The Trailer: "Reopen" didn't move votes in 2020. What about now?

Then the governor went to dinner.

Three months after Newsom defied his own pandemic restrictions and attended a lobbyist’s party at the French Laundry, California is bracing for its second gubernatorial recall election this century. It’s powered by conservative activists who want the shutdowns to end, and by Republicans who think fed-up voters are ready to reopen — and ready to blame Democrats for making the pandemic more painful.

“This is all about the arrogance of power," Randy Economy, a spokesman for the recall campaign, said in an interview. “When you have a crisis, you want the best and the brightest to help you get through it, and that’s not what we have in Gavin Newsom.”

Locked out of power at the federal level, Republicans have increasingly focused on shutdowns as a way to win back the suburbanites who drifted away during the Trump presidency.

In Virginia, Republican candidates for governor have campaigned on ending the school closures; in New Jersey, they’ve criticized the Democratic governor’s vaccine rollout. The first Republican ad buys ahead of the 2022 House midterms have been billboards accusing Democrats of opposing school reopenings because of their support from teacher’s unions; Republicans with national platforms have made the same argument, suggesting that Democrats simply can’t be trusted with ending shutdowns if it means offending their constituencies.

“The Democratic Party puts the interest of education unions and special interests ahead of the well-being of our children and our families,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday, part of a full-court press against the Biden administration’s guidelines for remote or hybrid schooling in places with high infection rates. “These kids have been out of school in parts of this country for almost a year, and if you follow that [Centers for Disease Control] guidance, they will not go back in this school year. They may not even go back in the fall.”

But the GOP plan mentioned in its advertising hasn't caught fire — it would cut funding to schools that weren't fully open, a political non-starter. And public polling suggests the country might not be on the Republicans' side.

Since the start of the year, national polls have found voters more in agreement with the teachers unions than with the demands for reopening. A YouGov poll this month, before the new CDC guidelines, found just 26 percent of voters in favor of “completely re-opening” the schools instead of “partially” re-opening or going online-only. Sixty-two percent of Trump supporters and 55 percent of Republicans favored complete reopening right away; no other segment of the electorate favored that option by a majority.

“They’re making hay of a problem that Trump made incalculably worse,” said Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, who has been in the crosshairs as Republicans accuse Democrats of ignoring science and research to mollify unions. A poll of AFT members, conducted by Hart Research Associates and shared with The Post, found that 63 percent of teachers who have returned to classrooms felt comfortable at work, and that 88 percent were comfortable with the new CDC guidelines. 

“They did nothing to help us get the guidance, the data, or the resources we’d been fighting for since March,” Weingarten said of Republican critics such as DeSantis. “Now there's a new president, and they respond by pitting educators against parents."

The public mood has been consistent for months, and the Biden administration, still in its honeymoon period, has gotten more skeptical questions about closures without a shift in voters' perception. As Newsom learned in November, one blunder can anger voters in a hurry; his actions since the recall campaign got serious included lifting a ban on outdoor dining, and promising a new plan on school reopenings. 

Nine more months of shutdowns, the nightmare sketched out by DeSantis, could shatter voters' willingness to go along with this. But if mass vaccinations proceed and the closures end, there might be a recall election responding to a crisis that's already over. Organizers, still energized by the frustration they see from voters, are aware.

“This campaign is not just about the lockdown,” Economy said. “It’s about Gavin Newsom and his lack of any ability to lead.”

Reading list

“A GOP donor gave $2.5 million for a voter fraud investigation. Now he wants his money back,” by Shawn Boburg and Jon Swaine

A comprehensive look at how one deep-pocketed donor fooled himself into funding election challenges.

“Nikki Haley's time for choosing,” by Tim Alberta

Is the former U.N. ambassador “friends” with Donald Trump? Read a few thousand words to find out.

“Ambassador sweepstakes underway as figures jockey for plum posts,” by Matt Viser and Anne Gearan

What did President Biden's biggest donors buy? A bit less than usual.

“The Biden team wants to transform the economy. Really,” by Noam Scheiber

The long game, with plenty of electoral implications, of the Biden agenda.

Republicans vs. Republicans

The second impeachment of Donald Trump made history, and so did his second acquittal. The 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump represented the largest bloc from a president's party, ever. So did the seven Republicans who voted on Saturday to convict the former president. 

They fell 10 votes short of a final judgment on Trump, and had they gotten there, a simple majority of senators could have barred the 45th president from ever again seeking office — something they clearly had the numbers to do, if not for the supermajority requirement.

“One of the goals of the Democrats is to deprive former President Donald Trump of the right to run for President in the future,” the Republican Party of East Baton Rouge Parish, La., said last week. “[That] would be undemocratic and a complete violation of the intent of the Constitution and place the United States in the category with Russia and various dictatorships and oligarchies around the world where the leading opposition figure is forbidden to run for President.”

