California Recall UpdatesAfter Newsom’s Decisive Victory, Californians Tally the Cost

How much was spent on the recall? One estimate: Nearly half a billion dollars.

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Poll workers processing ballots in Downey, Calif., on Tuesday.Credit...Allison Zaucha for The New York Times

The recall election is over, and Gov. Gavin Newsom held onto his office, leaving many Californians to ask: So how much did this whole thing cost?

Officially, the state estimated that administering a recall election would cost taxpayers $276 million. But that doesn’t take into account the mountain of cash spent on the campaigns — both Governor Newsom’s effort to keep his job and the attempts to gain traction by his rivals.

David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University and an expert on the state’s ballot initiative system, estimated that, all told, the cost of the recall would be closer to half a billion dollars — $450 million, and possibly more.

The state cost is, nominally, the largest share. To calculate the rest, Professor McCuan estimated that Mr. Newsom’s campaign would end up having raised around $90 million, based on the latest campaign finance filings. All the other candidates combined raised about $50 million.

Additionally, he estimated the spending by outside groups that sought to sway the election but were not bound by the same reporting rules because they weren’t directly affiliated with a candidate. Those could include nonpartisan efforts to get out the vote or some spending by the Democratic or Republican parties.

“There is a lot of money that isn’t necessarily directed at one candidate but is tethered to that candidate,” he said. He guessed it was around $30 million but could be twice that.

Still, none of that addresses what Professor McCuan described as one of the most important impacts of the Newsom recall election: “The spillover effect here is this increases the stakes of all levels of California politics. It raises the bar on the level of resources required to compete.”

California’s recalls and ballot initiatives — examples of direct democracy — were already famously expensive. Last year, the campaigns for and against 12 propositions on the ballot broke records, in large part because of huge spending by Uber and Lyft to pass Proposition 22, which exempted the ride-share companies from a law that would have required them to treat drivers as employees rather than independent contractors.

Mr. McCuan said that many interested parties have watched the way money shaped the recall battle, and are planning how they might be able to adopt bits of the playbook to initiate or influence efforts to recall local officials.

Next year’s midterms, determining the balance of Congress, will set new records, he predicted. “Only the future of the Western world will be at stake, according to both parties.”

A late surge in Latino voters helped Newsom keep his job.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom greeted supporters at a phone bank organized by the Latino Task Force in San Francisco earlier this month.Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times

For weeks, Democrats openly worried that Latino voters were not going to show up in force for Gov. Gavin Newsom. That might have spelled doom for the party, which has relied on support from Latino voters to rise to its current grip on power in the state.

But early numbers suggest that it might have been history repeating itself: a late investment in Latino voter outreach, and a late uptick in interest and voting among Latinos. Though it was far from unanimous, the majority of Latino voters backed Mr. Newsom, with some Latino-heavy precincts defeating the recall by as much as 88 percent, according to an analysis by the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Early numbers, though, suggest that Latino voters may still not be showing up to the polls at the same rates as white, Black and Asian American voters. As of Tuesday morning, 30 percent of Latino voters who received their ballots by mail had sent them back, compared with 50 percent of white voters and 40 percent of Black voters, according to Political Data Inc., a Sacramento-based research group.

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Newsom Remains Governor After California’s Recall Election

Gov. Gavin Newsom gave a victory speech after defeating California’s Republican-led recall vote in a landslide.

We are enjoying an overwhelmingly “no” vote tonight here in the state of California. But “no” is not the only thing that was expressed tonight. I want to focus on what we said yes to as a state. We said yes to science. We said yes to vaccines. We said yes to ending this pandemic. We said yes to people’s right to vote without fear of fake fraud or voter suppression. We said yes to women’s fundamental constitutional right to decide for herself what she does with her body, her fate and future. And so I’m humbled and grateful to the millions and millions of Californians that exercise their fundamental right to vote and express themselves so overwhelmingly by rejecting the division, by rejecting the cynicism, by rejecting so much of the negativity that’s defined our politics in this country over the course of so many years. I just want to say this, tonight I’m humbled, grateful, but resolved in the spirit of my political hero, Robert Kennedy, to make more gentle the life of this world. Thank you all very much. And thank you to 40 million Americans, 40 million Californians, thank you for rejecting this recall.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom gave a victory speech after defeating California’s Republican-led recall vote in a landslide.CreditCredit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Historically, Latinos are more likely to vote late, and many observers thought it was possible to see a last-minute surge among those voters. Exit polling suggests that Latinos made up roughly 24 percent of all voters in the recall, and that about 60 percent of those Latino voters favored keeping the governor in office.

