meanwhile, Arizona’s Republican attorney general, Mark Brnovich, issued a sharp rebuke to his state’s Republican-majority Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. They had fought for months against the GOP-majority Arizona State Senate’s subpoenas requiring necessary information to complete its audit of the accuracy of 2020 election results. Brnovich said the supervisors had to comply with the order.
On August 26 Brnovich issued an opinion determining that the supervisors were violating state law and, if they continued to do so, he would notify the Arizona Treasurer’s office to withhold from Maricopa County significant state-shared revenue. This reportedly could exceed $700 million a year.
The supervisors had 30 days to comply. There also was the possibility they could go to court to fight Brnovich.
California’s Larry Elder, a political-science graduate and attorney who stepped aside from his national radio talk program to join the current Golden State recall-election race, frequently would cite the example of his late father, Randolph, to his listeners, a World War II Marine sergeant who truly knew racism but lived by the philosophy “Hard work wins.”
After the war, Randolph moved to California and worked as a janitor, but through perseverance became a proud café owner who, Larry would recall, kept his shelves overstocked because he wanted to cook up whatever his customers wanted, not only limited to a standard menu.
Larry saw his father as providing an example of self-reliance, determination, and inspiration for conservatives, exactly the opposite approach of big-government Democrats who hold down minorities while claiming to be their saviors.
The example that a GOP Gov. Elder could provide was threatening enough to California’s left-wing establishment, even though Democrats had supermajorities in the state legislature, but Elder also proclaimed that if elderly Democrat U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein were to retire, he would replace her with a Republican.
Elder went on to point out this would mean the current 50-50 split in the U.S. Senate would become a 51-49 Republican majority — ending Democrat Capitol Hill dominance.
Northern California conservative commentator Barbara Simpson told The Wanderer on August 30: “The whole Elder situation is driving both parties crazy. The GOP wants to get a Democrat out of the governor’s seat, so the possibility of a recall is tempting. Newsom is giving his opposition lots of ammunition with what he does and does not do, but who will replace him is the issue.
“The possibility of a Republican black man, who came out of nowhere, in that seat causes consternation,” Simpson said. “Yes, get rid of Gavin, but Elder has ideas that challenge GOP old-timers and frighten Democrats.
“Why would anyone be surprised that if Feinstein left office for whatever reason, Elder would replace her with a Republican? That is exactly what a Republican governor would do! In fact, making changes like that is what California Republicans want,” she said.
“They are fed up with the damage Democrats have caused in the Golden State for Californians. It is time for a change!”
A person didn’t have to imagine the lengths that Democrat fraudsters would go to in order to keep Newsom in power. Reports of bunches of mail ballots being found in unauthorized hands sometimes made the news.
Not that Elder was guaranteed the victory even if Newsom was recalled, but his radio reputation gave him notable visibility and a self-reliance philosophy possibly attractive even to non-conservatives suffering under many months of arbitrary Newsom’s mandates, restrictions, and lockdowns.
Former California Democratic Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero was one of the kinds of people who could prove valuable in helping Elder attract wider support. In an endorsement video, she said: “I’m Gloria Romero. I was the majority leader of Democrats in the State Senate. I believe in charter schools and school choice; so does Larry Elder. Not Gavin Newsom. He shut our public schools while he sent his own kids to private school.
“Yes: I’m a Democrat,” Romero said. “But the recall of Newsom is not about political party. It’s about Newsom. Larry Elder for governor.”
The recall ballot had two questions: Should Newsom be recalled? If so, who should replace him? If Newsom were removed, the competing candidate with the highest number of votes, even if only a plurality, would win.
Dozens of candidates were running, from prominent names to wannabes. The certified list of candidates from the secretary of state’s office numbered 46 and, by profession, included “college student,” “entertainer,” “retail store worker,” and “software engineer.”
Early voting began in mid-August, with Election Day on September 14.
Bad Catholic Newsom, unsurprisingly, had the endorsement of pro-abortion groups that he did so much to help to spread the slaughter of the preborn. In fact, one of the left-wing talking points for Newsom was that he would protect “California values” like abortion.
Fraud Possibilities
In an interview with conservative radio host Dennis Prager, Elder said he was being outspent nine-to-one by Newsom, who had such predictable wealthy backers as Silicon Valley and Hollywood.
All active registered California voters were to receive a vote-by-mail ballot, although they could go to the polls if they chose. There also is a provision allowing voters to print out their ballots at home, which seemed open to encouraging fraud.
In an August 12 story about print-your-own ballots, the Washington Examiner quoted a Republican California state senator, “It’s another facilitation of garnering Democratic votes in a stealth manner. The Democratic Party will go to any length to ensure their dominance.”
A California voter called in on August 31 to Carl Jackson, another black conservative who’s hosting Elder’s radio program in his absence, to say he sees the same cheating machinery in operation as in 2020. The voter also cited “peek-a-boo ballots,” a reference to mail-in envelopes with a strategically located hole that allows someone holding the envelope to see how the recall question was voted.
Is it too much to imagine that Democratic operatives could remove some such ballots and replace them, marked more to their liking?
An August 24 Associated Press story said a man was arrested in the southern California coastal city of Torrance with more than 300 unopened recall ballots in his car. It added, “The man was a felon who had drugs, a loaded firearm, thousands of pieces of mail, a scale and multiple California driver licenses and credit cards in other people’s name, police said.”
In a separate incident, a video showed two women opening all the individual mail boxes at once with a master key for a community mail box, then removing all of the residents’ recall ballots delivered by the Postal Service.
In Arizona, the attorney general’s office said Maricopa County supervisors failed to explain why they hadn’t turned over all of the material subpoenaed to complete the election audit ordered by the Arizona Senate.
This had become the supervisors’ standard approach — to issue excuses and denunciations, but not reasons for why they wouldn’t fully cooperate with helping to determine the accuracy of the 2020 election.
Arizona’s powerful McCain political machine, exemplified by widow Cindy McCain and former Sen. Jeff Flake, endorsed Democrat Joe Biden for president. Biden supposedly narrowly won the Grand Canyon State last November.
Supervisors had said they turned over all that should be needed for an audit. However, the subpoenas didn’t say that what they turned over was left to their discretion.
An August 28 report at the online Arizona Sun-Times by Rachel Alexander said state senators “asked for six categories of information, but logins, routers, and logs — particularly router splunk logs — were not turned over.”
The head of Maricopa County’s prosecutor’s office, Republican Allister Adel, took a now-standard approach by saying that honoring the subpoenas would harm the county. In this case, she referred to the attorney general’s warning that state funds would be withheld.
“As the individual elected to keep the residents of Maricopa County safe and represent them in the criminal-justice system,” Adel said, “I can say that withholding state funds from Maricopa County would be catastrophic to public safety and my office’s ability to hold criminals accountable and protect the rights of crime victims.”
Likewise, the county’s George Soros-funded Democrat sheriff, Paul Penzone, repeatedly claimed that sensitive county information would be exposed if the legal subpoenas were honored.
Asked by The Wanderer to comment on Brnovich’s warning to the supervisors, conservative GOP political consultant Constantin Querard said on August 31: “I assume everyone will wait until they’re near a deadline and then file some sort of legal action to pause everything. The opinion is just an opinion, so it can/will guide action unless it’s challenged in court, then the judges get to decide.”
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