Why did the East Baton Rouge Parish Republicans weigh in? Because Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana voted to let the trial proceed, then voted to convict. Cassidy, who won reelection to a full term three months ago, is the only member of his party's pro-conviction minority who isn't planning to retire soon, or had a previous conflict with the disgraced ex-president. Almost all of them are now fending off, or shrugging off, official censures from local Republicans.

“He does not represent the people of this state or the Republican Party,” the parish GOP wrote of Cassidy. “He represents himself and has joined with some of the most dishonest and disreputable forces in our country to be part of this despicable sham.”

If grass-roots activists want revenge for the impeachment vote, the Senate didn't give them much to work with. Two of the votes for conviction came from Republicans who are retiring in 2022, Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina and Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. Both have been scorched by their parties back home, and reacted with a mixture of exhaustion and disinterest.

“Combined with his previous attacks on America’s Second Amendment, Senator Patrick Joseph Toomey continues to use the Republican banner while actively working against conservative values, principles, and elected Republicans in public office,” Republicans in Centre County, Pa. wrote after the votes. In Washington County, outside Pittsburgh, GOP chairman Dave Ball was even blunter.

“We did not send him there to vote his conscience,” Ball, told a Pittsburgh TV station. “We did not send him there to ‘do the right thing,’ or whatever.”

Burr's local GOP went after him on similar terms. In a statement, Burr called it a “sad day for North Carolina Republicans,” and stood by his vote, accusing the party leaders of choosing “loyalty to one man over the core principles of the Republican Party and the founders of our great nation.”

Both men had been withdrawing from leadership in their state parties anyway, as soon as they announced they were leaving. Of the remaining four votes against Trump, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine isn't on a ballot again until 2026, and used her distance from Trump to win reelection last year, though local Republicans are mobilizing to censure her. Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, also reelected last year, recorded a preemptive video mocking his second party censure. Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah won't face voters again until 2024, and his party officially tempered its criticism, but Romney-backed party changes have reduced activists' role in picking nominees. (The convention system that ousted former senator Bob Bennett 11 years ago has been updated, allowing candidates to seek election with a wider primary electorate.)

The last Republican “aye” on conviction, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, has carved out a political identity that doesn't really rely on local Republicans. In 2010, Murkowski narrowly lost a primary to libertarian tea party activist Joe Miller. She charged back to win election as a write-in candidate, rejoined the party — then in 2016, she beat Miller again, capturing 44 percent of the vote as a Republican to his 29 percent of the vote as a libertarian nominee. Last year, as Trump underperformed recent GOP nominees in Alaska, voters passed a “top four” ballot reform that removed the power of parties to nominate candidates in primaries altogether.

Ad watch

Kerry Donovan, “Real Toughness.” Democrats, who lost several 2020 House races they expected to win, were especially disappointed in Colorado's 3rd Congressional District. Among their reasons for optimism — the party held a similar seat for years. But Republican incumbent Scott Tipton lost his primary to restaurant owner Lauren Boebert, who ultimately defeated two-time Democratic nominee Diane Mitsch Bush. 

Donovan, a state senator from the district, is the first real recruit for Democrats of the 2022 cycle. Her launch ad, showing her at work in snowy conditions, is full of references to a certain unnamed member of Congress who has run on her gun ownership and willingness to fight liberals. “The last thing we need are people in Congress who talk tough and stoke division and fear,” Donovan says. “Real toughness is having to drive miles in the snow to take your sick child to the doctor.”

Poll watch

Should former President Trump face criminal charges for inciting violence against the government? (Quinnipiac, 1,056 adults)

Yes, face charges: 45%
No, not face charges: 6%
He's not responsible: 43%

Public opinion of the post-insurrection impeachment tilted in one direction, with most Americans favoring punishment for former president Donald Trump: Nearly every Democrat, a solid majority of independents, and a handful of Republicans. As they defended the former president in the Senate, Republicans left no argument unmade: Convicting Trump would prevent national “healing,” convicting Trump was unconstitutional, punishment for Trump should be meted out by courts and not senators.

The early read from polling is that these arguments confused voters while not really moving the numbers. By a seven-point margin, voters say they wanted Trump to be convicted; the idea of a conviction at some later date by a different government authority is less popular, as seen here. By a 12-point margin, voters say that Trump should be prevented from ever holding office again, by far the most popular punishment asked about here. But Senate Republicans closed that door by refusing to convict him, as the ban on seeking office can only be voted on afterward.

