Larry Elder, running today to replace Governor Gavin Newsom if Newsom is recalled, recently committed to appointing a Republican as a U.S. Senator if current Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein resigns.
That one statement, combined with the fact that Elder is the front-runner, will probably cinch the election for Newsom. Of millions of Democrats who might not have voted, a substantial fraction will have probably voted to prevent what they see as that awful outcome. That means that they will vote not to recall. Given the ratio of Dems to Reps, that means that the recall will almost certainly fail.
So was that an error by Elder? Not necessarily. We need to distinguish between Elder’s incentive and the incentive of those who want to replace Newsom.
By committing to appoint a Republican, Elder appeals to a Republican base and gives them yet another reason to vote for him. Remember that Elder has two goals: (1) recall Newsom and (2) be the top vote getter for replacing Newsom. If Elder had refrained from committing to appoint a Republican, he would have helped achieve his first goal but he would likely have reduced the probability of being the highest-vote-getting candidate to replace Newsom, thus making his second goal less achievable. If he cares way more about his becoming governor than about recalling Newsom, his action is not necessarily an error on his part.
Incentives matter!
READER COMMENTS
Daniel
Sep 14 2021 at 7:57pm
FYI: the governor’s name is Gavin Newsom, not Newsome.
David Henderson
Sep 14 2021 at 8:09pm
Thanks. Correction made.
Christophe Biocca
Sep 14 2021 at 8:14pm
You’ve got one left in the first sentence of the second paragraph.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Sep 14 2021 at 8:14pm
California’s error is in combining recall with replacement. Maybe that was a good idea in 1911, but does not make much sense today, especially w/o rank order voting.
Christophe Biocca
Sep 14 2021 at 8:22pm
The recall process definitely has a lot more of these strategic decisions playing out (including whether the party of the recalled governor tries to put forward their own replacement candidate). It has its own set of Arrow-theorem-like desirable properties that can’t all be true simultaneously:
If there’s majority support to recall the governor, the governor no longer holds office.
Whoever replaces the governor has more popular support than the governor.
The current system favors 1 over 2. If you let Newsom put himself in the list of replacement candidates, you’d gain 2, but lose 1 (if everyone who votes no picks him and they’re a plurality but not a majority).
Alan Goldhammer
Sep 15 2021 at 8:21am
the Democrats brought big money and names into the recall race and got the voter turnout they needed. Newsom looks likely to get north of 60% in a state that is heavily Democratic. Elder rose to the ‘top’ of a list of not very good choices which worked in Newsom’s favor as well.
In other news, the Democrats have full control in New York state and will handle redistricting with the potential elimination of 5 Republican congressional seats. If they are successful, it will negate the Gerrymandering that will take place elsewhere. Just to be clear, I am not a supporter of party controlled redistricting and would prefer it be done by an independent commission. We had Gerrymandering in Maryland 10 years ago and the Republicans lost one of the two Congressional seats they controlled.
robc
Sep 15 2021 at 1:30pm
Even independent commissions gerrymander, just not as bad. And they aren’t independent, they still have their biases.
The best I can come up with is multi-member, single-district, single transferrable vote in each state. It would offer the best representation along whatever lines best represent the voters.
In the larger states, it will probably break down pretty smoothly along party/racial/key-issue lines. Whatever factors people consider important. It would lead to some pretty wacky reps from the really large states…it would take less than 2% of the vote to get elected in CA. Even libertarians could have representation!
I could see this leading to a multi-party system, as there is no need to fit within the two party system.
Michael
Sep 15 2021 at 1:59pm
If you look up “FairVote,” they propose that states be divided into multi-member congressional districts of 3 to 5 members per district, then single transferrable vote elections. In a 3-member district, a candidate is elected if they get 25% + 1 vote.
Since districts would still need to be drawn, some gerrymandering would be possible but it would be much harder.
robc
Sep 16 2021 at 9:08am
My problem is exactly the 25% threshhold.
Now, in a smaller state, that is going to exist. But what is wrong with the (slightly less than) 2% threshhold in California? Why should the Greens have zero reps from CA instead of, say, 3?
Yes a 52 deep ballot would be absolute chaos – but so what? If you are a straight D voter, you can still figure out how to rank the choices from 1 thru 52.
It would be interesting to see how many people care more about local than party.
Say, someone who normally votes D. But their choices are 1,2,3 for local Ds, then 4,5,6 are local Rs, before going 7-whatever as non-local Ds. Or you may have that one particular member of your party that you despise and just skip over.
I am in Colorado now, I would have fun with an 8 deep ballot.
Michael
Sep 15 2021 at 1:55pm
I’m not sure if an aggressive NY gerrymander will negate Republican agains from gerrymandering elsewhere – Republicans have a lot of states and districts work work with while Dems have relatively few. But NY is the single biggest gerrymandering opportunity for either party.
robc
Sep 16 2021 at 9:12am
Technically NY uses an independent commission, it is just they aren’t being very independent and are going to punt back to the legislature.
I like what the KY (my original home state) Supreme Court did. They still use partisan redistricting, but they put some strong gerrymandering rules in place, in that the minimum number of counties must be split.
They still gives some say, but it eliminates the worst cases of gerrymandering. Now its a question of “Do we split county A or county B?” and “Now that we have chosen A to split, how do we split it exactly?” You don’t get the district snaking up an interstate median halfway across a state.
Ken Costello
Sep 16 2021 at 7:05pm
But I think Elder made an unconscionable mistake: his Senate statement undoubtedly turned out more Democrat to vote “no” on the recall, and probably had little effect on getting more votes in the second part of the ballot. The reason for the latter is that the the polls indicated (if I am correct) that he was far ahead of the other candidates for replacing Newsom and almost anyone who would have replaced Newsom would select a Republican for the Senate (since the leading candidates for replacing Newsom were Republicans or at least not Democrats).
David Henderson
Sep 17 2021 at 10:25am
Good point. I failed to look at the polling data at the time he made his statement.
Moreover, the other person who made a mistake is Mark Levin. He was the one who asked Elder in an interview whether he would appoint a Republican. Anyone who knows Levin’s views knows that he was all in on recalling Newsom. So his mistake was even less forgivable.
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