Recall 2021: Law & Policy
Thursday, April 29, 2021 | 12:50 – 2:00 pm
Zoom | Berkeley Law
Event Video
Event Description
Since 1911, during the “progressive era,” California has allowed voters to remove state elected officials and judges (Article II, Sections 13-19) by means of recall election. There have been 55 previous attempts to remove a sitting Governor, only one of which has been successful: Gray Davis in 2003. It appears that sufficient signatures have been submitted to cause a recall of Governor Gavin Newsom and a special election is expected to be announced soon. Recall proponent Tom Del Beccaro speaks on behalf of the effort to remove Governor Newsom, David Carrillo of Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center speaks against the recall, and Steven Hayward speaks in opposition to recalls from the perspective of a conservative who opposes recalls as a matter of principle.
Panelists
Thomas Del Beccaro is an acclaimed author, speaker, Fox News, Fox Business & Epoch Times opinion writer and the former Chairman of the California Republican Party. Tom is author of the historical perspectives The Divided Era and The New Conservative Paradigm 1st Ed. & 2Ed and is publisher of PoliticalVanguard.com, where he publishes daily commentaries.
Steven Hayward is an American conservative author, political commentator, and policy scholar. He is a senior resident scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley, and a visiting lecturer at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall Law School. He was previously the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Visiting Professor at Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Public Policy, and was the inaugural visiting scholar in conservative thought and policy at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2013–14. From 2002 to 2012 he was the F.K Weyerhaeuser Fellow in Law and Economics at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, and has been senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco since 1991.
David A. Carrillo, J.S.D. joined the Berkeley Law faculty as the founding executive director of the California Constitution Center in 2012. He currently serves on the California Law Revision Commission. Dr. Carrillo teaches courses at Berkeley Law on the California constitution, and edits a blog about the state high court (SCOCAblog.com). Dr. Carrillo served on the State Bar Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation and the Committee of Bar Examiners, as well as San Francisco and Alameda bar association committees on judicial appointments. A member of the California bar since 1995, Dr. Carrillo is admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Northern, Southern, Central and Eastern District Courts of California.
Brad Barber is a retired attorney and development professional with extensive experience in the management of non-profit and fundraising organizations, and in the planning and implementation of fundraising campaigns. He currently serves as a board member or advisor for several non-profit organizations. He is currently a member of the Advisory Board for the Division of Earth and Life Science of the National Academy of Sciences. From 2017 to 2020 he served as Treasurer of the Episcopal Diocese of California. He is currently a Commissioner of the City of Orinda Supplemental Sales Tax Oversight Commission. From 2006 to 2012, Mr. Barber served as Senior Vice President and Chief Development Officer of Children’s Hospital & Research Center in Oakland, CA (now part of UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital). After retiring in December 2012, he served as advisor to the CEO on the UCSF affiliated hospital where he raised over $120 million, almost half of which was unrestricted.
Event Flyer
Event Transcript
Brad Barber: I’m Brad Barber, director of the Public Law and Policy Program at the law school at the University of California Berkeley. I want to thank our co-sponsors, The California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law and The Citrin Center for Public Policy Research also at Berkeley. Since 1911, during the first Progressive Era, California has been one of nineteen states that have allowed votes to remove elected officials and state judges. But in those one hundred and twenty years there have been fifty-five previous attempts at recall, only one of which has been successful – Governor Gray Davis in 2003. But it now appears that enough valid signatures have been submitted that we will have a special election in the fall. To discuss that event and to look at the law and the policy behind the law we are pleased to have three experts: Tom Del Beccaro, an attorney, author, speaker, former Chairman of the California Republican Party, a candidate for United States senate, and for purposes of today’s discussion, importantly chairman of California recall and chairman of Rescue California, a group that was instrumental in raising funds and gathering signatures for recall of Gavin Newsom. Followed by Tom, David Carrillo, who is the director of the California Constitution Center, will speak not as a representative or a spokesman for the governor, but as an expert in constitutional law and in recall on the issue of whether the facts of the Newsom situation apply properly to the purpose and law behind a recall. He will also discuss other aspects of the California constitution and the recall. Finally, we’re pleased to have Steven F. Hayward, also an author, political commentator, policy scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at Berkeley, lecturer at Berkeley Law who will speak to us from the position of a conservative who is opposed to initiatives referendums recalls and other heritage of the Progressive Era. So welcome, gentlemen. Thank you all for coming and I would like to start now with Tom. If you could tell us a little bit about your any part of your background that I have omitted, but also how you got involved in this recall effort and where you see things standing now.