Do Democrats and Republicans do such a poor job that a third party is needed? (Gallup, 906 adults)

Yes, third party needed: 62%
No, major parties fine: 33%

The 2020 election saw the biggest collapse in third-party support in decades, as even the celebrity candidacy of Kanye West — a bumbling lark that cost him millions of dollars — failed to attract many votes. But so long as there's frustration with the direction of the country, and so long as younger voters enter the electorate with no attachment to Democrats or Republicans, “we need a third party” is going to get heads nodding. Here, Gallup finds the highest level of support for a hypothetical third party since it started asking the question 18 years ago. 

Independents always have supported a third option; it would be surprising if they didn't. Republicans have said “no” to the question when a president of their own party has been popular, as have Democrats. But the shift in Republican opinion since the 2020 election has been dramatic. Democratic interest in a third party fell by 6 points, independent support fell by 2 points, and Republican support surged by 23 points. The polling was conducted before reports that anti-Trump conservatives and Trump himself had speculated about forming their own parties; 41 percent of Republicans simultaneously want Trump to remain leader of their party and want a third option.

Special elections

In Texas, the date for a special election in the 6th Congressional District hasn't been set yet, but candidates have started to pile up. Most recently, Democrat Jana Lynne Sanchez, who challenged the now-deceased Rep. Ron Wright for the seat three years ago, launched her campaign In the middle of the first snowstorm in years.

“It's been a little bit chaotic today,” said Sanchez, a communications consultant who sold her company before the 2018 run, in a phone interview. “This morning, I woke up and there was no power. I had to go check on my mother, because I couldn't reach her by phone. And now we're headed to my boyfriend's house because we think he has power. A lot of things are closed, and a lot of people are cold.”

But Sanchez said she'd already raised $100,000 since putting the campaign together over the past week, a sum that took her months to build during her 2018 run. What had been a safe Republican district, in the suburbs south of Dallas and Fort Worth, backed President Trump by 3 points. 

“When I ran in 2018, there was not a soul in the world who thought the seat was winnable,” she said. “Not even me, most of the time. But the previous candidate lost by 19 points, and I lost it by eight. I could see the impact of even just a little bit of spending.”

Sanchez said that her campaign would focus on the economy and recovery from the pandemic, “roll out the vaccine” and “get a handle on covid.” She favored “what President Biden has proposed” on health care, including a new government-run health plan and expanded Medicare and Medicaid, but not a complete replacement of the insurance market through Medicare-for-all. Republicans had lost support even since the last election, she suggested, because of “what happened on January 6.” But the coronavirus probably will dominate the election, and Sanchez plans to run as a supporter of the Biden administration's response.

“There was a big pushback in Texas against these measures that would have saved lives and gotten us back to work sooner,” Sanchez said. “And what you saw instead was that everything became a political issue. You'd go to the store with a mask and people would say: 'You know it's a hoax, right?' I have a lot of friends who are teachers, and they're torn on this, but all we did was put kids back in school and we didn't ask how we keep everybody safe. With better planning, there wouldn't have been so many deaths, and the economy would have rebounded faster. I was disappointed that Republicans in Texas made this a false choice between the economy and human lives.”

Wright will be laid to rest this weekend, and potential Republican candidates, which include his widow, Susan, have been holding off on announcements before that.

In Wisconsin, some ballots in today's primary elections will feature special elections to replace two Republicans in safe legislative seats. In the 13th Senate District, four Republicans will battle to replace Rep. Scott Fitzgerald; in the 89th Assembly District, five Republicans will face off to replace a former legislator who resigned to lead the Wisconsin Association of Health Plans. The elections will unfold weeks later, and Democrats already selected their candidates.

Candidate tracker

Is it too early to track the moves of potential presidential candidates? Not for this newsletter. Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota will keynote the Minnesota Republicans' Lincoln Reagan Dinner next month, held at a to-be-revealed location due to coronavirus restrictions. Those restrictions, a constant point of conflict between the party and Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, were among the reasons the party held its last retreat in Deadwood, S.D.

There's no major federal election in Minnesota next year, but two high-profile Republicans made moves this week to run for Senate seats in swing states. In Pennsylvania, 2018 Republican candidate for lieutenant governor Jeff Bartos left his nonprofit organization on Tuesday, a necessary step if he wants to replace the retiring Pat Toomey. (Bartos's last public statement was a tweet calling for the Senate to investigate Robinhood after the stocks app stopped trade on GameStop shares.) 

In Georgia, former senator David Perdue filed paperwork that would allow him to explore a run against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock; Perdue narrowly lost to Georgia's other senator, Democrat Jon Ossoff, in last month's runoff. In a statement released Tuesday, Perdue cited the “radical” policies of the Biden administration, specifically the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, to argue that the president was moving away from the moderation he'd run on.

Countdown

… nine days until the Conservative Political Action Conference
… 32 days until special House election primaries in Louisiana
… 112 days until primaries in New Jersey and Virginia
… 126 days until New York City’s primary