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When I left Los Angeles the other day, I suddenly realized that hardly anyone cared about the encore race.
Ordinary people didn’t talk about it. I didn’t see anything on the local TV news. Newspapers covered it, but the countryside seemed as far away as a peak in Malibu.
In fact, the only political passion I saw was at an anti-vaccination rally in Santa Monica, which caused many honks among drivers passing through the Liberal enclave.
But with three weeks to go, the national media suddenly woke up to the fact that Larry Elder could be the next governor of California and are hitting him with a hammer.
The conservative radio host, in turn, denounces the press as biased and unfair.
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“How did Larry Elder become a favorite in the California governor’s race? The New York Times asked Tuesday, although the answer has been obvious for some time. With two other Republican candidates urging Elder to quit the campaign to replace Gavin Newsom, Elder’s rise “has stunned and pissed off many in both parties,” according to the newspaper.
As I noted in this space on August 13, it highlights the odd nature of Golden State’s recall rules. Newsom will be removed if it fails to secure a majority plus one, and the vote in favor of the recall now averages 48%. The top voter in a crowded field would then go to Sacramento, and Elder leads the field with an average of 22%.
Much of what reporters dig up on Elder is fair play. But consider this article by Los Angeles Times columnist Erika Smith, titled, “Larry Elder is the Black Face of White Supremacy. You have been warned. Accusing the commentator of whitewashing the problems of being black in America, Smith called his candidacy an “insult to the dark.”
Elder told his friend Sean Hannity on Fox that there is another LA Times writer “who almost called me Black David Duke. They were scared to death.”
LARRY ELDER’S RADIO RHETORIC COULD BOOSTER OR STOP IN CALIFORNIA RECALL
Other recent LA Times articles: “Larry Elder talks a lot. Too bad you can’t believe everything he says.”
“If Larry Elder is elected, life will become more difficult for black Californians and Latinos.”
More specifically, the newspaper reports that state officials are investigating whether Elder has not disclosed all of his sources of income.
The most sordid allegation surfaced in Politico, which quoted his former fiancee and radio producer Alexandra Datig as saying she broke off their engagement in 2015 “after he brandished a gun at her while she was under the hold of marijuana “.
Datig, who was once part of Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss’ network – that’s California – told Politico she was “terrified” and “ran for my life.”
Elder said on Twitter that “I have never brandished a gun against anyone. I grew up in the center-south. [Los Angeles]; I know exactly how destructive this type of behavior is. It’s not me, and anyone who knows me knows it’s not me. These are salacious claims. “
GOP opponents of Newsom and Elder have made his attitude towards women a major problem, noting a column two decades ago in which he claimed that “women know less than men about political, economic and social issues. current events “.
Elder’s provocative language over the years – opposing minimum wages, vaccination warrants and abortion – shows how radio rhetoric can instantly become fodder in politics.
New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo is also provocative, calling Elder a “liberal nightmare” whose record “is so beyond the Californian mainstream that it functions as a one-man goad to energize the Democratic base.”
Washington Post columnist David Von Drehle takes aim at the obscure nature of California’s recall process: “The question is whether any of us can still accept losing an election, or whether this constant rhetoric about a ‘rigged’ democracy has brought us to a place where we are willing to live only with the results we love and immediately set out to try to defeat the ones we dislike. “
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It is true that Newsom, elected in a landslide in 2018, is not involved in a major scandal, but beaten in large part because of Covid and his own blunder by hosting a group dinner in a restaurant. luxury while urging voters to stay home.
It’s no wonder, then, that the Democratic governor is primarily targeting Elder, whose battles with the press haven’t hurt him with Republicans as he avoids debates. If Newsom can’t generate more excitement than what I’ve seen in Southern California, he has a good chance of following Andrew Cuomo out the door.
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