Thomas Del Beccaro: Sure. I guess the part you might have left out is UC Berkeley graduate from 1983 and graduated in the from with the B.S. in English. So there you go. I got involved with this particular recall – I was involved in the 2003 recall, back then I was the county chairman of Contra Costa. Since that time I became Chairman of the California Republican Party and we put an initiative on the ballot during my term and after being chairman I became a commentator on national networks and last year I made over five hundred radio and tv appearances around the world from the Middle East to New York to San Francisco to Alaska. I didn’t support the initial efforts to recall Gavin Newsom. This might be the sixth time someone has attempted to get signatures. I didn’t support those earlier efforts, but once this particular effort got underway and I saw Gavin Newsom’s response to Covid, I thought it was time for him to be recalled and the reason for that relates to – and, you know, keep in mind recalls are obviously very political, right? But this one has a lot of legal overtones that we should consider especially given today’s settings. Gavin Newsom once the Covid response got underway, as you know, has now changed – unilaterally changed – over four hundred California laws. He has signed numerous no-bid contracts which aren’t good public policy to begin with and are problematic legally. Even at the outset when they initially appropriated money to respond, that law required Newsom to work with the assembly in the distribution of those funds but he didn’t even do that a lot he. If you google that process you you find a lot of Democrats were upset with him for essentially doing things unilaterally. As you know, at one point the assembly was suspended and Gavin Newsom was essentially one person one ruler and has been overturned by the courts I think more than any governor in the country with respect to this and recently again by the Supreme Court. So the legal aspect of this, as a practicing attorney now for thirty-three years, concerns me. Shouldn’t we have a governor that at all times seeks to stay within the law and build consensus for his initiatives and programs within the law? Or should we simply tolerate a chief executive who pushes the envelope constantly and waits for the courts and the citizens to overturn him? And of course that last point is the recall in a nutshell. The citizens here are attempting to overturn the rule. We’re going to hear shortly about that some of the history related to this this movement of progressivism that led to this law in California. Of course it was an outgrowth even before that – the Progressive Movement didn’t start in California. William Jennings Bryan sensationalized it in his fight against the big trust interests back in the day. And we had a Progressive Movement in this country which principally was about empowering citizens to take on special interests that can rule the country when it’s in when they’re engaged with government. Keep in mind in William Jenning Bryan’s example, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and others banded together, spent an outrageous amount of money to prevent Bryan – William Jennings Bryan – from becoming president and there was the Progressive Movement progress from that point to fight against interests that govern as opposed to a more populous or a democratic, small “d”, process. Here in California today, the rulings of Newsom have gone beyond legality and they have harmed an enormous number of Californians. There’s really no sector of the California society that hasn’t been adversely effective. Now you can argue that there was a pandemic and action should have been taken, but the question is was it legal action and also was it appropriate action in all these circumstances? Now getting overturned by the Supreme Court certainly speaks to the notion that it wasn’t legal for him to do some of these things, but also the pain suffered. Whether it was the enormous increase in the suicide rate, the problems with children not being in school that were referenced by the CDC almost a year ago, whether it is the shutdown of the churches, whether it is the enormous number of businesses – small business – that went out of business. Now keep in mind there was two models to respond to the pandemic: the Florida model, which is to keep things open since last July to a great degree in California. So there really isn’t one way to do this, but Gavin Newsom certainly took the most dramatic and the most challenging legally in my view. Recent poll said that fifty-eight percent of Californians don’t want him to run for governor in 2022. They think it’s time to move on. Well of course if you get to fifty-eight percent in this blue state that requires a lot of Democrats and in fact thirty percent of Democrats in the poll suggested they should move on. So this recall movement is actually, I think, a breath of fresh air. It’s already had enormous impact. There was big talk of a tax increase to come that hasn’t because of the recall. The recall pushed open California a lot earlier than Newsom was otherwise planning to do. But perhaps the greatest benefit so far is the fact that for once we’re having a true policy debate in this state and what do I mean by that? Normally California elections at the statewide level tend to be a little lopsided. I should know, I ran for US Senate against Kamala Harris. There were two debates, they weren’t statewide broadcast live, which limited their effect. But normally at the state level these races go on under the radar without much policy discussion. Thankfully this time around there’s enormous policy discussions going on. What is the best way to deal with the pandemic? What should be done about the jobs leaving California? How should we handle water, the wildfires, and so many other topics? And why is that occurring? Well because citizens two point – nearly two point two million to be exact – signed the petition in an effort to recall or set a recall election and whether or not that process succeeds and certainly my groups, which have raised over three million dollars and actually my pack CA revival.com wrote the first large check in support of the recall in this state – because of that effort people feel involved again and feel like there be some sort of discussion policy wise and perhaps even a new governor and a fresh start for California. That is a good thing. Having elections that don’t seem to be contested is never good for a democracy or a republic. In this case we suddenly have a heartbeat in these elections and it can be debated at many levels as you’re going to do today. So for my part I think this has been a win-win all along, Gavin Newsom – think about this – visited the state in full for the first time in his career and got to see some of the counties. I’ve been to fifty-four the fifty-eight counties to see how they live. He finally got to do that. In many ways this is a great exercise and of course I personally am hopeful that it results in a governor that governs more in line with the law, but also a governor that brings balance to California so that California can grow and stop losing electoral college votes.
Brad Barber: Thank you, thank you very much, Tom. Before we turn to David, I wonder if I could ask you to talk just a bit about the mechanics.
Thomas Del Beccaro: Sure.
Brad Barber: It’s my understanding that you needed just short of one point five million valid signatures and accordingly you needed to turn in more than that so you or the other groups supporting the recall turned in approximately two million or something over that during the time allowed. Do you can you discuss how you went about getting those signatures? Did you use paid signature gatherers? Were were there special provisions made because we’re dealing with a pandemic? And how quickly were the signatures able to be gathered compared to other recall activities in the past?
Thomas Del Beccaro: So thanks for asking that. The the initial group – Recall Gavin 2020 – that started this process, which I my pack wrote that thirty-three thousand big check, they were largely volunteers and they gathered over a million signatures. My group rescue and they did that by going either door to door, being outside, asking people to sign. They were hampered by the shutdowns and that is why they went to court in Sacramento and actually got an extension to gather signatures which no one can deny was the reason why ultimately it was successful. The court said that if a governor subject to a recall shuts down your ability to exercise your constitutional rights he can’t benefit from that, he can’t prevent a condition from occurring and then claim the condition didn’t occur if you want to put it in sort of contract law terms. And therefore an extension was granted and as a result with an additional three months occurred and then that’s when my other pack – rescuecalifornia.org – really kicked into gear. And what we did was very unusual, but again because of the shutdown people weren’t out and about shopping to in order to talk to you get petitions, we direct mailed millions of petitions to voters, got those back, and then when in response to the recall opening started to occur throughout the state, we then – my group not the volunteer group Rescue California – paid used paid signature gatherers – which are you literally pay them to be out there that’s a that’s the way historically it’s been done – and for we did that for about a month month and a half. Got I think one hundred and eighty-thousand signatures that way and continued our other efforts. So in in the large what happened was Rescue California got the ball rolling – it’s much easier to keep a ball rolling than start it rolling – we began to raise big money and and broadcast broadcast this in a greater fashion. But this is a unique time because of the pandemic and we did things in a unique way compared to prior efforts at recall and initiatives.
Brad Barber: Thank you, thank you very much, Tom. I want to talk at some point in this discussion about the relationship of the candidates – potential candidates to the recall – but let’s first turn to David Carrillo. I want to say a bit more about his background. David joined the faculty at the law school as the founding executive director of the California Constitution Center which, I believe, may be the only such center in the United States devoted expressly to looking at the constitution of that state. Of course the California Constitution is renowned for being the largest constitution in terms of length of any document of–
David A. Carrillo: It’s actually that’s actually not true.
Brad Barber: It’s not true?
David A. Carrillo:Yeah
Brad Barber: Alright well–
David A. Carrillo: Alabama’s longer.
Brad Barber: Alright well maybe there’s an opportunity to set up a center in Alabama then as well. We can get a little rivalry going. David was appointed by Governor Newsom to a four-year term on the California Law Review Commission in 2019. He has been a Deputy
Attorney General of California for sixteen years, Deputy City Attorney of San Francisco, and Deputy District Attorney of Contra Costa County. He’s a life member of La Raza Lawyers Association and the Hispanic National Bar Association. But the most important fact I neglected to say at the introduction is that he holds four earned degrees from UC berkeley – B.A., J.D., L.L.M, and J.S.D. So congratulations.
