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On Wednesday, four of the top Republican contenders for California’s next governor held a debate in which anti-vaccine and anti-mask rhetoric featured prominently, showing what could be in store for one of the most progressive states in the world. country if the Gavin Newsom government is recalled in the state vote on Sept. 14.
You might be asking yourself a few questions right now such as: Republican next governor of California? Debate? Recall? Although much of the country – and even the state! – apparently didn’t notice, the Democratic Governor of California is at high risk of losing his job. The Trump-backed recall effort in, yes, the bluest of the blue states, will be successful if just over 50% of voters agree to replace Newsom with someone else (voters will also be asked who should replace him , and a much smaller plurality would be needed to claim victory than that 50 percent threshold for the recall itself – that’s weird). Candidates vying to take Newsom’s place have, to varying degrees, vowed to bring COVID denial into the Golden State. In short: we could easily become the next Florida.
The debate featured four of the GOP’s most serious contenders (though all of them lagged behind Tory talk show host Larry Elder, who did not attend). Each has promised to emulate the COVID-19 response of much more conservative states, if they take office.
Conservative businessman John Cox – who lost hands down to Newsom in the gubernatorial race three years ago, but recent polls show he now has a chance to play a role – said during of this debate that Florida would be his model.
“This disease is awful, I got it really early on and it’s not something you want to have, but it is 99.9% survived by healthy people who are not old,” Cox said. , radiating out entire sections of the disease. population to die, while minimizing the severity and potential long-term consequences of the disease, even in young people. “What we need to do is look at what other states have done. I mean, I compare California to Florida. (Florida is currently experiencing one of the nation’s worst COVID delta epidemics, with the state accounting for about a fifth of cases and hospitalizations across the United States.)
Cox also said he would end vaccination mandates for healthcare workers and state employees and went so far as to encourage Californians to do not get vaccinated.
“First of all, there are a lot of people who have had COVID and have antibodies, they don’t need the vaccine, they shouldn’t be getting the vaccine,” he said.
The other three Republicans on stage were also opposed to issuing orders to protect California residents from COVID-19, even as the number of cases continues to rise across the country.
“I do not favor mandates, I prefer to educate: you are not going to mandate your exit from the coronavirus,” said former San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer. One of the moderators asked if he would try to ban mask warrants in schools by local authorities, as has happened in red states like Texas and Florida. “I don’t support a school mask mandate,” Faulconer said.
Another candidate tried to exclude the “public” from “public health”. “I think the government has engaged in a significant excess of its authority in terms of taxing these things,” former Republican Rep. Doug Ose said. “I happen to have great confidence in the ability of people to make their own decisions, to assess the risk they face, whether it is to their child at school, their workplace or their store. If you go to a store that says to wear a mask you have a decision to make, you can put on a mask and go in or you have to respect the rights of store owners to control their own environment. I just think the government’s excesses need to stop. Ose also said he opposed the current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines on masks.
Like Cox, State Assembly Member Kevin Kiley, who appeared to be one of the more moderate GOP candidates on the scene, also said he believed California should have followed suit. other more red states. “We certainly would have done a lot more good than the hype with these vaccine lotteries and these steps that we’re taking towards money orders and passports,” Kiley said. “It’s a perfect case study for the perversity of California politics.”
Again, any of these characters could very well become the next governor of one of the bluest states in the country. According to a recent Emerson College poll, 46% of California voters polled were in favor of Newsom’s recall, with 48% against. According to another recent poll by the UC-Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and the Los Angeles Times, 47% supported the recall and 50% opposed it. According to that poll, Faulconer and Cox were in second and third place in the next question in this poll if Newsom’s recall is successful, with 10% each. (Kiley had 5% in this poll.)
And what about that poll leader Elder, who was not on the debate stage on Wednesday but had 18% support according to the Los Angeles Times poll? Last week he said definitely on Instagram: “No mask and vaccination warrants when I become governor.”
If California Democrats don’t change things very quickly, it could happen sooner rather than later.
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