But early precinct analysis suggests the level of support for Mr. Newsom was likely much higher among Latinos. In Orange County, an estimated 83 percent of Latino voters cast their ballots against the recall, while in San Diego County, that number was estimated at 79 percent, according to the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative.

“There’s nothing atypical here,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican consultant who has been critical of both parties’ Latino voter outreach in the past. “This was simple math, especially because it was driven by negative partisanship: You vote against Republicans if you hate Republicans — that is true for white voters and it has been true for us for longer.”

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What the exit polling tells us about the California electorate, and why it might be wrong.

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A poll worker processed ballots at the Tally Operation Center in Downey, Calif., on Tuesday.Credit...Allison Zaucha for The New York Times

The only exit poll from California’s recall election showed Mr. Newsom winning with an unusual coalition. In a departure from nearly every recent election, longstanding racial and ethnic divides between white voters and voters of color seemed to vanish.

According to the exits, 63 percent of people of color and 60 percent of Latino voters chose “No” on the question of whether to remove the governor, compared to 59 percent of white voters. Typically, Democrats fare somewhat worse among white voters in California, but much better among other voters. The 63 percent and 60 percent showings of people of color and Latinos would be the weakest for a California Democrat in memory.

If true, the exit poll result would mark a seminal moment in California’s political evolution. It would suggest that growing Democratic strength among college graduates — and weakness among those without degrees — has begun to significantly reduce the gap between white voters and others, and nearly eliminate it altogether in the state.

But the actual results of the recall election tell a different story. They don’t show much of anything unusual at all. The results suggest that Mr. Newsom won with a fairly typical coalition for a California Democrat in recent years, one not too dissimilar from the one that elected him in 2018 and elected President Biden in 2020.

The governor may have fared somewhat worse among nonwhite voters than Democrats did a decade ago, but in the end, California voted for the Democrat — and it seems to have done so in about the same way it has in recent cycles, including among Asian and Latino voters.

Millions of votes remain to be counted, and a clearer picture may emerge in the coming days as more votes are tallied. But so far, the county-by-county results are nearly identical to those from 2018 or 2020. There’s only one county — Riverside County — that flipped from 2018 so far, and it flipped to Mr. Newsom.

On average in the recall election, the “No” vote in a typical county was only about 2 percentage points different than Mr. Newsom’s vote share in 2018. It’s hard to reconcile the stability of the results so far with the huge shift in Mr. Newsom’s coalition indicated by the exit poll. The results don’t show evidence of a stark drop-off in Democratic support among Latino voters, either.

Mr. Newsom performed about as well as he did four years ago in relatively diverse Southern California, including in heavily Latino stretches of the rural Central Valley and the Imperial Valley, where Democrats only compete on the strength of Latino voters.

Still, Mr. Newsom’s support there was already relatively weak for a Democrat: He often fared about as poorly as Mr. Biden, and worse than Gov. Jerry Brown did in 2014. The 2018 exit poll showed Mr. Newsom winning 64 percent of Latino voters, down from the 73 percent share won by Mr. Brown in 2014.

The exit poll on Tuesday was conducted by Edison Research and sponsored by major television news networks. Unlike traditional in-person exit polls, most California exit poll interviews are typically conducted by telephone to reach early and mail-in voters. This year, the recall exit poll added an online and text message component.

It is possible the additional online and text interviews may have contributed to some of the unusual shifts that were apparent in the poll.

The pandemic was the No. 1 issue for many voters in California’s recall election.

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California Residents Head to the Polls in Recall Election

Voters across California cast their ballots in a recall election to decide the political fate of Gov. Gavin Newsom. The Democrat’s main challenge is from the Republican candidate Larry Elder.

I support the desire to recall him. You know, that’s a constitutional right that, you know, people are exercising, and so, I just don’t support him being recalled. I don’t see Elder or any of the other ones as viable candidates or leadership for the state. I think that Gavin Newsom has failed our state so immensely. I have four children, and the last two years have been atrocious with the schools and just the lockdowns and the homeless and the taxes, it’s too much. Go, Larry! Personally, I think that we need change in California. You know, I’ve been born and raised here, and the state has been in decline for the last five or so years, you know, and it’s getting worse and worse and we really need some change in California. It’s always important to vote, no matter what, to exercise your rights. But today is particularly important because I’m not sure that everybody understands the consequences for not voting. If we recall Governor Newsom, who knows who we end up with, and the options, in my opinion, are not looking very good. I just think there is no reason for the recall. I think the job he’s doing is the best job that he could do, regardless of political affiliation. I think he’s, he’s handling the business he needs to handle for the people. We’ve made a mess of our beautiful state. Larry Elder seems to have all the issues, what’s going on, what needs to be addressed, and I wish him the best today, I pray he gets in, and like I said, I’m a Democrat and Gavin needs to go. Sorry, I voted him in. He needs to go.