David A. Carrillo: Thank you.
Brad Barber: David and with that tell us whether you believe that the particular facts and circumstances of the situation of Governor Newsom fit the recall process and law and if you want to add anything to the mechanics and law of recall in your presentation here this this would be a good time to do it.
David A. Carrillo: Thank you I do have some thoughts and comments. I’m going to largely divide them into procedural things and substantive things, but before i get into that I need to get a disclaimer on the record which is that I speak solely in my individual capacity. These are merely my personal opinions, I’m not affiliated with any political operation associated with the recall and my comments should not be attributed to any candidate in the recall campaign. Having said that, some people might think that this recall is all fun and games but unfortunately politics isn’t a game it’s real life. Celebrity candidates running on Twitter with nothing more than name recognition might be entertaining, but you don’t learn much about public policy from the entertainment business. Now we might get another Schwarzenegger – he had some some policy experience and he was a decent governor – or we might get another Trump who had zero policy experience and was a terrible president. Which of those do you think that, for example, a governor Jenner would be? I’d like to think we’ve learned our lesson from the past few years and from the 2003 recall. That lesson is that we don’t need another slate of quasi-celebrity candidates for governor and we might not see that because California law gives its Secretary of State and lieutenant governor discretionary powers to make two key decisions in a gubernatorial recall: replacement candidate procedures and the election date. Those decisions will determine how difficult it is to qualify, which means those officials can exercise their discretionary powers over the recall process to give voters their say while preventing another clown car spectacle. So let me talk about procedure first and there’s two subcategories in procedure and then I’ll move on to substance. There’s two variables in the procedural category: a candidate qualifying procedure, which is determined by the secretary of state, and the election date, which is set by the lieutenant governor. And those things ultimately affect each other. The first variable that I want to talk about is the qualification procedure. The Secretary of State has discretion to decide between two primary procedures for replacement candidates to qualify for the recall ballot. She can choose between the procedures for primary and for independent candidates. This choice greatly affects how difficult it is to qualify because the independent procedure requires far more signatures than the primary procedure. The primary candidate procedure requires not fewer than sixty-five and not more than one hundred signatures. Very easy. The independent procedure is the opposite – it would require replacement candidates to submit the signatures of one percent of all California registered voters. This year that’s two hundred and twenty-one thousand five hundred and forty-four signatures. I should note the filing fee is the same in either one of these scenarios. So initially it might seem like money doesn’t come to come into play here, it actually does ultimately. I’ll come back to that. But at the outset, in either scenario filing fees are set at two percent of the first year salary of the office sought, which is the governor, and two percent of the governor’s two hundred and one thousand six hundred and eighty dollar salary is four thousand thirty-three dollars and sixty cents. Let’s call it four grand. So I can’t and also a candidate for statewide office can submit seven thousand signatures in lieu of the filing fee. So it’s four grand either way but while the fee is the same in either scenario, money ultimately does become a factor, more on that in a minute. So the upshot is that the choice of qualifying procedure will mean that the difference between anyone with four grand and a hundred friends can qualify versus requiring a substantial signature gathering effort to make it on the ballot. It’s possible that an individual could gather two hundred thousand signatures. Tom just told us that the all volunteer campaign rates gathered about a million signatures all by themselves, which is amazing. That’s extremely difficult to do – kudos to them – that’s very rare. But the reality is most people need to pay for a paid signature gathering company. So to gather two hundred thousand signatures can you do it quickly? Can you do it without employing a professional operation? This is where money comes back in. The rule of thumb average per signature cost for professional signature gathering companies is two to three dollars each, which makes the signature gathering cost for independent candidates between four hundred and forty-two thousand and six hundred and sixty-three thousand here. If that’s the scenario we’re looking at, that’s probably enough money to rule out most non-serious candidates. Now in 2003 Secretary Shelley used the easier primary candidate procedure. People seem to be assuming now that secretary Weber will do the same, but that’s neither required by law nor something she has yet committed to doing. So far the Secretary of State website just says: “Who can run as a replacement candidate. A replacement candidate must meet the existing legal qualifications and requirements to run for the office of governor.” That doesn’t answer the question. So we don’t know which direction Secretary Weber is inclined to go at this point. I should also mention that there’s a third way here: the Secretary of State is not limited to just those two options for primary independent candidates in regular elections. She’s only required to run a recall election in substantially the same way as a regular campaign for that office. That means there’s room for compromise here – something between a hundred and two hundred thousand signatures. She can choose a reasonable signature number somewhere between those two things. That could balance access to candidacy against concerns about a raft of vanity candidates like we got in 2003. Wo let me that’s the qualifying procedure – that’s the first variable under the procedural category. Let me talk about the second variable: that is the election date. The lieutenant governor sets the election date, but there’s no regularly scheduled election this fall so the state constitution requires the lieutenant governor to order the election held within sixty to eighty days after Secretary Weber certifies the recall. The earliest possible day will jam the candidates with a short window to gather signatures. The latest day will jam the public with another thirty page long ballot of whatever a hundred, a hundred and fifty candidates. And because of the interaction between several statutory procedural requirements that apply here, you wind up with two extreme scenarios with some possible variations between them, so these are the kind of ends of the spectrum. On the one end if the lieutenant governor schedules the election as soon as possible – sixty days after certification – and Secretary Weber requires that replacement candidates comply with the onerous independent candidate procedure, that means that potential candidates would neither gather and submit over two hundred thousand signatures in about a day. At the other of the end of the spectrum, if the lieutenant governor schedules the election as late as possible – eighty days after certification – and Secretary Weber applies the easy primary candidate procedure, that means prospective candidates would have about three weeks to gather a hundred signatures. Far easier. Now there are a number of time blocks between now and the actual certification. So people are talking about it in terms of “Oh the recall is definitely on, enough signatures have been submitted.” That’s actually not technically true. It looks like it’s going to happen, but there are a number of other actors who have roles to play by statute and designated periods of time for them to do the things that they’re required or permitted to do by statute. So adding up all of those things is a somewhat dicey business. They all have to happen before the secretary of state can officially certify the election. All of which means that it’s hard to tell exactly when that sixty to eighty day window will fall. The estimates by my center and other smart people put the range anywhere between October and December. It could be a lot earlier if people do their jobs, if the people don’t take as much time as they need to. So for example Department of Finance has thirty days to figure out how much it’s going to cost. They might already know, so maybe it only takes them a day. That lot that moves everything up by thirty days, but we don’t know. Regardless for this purpose for determining how easy or difficult it is to qualify, none of that matters because the window always follows the certification date whenever that happens to fall. Now in 2003 – the Great Davis Recall – qualification period was sixteen days and a hundred and thirty-five people qualified because, as I said, Secretary Shelley used the easy primary candidate procedure. It would have been very different if those candidates were required to qualify as independents and at the time they would have had to gather a hundred and fifty thousand signatures in sixteen days. So the takeaway here on the procedures for qualifying to run on the recall as a replacement candidate is that these decisions by the secretary of state and lieutenant governor both will significantly affect how difficult it is to qualify as a replacement candidate. And the lieutenant governor’s decision can amplify secretary weber’s decisions effect – an earlier date magnifies the decisions to use the harder independent procedure and a later date magnifies the decision to use the easier primary procedure. And of course the easier it is to qualify, the more goofball candidates that we’ll see. So let me talk about the – that’s procedure – let me talk about substance and again I need to note these are just my personal opinions. I should first note that there is no legal criteria for the electorate’s recall decision. The voters can recall an official for any reason or no reason at all. But that doesn’t mean that there are no policy considerations in a recall election and there are a number of them. For example money. What is this going to cost us? Projections are that it will cost the state around four hundred million dollars to run this special election and that’s not counting the campaign expenditures, which because it’s a recall are unlimited. Combined the campaigns have so far raised or spent about seven and a half million Governor Newsom’s raised about three million, the two recall campaigns combined have raised around four and a half million. The upshot is that we’re potentially looking at a half billion dollar special election race this fall. You have to ask yourself do we have more pressing needs for that money? Another issue here is that this all this effort and treasure is for a very low percentage enterprise. Recalls usually fail. As brad explained since 1913, there have been a hundred and seventy-nine attempts to recall state officials in California and just ten qualified for the ballot. That’s five point six percent of those the official verse were called in six instances. That’s three point three percent for the governor, specifically fifty-five attempts, one success. That’s one point eight percent. You don’t need Nate Silver to tell you that those are pretty bad odds. And as Tom mentioned, this is the sixth attempt just to recall this particular governor since he took office in 2019. The previous five attempts – including two by some of the people who were involved in the present recall – they all fizzled without anyone even noticing that they were happening. The takeaway is that recalls are only worthwhile in extreme circumstances and at some point you have to be concerned about people who repeatedly at windmills to pursue their personal agendas to the point that it becomes an abuse of the process. Finally I would ask what is the rationale for this being the extreme scenario that merits a recall when there’s a regular gubernatorial election next November November anyway? I should insert a clarification here – Tom mentioned that Governor Newsom changed four hundred laws. I respectfully submit a point of clarification. That’s somewhat inaccurate. The Emergency Services Act, which permits the executive orders he’s talking about, that only permits temporarily suspending statutes during an emergency. Everybody knows that a governor can’t make law. So all those legal issues aside, let’s look at the reality on the ground right no: California’s coronavirus case rate is the lowest of any state, schools are reopening, state could see a fifteen billion tax revenue windfall, the state’s economy is going to fully reopen by June 15th – which is in about a month – almost forty percent of Californians have Covid antibodies now either from catching the virus or from vaccines, and everybody can get the vaccine now. So you have to ask yourself what exactly are we mad about? Bottom line I submit is that challenging the chief executive of the world’s fifth largest economy shouldn’t be political theater. So the question my fellow my fellow Californians is let’s be serious about this. Thank you.
Brad Barber: Thank you, David. Just a point of clarification: for the candidates or prospective candidates as replacement candidates for governor, is it permissible for them to begin collecting signatures in anticipation of a choice one way? In other words can they have these or can they not be collected until the date set?
David A. Carrillo: My– okay so two things: one one is I’ve looked at this pretty closely and a number of the research fellows at my center have also looked at these step these statutes pretty closely – they they are confused and highly confusing and it’s particularly difficult to sort them out when it comes to recalls. So if if somebody if somebody smarter than me has has a better way of looking at this, I’m fully prepared to be wrong. But all that being said, my my view on the statutes is that in a recall – specifically in a recall – you can’t start collecting signatures before the Secretary of State certifies the recall. I’d be interested in Tom’s thoughts. That’s the way I read the law. So I think the answer is no you can’t.
Brad Barber: Thank you. Quickly, Tom do you have a view on that?
Thomas Del Beccaro: Yeah my view is the same. They have to create an authorized form and short of that authorized form I hearken back to the days pre-1880s when there was no official ballot and people got to vote in any way they wanted to, but that’s not how this particularly works. They’re going to have to issue a particular form once it’s certified.
David A. Carrillo: Yeah so that partly explains why you got sort of this this odd number, sixteen days, in the 2003 recall because when things happen determine when other things happen and, you know, they don’t necessarily happen when they’re supposed to. So there’s there’s there’s a high degree of variability here. But, you know, it sounds like Tom agrees with my take that until the Secretary of State at the end of all of the very statutory deadlines says, “Yes I hereby certify the recall,” that’s the the first point in time in which potential candidates can submit themselves for candidacy and start gathering signatures. That’s when the clock starts.
Thomas Del Beccaro: And you can expect at that moment when they do certify it that the Secretary of State will immediately have the authorized form for candidates.
David A. Carrillo: You’d hope.
Brad Barber: All right, well thank you very much. I assume – maybe there’s a question for both of you but I assume – there is no prohibition to raising money in anticipation of–
David A. Carrillo: No.
Brad Barber: An election and that that is probably going on as we speak.
Thomas Del Beccaro: I did.
David A. Carrillo: I think that’s right yeah.
Thomas Del Beccaro: But I think for the candidates that have declared and are raising money they have opened committees for governor for 2020. You can’t you can’t open a committee for the recall. Once it is certified then you’ll be able to open up that committee and they will be able to transfer primary funds – money given for the purpose of primary, not the general election their primary funds – they will be able to move over to the recall, but not all of their funds.
David A. Carrillo: Yeah and I counted about a dozen people who have already opened accounts for 2022 and a lot of them are obviously people who have already indicated that they’re interested in running in the recall if it happens.
Brad Barber: And those those candidates are reporting regularly the results of their fundraising?
David A. Carrillo: I believe so. That that’s how we know how much the Governor Newsom has raised for this effort.
Brad Barber: All right. Well it sounds like given the some of the uncertainties that there might be work for the California Law Revision commission in this.
David A. Carrillo: In whose capacity? I am not speaking today.
Thomas Del Beccaro: Right yes there’s also a strong likelihood that there will be legal challenge either way once the Secretary of State acts. Because you could imagine, as as David points out, in almost – how shall I say – perfect law law school test format. What if she decides you have one day to to get two hundred thousand signatures? Has she, in effect, extinguished your rights and the rights of citizens to get candidates–
David A. Carrillo: Right.
Thomas Del Beccaro: By by such a procedure? So in the immortal words of somebody on this stay tuned and that probably especially applies to lawyers.
David A. Carrillo: Yeah you’re absolutely right about that. I would make two points there: one is that, you know, I mentioned that there there are I think there’s about half a dozen statutorily required actions and time periods associated with them before the Secretary of State can can certify that the recall is on. What’s interesting about those is that even though there are statutory time periods, there’s no sanction associated with either doing it shorter or longer. So, you know, I mentioned Department of Finance – they have thirty days to figure out how much the election is going to cost. If they do it in a day, that has knock-on consequences. If they take two months, as you point out, somebody is going to sue at some point to actually, you know, like motivate them with a written mandate or something like that. But, you know, but otherwise you know there there’s high potential for variability here depending on how quickly or slowly people move and, you know, litigation could potentially affect that. So we’re in for a dynamic process I think this is the bottom line.
Thomas Del Beccaro: Brad and David I’d like to point out that in 2003 in April they were still collecting signatures, but yet the recall election happened by September largely for the dynamic that David pointed out – it didn’t always take them the full statutory period so it happened in a rather quick fashion. Which is not expected this time either by the cynics or the lawyers and sometimes they’re the same.
David A. Carrillo: That’s only smart.
Brad Barber: And I understand that’s that’s true, but let’s turn now to non-cynical Steven F. Hayward, whom I mentioned is an author, commentator, policy scholar at both IGS and Berkeley Law. I guess a blogster and a podcaster of some renown as well. Steve, what do you say about recalls under circumstances such as we face today?
Steven Hayward: Yeah well the first thing I say brad is you do me a credit saying non-cynical because I can be plenty cynical and not too much perhaps in my opening thoughts here which are I think orthogonal in this way. And and I’ll admit to having a large amount of cognitive dissonance and I’d like to compare opening up with recalls and term limits. I always voted for term limits even though I think they’re a bad idea and ineffective but I always like the insult that delivered to the political class and recalls are similar. You know, they make you feel good in the immediate instance but I do wonder more broadly about the long-term effects it has and I think I think it, well, I’ll work into it this wayL I agree strongly with Tom that the strongest grounds for being critical of Governor Newsom is not something peculiar to Governor Newsom. I think that the the whole aggrandizement of executive power and the abdication of legislative power is something that’s been happening on the national level in the states for a very long time and not just the coronavirus but other aspects of recent years have made this problem more acute and subject to more vigorous debate. I do think as a contingent matter that’s probably not what is driving the public support for the recall. I think it probably has more to do with dinner at the French Laundry, right? That’s the kind of thing that offends small d Democratic sensibilities and quite rightly. I mean, in a certain sense that would be reckoned by punishment for ignoring the rules that someone imposes on others. But that’s not a serious reason for recall and if the election could be about the serious reasons I’d feel better about it. In other words, the recall reminds me of the other seven deadly sins – they give momentary pleasure while storing up some long-term problems and maybe some perverse results. Let me make three points about it then and then I’ll stop we’ll go on a discussion. First I want to do an irony and put the recall in a broader perspective that of progressive changes in modern government and compare it to the initiative process for a moment because both initiatives and recall were born more than a century ago, as Brad noted, under peculiar conditions. We wanted the initiative process as a way of breaking the special interest stranglehold on the state legislature and allow the people a mechanism to make government more responsive, more populist, and so forth. And I think you want to notice two things about initiatives today that will I will tie into recall a phenomenon. One is today the initiative process is also dominated by special interests and big money. It’s very very rare now that an initiative actually is conceived – because of the size of the state, right? Other states that’s less true. In Oregon it’s much more it’s much easier for a genuine populist initiative to be qualified for the ballot there because the signature requirements are much lower because it’s a smaller state, but in a state California size the signature requirements are such that it takes big money to get an initiative on the ballot. So no longer can you say the initiative process it serves its original intention or original hopes. But the second thing to notice about the initiatives is where i think it gets interesting. If you do a balance sheet on the initiative process going back sixty or seventy years – and I’ve never done this in a thorough way but I think I’m right about this – I think the initiative process has more often served conservative policy goals in California. Starting maybe with the the Fair Housing Initiative back in 1966, but certainly with Proposition 13 in 1978 and then you’ll run on down the list – Prop 209 the three strikes criminal sentencing initiative, term limits of course, the state version of the defense of marriage act, Prop 208, and this odd pattern I think you can still observe in this last election with Prop 16, Prop 22, and a couple of others. This is an odd thing in a state that has, you know, oftentimes expresses center-right opinion and an electorate’s otherwise center-left. Meanwhile I think it’s equally true that not all, but a great many of the most prominent liberal ballot initiatives in the last thirty forty years have generally failed at the ballot box. One thinks of the 1982 gun control measure that that failed and was thought to have helped George Duke Nagin and his upset win for governor that year. There’s the 1990 Big Green Initiative from the environmentalists. And there’s been a whole slew of tax increase measures that have mostly failed. One got through here a few years ago under Governor Brown. And so my my thought about this is that while the initiative process has been something of a relief valve or conservative opinion in the state, it dilutes partisan identification and accountability. I’ll just give you one example that i remember because I was alive at the time – I’m actually older than Thomas – and that’s the whole Prop 13 episode in 1978. If Governor Brown, then running for re-election that year, had had to defend his party’s refusal to provide meaningful tax relief it would have been an issue in the fall campaign and who knows how that might have played out. Instead, because Brown is such a political genius, after it passed in June by a landslide, you would have thought Jerry Brown had written Prop 13. I mean he switched on a die was very skillful. But the point is it took the issue off the table, removed it as an issue for the two parties to contest each other each other over – not only on the level of the governor but also state legislative races and so forth. And so I think you can play that out in a lot of areas – I think if you’re a republican you it’s not to your advantage to have a lot of issues about which you arguably have majority support removed from the election menu of things that the parties contest about. And so I think that is uh one one interesting defect of the way this affects our politic. And I often add, by the way, if we’re gonna decide all of our major questions by about initiatives, why have a legislature at all? But that starts to sound like Ross Perot and I don’t really want to sound like that very much. But I think if we continue on the recall path we are going to be slowly transforming California more into a parliamentary style democracy in which recalls are no confidence vote. Our national politics have been trending that way in ways I think are not good. And so I went and looked up what i wrote for real clear politics eighteen years ago – hard to believe now – during the Davis recall. So here’s the quote: “In the future whenever a governor’s popularity swoons – and remember that governor Pete Wilson’s polls were very bad in 1992 and 1993 – liberal interest groups are likely to try to recall route themselves. They have more money in organization than the right does in California.” I think that’s even more true now in 2021. “Having done it once, Californians might get used to doing it over and over again – a populist progressive form of a no-confidence vote in the elevation of a new prime minister,” end my quote. And that leads to my final reflection on the matter which David has already brought up in especially acute form which is: are we going to have another – I call the jungle ballot – like we do in our primaries now with dozens and dozens of candidates and this is a peculiar means of succession. You know when you have impeachment the vice president takes over. If the governor of California, you know, dies or resigns or leaves office for some other reason, the lieutenant governor becomes governor. The separately elected lieutenant governor I want to add, right? And instead here we have this peculiar circumstance in which we’re going to pick from this feel and the person who gets the most votes becomes the next governor. Now there’s one interesting wrinkle right now that we don’t know how it’s going to play out but back eighteen years ago Governor Davis’s polls were so bad that it was widely assumed he was going to lose and so the re-election was going to be on the replacement ballot. And so Democrats rallied around the lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante who is nonetheless blown away by Arnold. This time, you know, Newsom’s polls on the recall question I gather that, you know, they’re volatile that they look plausible that he would survive it. And so right now the reporting we’re hearing is that Democrats are trying to discourage any prominent Democrats from considering being on replacement ballot. It’s kind of an all-in strategy or Cortez burning his ships on the aztec shore five hundred years ago to concentrate the minds of the people and that’s probably a shrewd campaign tactic for Newsome. And although if you have the uh the more a liberal ballot access scenario that David mentions, it seems not completely out of the question that the next governor might be some city councilman from Resida. You can imagine a Democrat somewhere wanting to get their name on the ballot whereas you have I think now four Republicans with sufficient name ID who might split the republican vote and so, you know, what an unusual scenario that would be. And it does seem to me that if – from a partisan republican point of view – if Bewsom survives the recall I think it probably makes him stronger for reelection next year, whereas if you didn’t have the recall I think he’s more vulnerable next year. I mean if I’m governor sorry if I am former Mayor Kevin Faulconer of San Diego – I think the Republican’s strongest candidate in an ordinary election cycle – I’m not sure that this recall is actually helps his chances. So some of these are some theoretical perspectives, some of these are contingent perspectives, it’s a high risk election for both sides in other words and that always makes a lot of fun for us political scientists but like David, I’m less sure it’s fun for California in the long run. And so that’s a few thoughts to recall in this and other recalls. Thank you David.
David A. Carrillo: Brad would you mind if I jumped in with a, you know, sort of clarification, agree-disagree on something Steve said?
Brad Barber: I was actually going to invite comments and–
David A. Carrillo: Thank you.
Brad Barber: From both you and Tom.
David A. Carrillo: Well if you don’t mind then I’ll go first. Steve I thought your perspective on how easy or difficult, relatively speaking, it is to qualify something on the ballot in California was very interesting. Obviously you’re right on the numbers – it’s numerically easier in Oregon because they have a smaller population. Well in California it’s also somewhat population based – it’s based it’s either five percent or eight percent of the number of people voted for governor in the last regular gubernatorial election. So, you know, yeah it’s it’s proportionally higher because we have more voters than they do but but so the kind of clarification I was going to make is is that California’s initiative process is typically critiqued for making it too easy to get things on the ballot so I thought your perspective that it’s it’s too hard to get things on the ballot or harder in California it’s sort of true but it’s sort of not.
Steven Hayward: Well I– sorry I should have been a little more clear but I mean harder for the original understanding of the progressive reformers a hundred years ago where it would be a purely popular measure of the people right on volunteer basis and so forth.
David A. Carrillo: Especially when you bring in money, yeah, that’s that’s where you’re definitely right. And so the the second perspective you you articulated that that I’m more in agreement with is your statement about California’s electorate being conservative and I don’t mean in the traditional liberal conservative you know partisan sort of way, but they’re they’re they’re loath to approve things. They’re conservative in that sense. So so your perspective’s interesting in that it’s actually relatively easy speak speaking, you know, comparatively to get things on the ballot in California. So for example like this this recall campaign, you know, we were just talking earlier about the fact that a bunch of volunteers gathered almost a million signatures by themselves with no money and no professional – that’s just amazing, that hardly ever happens. And that would have definitely been enough to get something an initial co-initiative constitutional amendment on the ballot. They could have done that all by themselves, all volunteers. So that’s, you know, so in a sense like that’s that’s the basis for me saying it’s it’s relatively easy to get things on the ballot in California but where I think you’re definitely right is that California voters are, you know, they they tend to be relatively conservative again in a non-partisan way about approving things they they don’t have a higher approval rate for initiatives.
Thomas Del Beccaro: So picking up from there and also what Steve talked about related to Republicans and initiatives and how Republicans do statewide, Republicans have done poorly for decades now in California because they run candidates based on personalities instead of solutions. The reason why Republican initiatives win is because they marry a solution to a very specific problem – if you like Uber and you want it to stay, vote this way. That works. When they run candidates they tend to not be specific in their ideas, there’s not easy hooks and so a lot it loses. We’re also in in a period of time with respect to initiatives right now where they are dramatically longer than the US constitution, they’re held to read through, and if you vote yes you really mean no on in so many circumstances that many people just vote no because of overload. And it is true that it was quote “easy” to get an initiative on the on the ballot. It sort of remains that way. It’s getting harder for the populist – it’s easier for Uber who has the money, harder for, you know, Joe Smith who may not have that particular amount of money to do it now. But I think, you know, in a very real sense the fact that so many volunteers got so many signatures tells you something’s greater afoot in this particular circumstance and I don’t agree. Steven – I’m being very dramatic right now so imagine me jumping up and down – the pain caused by the number of people who lost their jobs is no minor thing. It’s historic. The number of jobs lost and the speed at which they were lost it resonates and remains with people and it drives this. I am very much aware of of normal demographics – more Democrats signed this in la county than Republicans. In other counties the number of Democrats whose businesses were put out of work are under restriction and of course it it hurts the least among us more than the rich. History has always been that way. So there is a greater movement here than you see and it’s and I’ll end with this: people ask me all the time, “Oh nationally is California moving to the right?” I say – and, “Can you make California Republican?” – I say this: California is having a spate of common sense. Running out Uber and Lyft was stupid a massive tax increase in the form of killing half of Prop 13 ill-timed to say the least, cashless bail not a sensible system. What is happening right now are people are listening and they’re going to listen the candidate that wins this if it gets the yes vote. Is the one who puts forth the clearest solutions to the clearest problems not some huge ideological warfare? I’m not a stranger to that, of course my book “The Divided Era” talks about why we’re so divided in the power of parties in this circumstance, but in California this isn’t a big ideological fight right now. Do you have a better solution? That’s going to win.
Brad Barber: I think you suggested that the threat of the recall has already affected Newsom’s positions, perhaps his behavior in office. Do you think it has affected others than Newsom as well? Democratic Party more broadly, legislators, or this personally just about the governor?
Thomas Del Beccaro: No I think it’s had a big policy difference, if you will across the country. I can tell you I feel questions every day can we do this somewhere else and that’s why, Steve, this is such a good process. Voters having a say. Look, the bigger government gets the harder it is to change its course and voters tend often tend to feel unimportant and that’s a bad thing. You felt very important as a voter in the 1800s because an issue was going to be decided. Then we had many of decades where voters felt that they had very little say. So this invigoration, I think, is good. The answer is that the Democrat look they just tried a process whereby they were going to disclose who signed this for the future – there was even an effort for a moment to to require the disclosure of the people who signed this now and the threat of the recall internally caused Newsom and his people to say, “I don’t want that on the ballot now you make me a villain.” Rightly so. So yeah public policy has been dramatically changed. That’s a victory of itself if this stay was open six more months than it otherwise wouldn’t have been, that’s an enormous amount of money in an enormous amount of jobs so I’m proud of what they’ve done.
Steven Hayward: Well I’ll just I’ll just throw in that – I’ll put it this way I hope you’re right about all that score and and if the recall goes the way you hope it does and want to go. I’ll tip my hat off to you. I’ll say as a summary thing that without getting into the substance of it beyond the summary is: we’re going to be we – I mean them you know, scholars, policy analysts, politicians, historians – we’re going to be studying the whole coveted policy response for decades and I believe that the weight of opinion is going to come down on the side of some of the biggest public policy mistakes in American history. It’s not just here it’s the whole darn country, federal state level. Here’s the flip side which is if the recall fails and, you know, as it did with Scott Walker ten years ago for example. Not quite parallel of course but a recall that strengthened him in the intermediate term in Wisconsin, it will be interesting to compare the results next year to see what happens in other states where, for example Governor Whitmer in Michigan, Governor Cuomo New York, if he runs again. Other governors – Governor waltz in Pennsylvania – we’ll see how those races unfold in a more conventional setting. I think that’s the test of of my hypotheses which I throw out as hypotheses so you may well be right in that case more good for you.
Thomas Del Beccaro: Well well they told us we couldn’t get the signatures, now they’re telling us Newsom can’t win. I mean can’t lose, sorry.
Steven Hayward: Yeah.
Thomas Del Beccaro: Same people are saying both things.
Steven Hayward: Oh look and as I, you know I said in the beginning I always love it when the conventional wisdom is proven wrong and I never regret when a politician gets his or her comeuppance. It’s this other thing I worry about lots of other things, too.
Brad Barber: The attempt to recall the governor is not the only possible recall that will happen in California. Right now there is discussion and I guess signature gathering going on in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Thomas Del Beccaro: And Shasta County.
Brad Barber: I didn’t know about Shasta.
Thomas Del Beccaro: The boards of supervisors
Brad Barber: So my question is: given the fact that this rarely succeeds, would either success or failure on the part of the attempt to recall the governor have an effect on the local attempts to recall local officials?
Thomas Del Beccaro: Well if I can quickly comment on that that – California does have recall fever the fact that we did this statewide did result in and people wanting to do it. I like in recalls as long as we’re going to talk about history to third parties. Throughout American history, third parties have chastened the major parties when the major parties have failed to answer questions. Recall efforts tend to laser focus politicians – sometimes good sometimes bad – but this is a chastening effect and why I think it should remain and it does have spillover. You would not have this in LA or San Francisco without what’s going on statewide.
Brad Barber: Well I understand that recalls of some sort have an ancient history. According to Aristotle it was allowed in in ancient Athens and the constitution of the colony of Massachusetts Bay provided for it, but it was discussed as a part of the Virginia Plan at the Constitutional Convention and was expressly rejected. The idea was that short terms are recurring elections frequently recurring elections plus the possibility of impeachment would be sufficient to prevent a tyrant from abusing power and that there might be some pernicious effects. And as we have all pointed out there’s only one other successful recall in California and I think only one other successful recall of a governor in any of the fifty states that of a governor in in one of the Dakotas in the 1920s. There was an effort to recall a governor in Arizona that was headed for the ballot but before the governor was put to the to the ballot he was impeached by the legislature and removed from office. So in the in the time that we have left I want to encourage you to um talk about any questions you have of each other. Anything you want to add or correct or last minute points.
David A. Carrillo: Do we have any audience questions?
Brad Barber: And we’ve we have been asking the audience for question and I have tried to field a couple that have come in to me, but if the audience has other questions please add those too So gentlemen any questions you have for each other?
Steven Hayward: Well I’m not sure a question but a comment on the local recalls of, you know, the DAs in San Francisco and LA that have been controversial. I think in my own mind I draw a bit of a distinction between local recalls and, you know, and as you scale up right on the state level. You know local recalls make a lot more sense because because of their locality and because there it’s much more likely to be approximate issue of corruption or extreme blunder that affects a concentrated number of people in the local area. I think of the who was the treasurer in orange county twenty-five years ago who blew up their – I don’t know whether it was their pension fund or their general fund – I’ve forgotten the guy’s name now but–
David A. Carrillo: Led to their bankruptcy, didn’t it?
Steven Hayward: Yeah they’ve left their bankruptcy right and he thought he was some fancy hi actually my dad’s lawyer knew the guy from law school and couldn’t believe that he blundered so badly in investing county funds and some exotic derivatives and whatnot. That’s kind of thing where a recall that that’s gonna be swift, it’s approximate, I feel a lot better about that kind than on on the larger level where I don’t know I try to express a few aspects of this earlier where the causes are more diffuse, where partisan passions play a larger role than approximate problem of corruption or, you know, an incredible blunder of governance like you had in Orange County. That wasn’t ideological or partisan at all what happened in Orange County. The DA but again even the DA thing that’s going on right now in LA and San Francisco and in other cities. I think the DA in Philadelphia is under a lot of trouble is we’re having this sudden– we’ve had a lot of changes in criminal policy that have happened very quickly like, you know, bail changes here in in California and sentencing reforms and all the rest of that and then suddenly for a whole lot of reasons the crime rate is spiking up and this started to look like a rerun of the sixties to me a bit. And maybe these things need to go in cycles and will go in cycles and so I don’t know, I think, you know, those again are those recalls are a little closer to a proximate issue. Not that Tom’s case about the proximate issues with Newsom are not real and serious – I think they really are they’re really big, it’s a little easier to get my head around, I think voters heads around, you know, local municipal level uh recall controversies.
Thomas Del Beccaro: I tell you you’re definitely right about one thing, Steve, which is that there’s there’s a cyclical nature to voter interest in the direct democracy process, in California at least. Some of the scholars in my center mapped out initiative activity since its inception in 1911. It’s it’s a bit of a bell curve, you know, there’s there’s significant initial interest, it declines significantly in kind of the World War II era, spikes back up with Prop 13 in the late seventies eighties and it’s been on it’s been on the decline for the last, I don’t know ten twenty years or so, but as you say that, you know, for various for various reasons it may be ticking back up.
Steven Hayward: Yeah.
Thomas Del Beccaro: I’d make one – David you talked about it costing four hundred million dollars.
David A. Carrillo: That’s the estimate that I read.
Thomas Del Beccaro: Yeah.
David A. Carrillo: Who knows if that’s right.
Thomas Del Beccaro: There’s an EDD scandal where thirty-one billion dollars is in question, which of course absolutely that’s seventy times the cost. So for us, many of us, we think it we can no longer afford to keep them there. But, you know, for someone like me who again wrote the book “The Divided Area” that talks about the more government decides, the more it divides and how divided we are in all of these things, I commend everyone to read William Jennings Brian’s “Cross of Gold” speech. Which is, by the way, given in some form at every Democrat convention ever since. Sso that’s where it started, that’s the original genre in America. Of course they did this in Ancient Rome and in Greece as well, but I for one celebrate individual voter interest. Republics and democracies die when the individual feels he has no or she has no say. And so this recall effort gives them a say – it has had an impact and even if it doesn’t succeed immediately, I think you’re going to find more of this going on. There’s so much more political activity now, of course because you know the larger government is every decision government makes it picks a winner and a loser and someone to pay for it. Mathematically the more it does, the more this competition goes on. So I think you’re gonna that’s why you have more initiatives today and so and will then you had in the fifties or the sixties. So this is a coming thing and I particularly like when volunteers come out and make a difference.
Brad Barber: Well we have less than two minutes left, gentlemen, so any–
David A. Carrillo: No audience questions?
Brad Barber: I have been fielding some audience questions that I’ve folded into my questions. I don’t see any remaining that we haven’t touched on so unless someone else in cyberspace wants to submit a question, I will I will ask each of you to say any any last words and then have our thanks to all of you and sign off. Steve, I see you were looking.
Steven Hayward: No I don’t really have any last words except to say, you know, we’ll have to see yet what the qual. Okay let’s see what happens here but if this if Governor Newsom gets recalled and then we get another i won’t necessarily say exotic governor but someone, you know, I think we’re gonna start seeing this is a much more regular feature of California politics and I think that’s be a mixed bag.
David A. Carrillo: Yeah god I certainly hope not. I’m happy to give Tom the last word here so I can dovetail on that. Overall I think the the folks at my center who have spent a lot of time looking at the initiative process in particular out of all of our direct democracy tools, we’ve we’ve come down to conclude that we’re qualified fans of direct democracy and the reason we qualify it is is there’s two reasons. One one is the the voters occasionally do make decisions that in hindsight weren’t particularly good. I realized that that largely depends on your your position on what if what constitutes a good policy idea and what’s a bad policy idea, you know, so you know those those can be somewhat subjective but there’s a few calls that the electorate has made in the past that that are objectively wrong in hindsight and that’s hard to debate. So there’s that. And then the other the other reason is, you know, is more meta which is the direct democracy writ large it’s a double-edged sword. It puts a significant amount of power directly in the hands of the voters which can be a good thing and on the whole it tends to be a good thing, but it there with this possibility of making mistakes, you know, with great power comes great responsibility when you wield a double-edged sword sometimes you can cut yourself unintentionally so that’s why we say we’re qualified fans. So you know as I said during my spiel that, you know, the the voters are well within their rights to do whatever they want on the recall all I would ask is if they use their power wisely.
Brad Barber: Thank you. Tom.
Thomas Del Beccaro: Well of course Thomas Jefferson preferred to men contestus democracy of storms to to the calm and look the the more top-heavy government gets throughout all of history, the the less responsive the the and and freedom tends to go away. So this periodic exercising of muscles by the electorate is always untimely for the establishment, but always good in the long run, I think, for the republic. And so I’m thrilled to be a part of this particular process. Again, I was asked to to do this in the past but I didn’t agree with it – Newsome won, his policies get to come in. But it crosses the line at some point some point in the manner in which he conducted himself did this and then he lost faith by doing French Laundry and lying about it and that’s what’s hard to that makes it hard for a politician to come back. But I enjoyed my time here. Thanks so much for hosting this. I think it’s a good discussion. I learned a few things from David, I got frustrated by a few things from Steven, but but that’s that’s what he wanted in some regard anyway so I appreciate the time today.
David A. Carrillo: If i managed to teach Tom something today, that’s a win.
Brad Barber:Well thank you all very much. Thanks to our co-sponsors and thanks to the attendees. Wwe may reconvene a similar panel like this as the election goes forward and to look at developments, particularly if any occur in the courts as this moves forward. But thanks again everyone. Okay.
Steven Hayward: Bye-bye.
Thomas Del Beccaro: Thank you.