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Voters across California cast their ballots in a recall election to decide the political fate of Gov. Gavin Newsom. The Democrat’s main challenge is from the Republican candidate Larry Elder.CreditCredit...Ryan Young for The New York Times

The coronavirus pandemic helped propel the recall attempt of Gov. Gavin Newsom to the ballot in California, and on Tuesday, his handling of the pandemic was an overriding issue as about two-thirds of voters decided he should stay in office.

Across the nation’s most populous state, voters surveyed by New York Times reporters outside polling places cited Mr. Newsom’s pandemic restrictions and support for vaccine mandates as key factors in whether they voted to oust or keep him. The recall served as a preview of next year’s midterm elections nationally, with voters sharply divided along partisan lines over issues such as masks, lockdowns and mandatory vaccinations.

In San Francisco, Jose Orbeta said he voted to keep Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, in office, calling the recall a “waste of time.”

“It’s a power grab by the G.O.P.,” said Mr. Orbeta, a 50-year-old employee of the Department of Public Health. He said Mr. Newsom had done a “decent job” leading California through the pandemic despite his “lapse of judgment” in dining at the French Laundry during the height of the outbreak.

In Yorba Linda, a conservative suburb in Orange County, Jose Zenon, a Republican who runs an event-planning business with his wife, said he was infuriated by Mr. Newsom’s pandemic restrictions and support for vaccine mandates. He pointed to examples of his friends leaving for other states, such as Arizona, Nevada and Texas.

“That train out of here is really long, and we might be getting on it, too,” Mr. Zenon said, just after voting for Larry Elder, the Republican talk-radio host who led the field of challengers hoping to take Mr. Newsom’s job.

“The rules this governor made put a lot of businesses in an impossible position — we were without income for 10 months. Here we live in a condo, we want to have a home, but it’s just impossible. Something’s got to change.”

Some voters in an increasingly politically active constituency of Chinese Americans supported the recall. They blamed Mr. Newsom for a rise in marijuana dispensaries, homeless people and crime that they said are ruining the cluster of cities east of Los Angeles where Chinese immigrants, many of them now American citizens, have thrived for years.

“We really don’t like the situation in California,” said Fenglan Liu, 53, who immigrated to the United States from mainland China 21 years ago and helped mobilize volunteers in the San Gabriel Valley.

“No place is safe; crime is terrible. Newsom needs to go. This is failed management, not the pandemic.”

In the wealthy Orange County suburb of Ladera Ranch, Candice Carvalho, 42, cast her ballot against the recall because, she said, “I thought it was important to show that Orange County isn’t just Republicans.”

She expressed frustration that the recall was taking so much attention at a critical moment in the pandemic.

“It was a waste of money and completely unnecessary,” she said. “And I’m a little shocked we’re focusing on this now.” While she acknowledged knowing little about the specifics of state election laws, she said it seemed “slightly too easy” to get the recall attempt on the ballot.

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The White House says Newsom’s victory validated Biden’s approach to the coronavirus pandemic.

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The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, speaking to reporters on Wednesday.Credit...Pool photo by Oliver Contreras/EPA, via Shutterstock

The White House on Wednesday touted Gov. Gavin Newsom’s landslide win in the California recall election as a triumph for science — and for President Biden’s increasingly aggressive approach to ending the pandemic.

Mr. Newsom’s victory on Tuesday evening was a jolt of welcome political news for Mr. Biden. The president’s approval ratings have sagged in recent weeks following the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and a steep rise in coronavirus infections, which has hampered economic growth and stressed health care systems in areas with low vaccination rates.

“This was a resounding victory for Governor Newsom, but also for a science-based approach to fighting the pandemic, for vaccines, for testing, for steps that will protect more people and save more lives,” Mr. Biden’s spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, told reporters at the White House on Wednesday.

“There was extensive data from last night that shows that Californians were overwhelmingly in favor of a leader who’s willing to take strong steps to defeat Covid and get the economy up and running,” she added. “Governor Newsom has been one of the leading governors in the nation protecting his people and vaccinating his state.”

Although dissatisfaction with lockdowns and mask mandates helped propel efforts to put a recall on the ballot, voters who wanted to keep Mr. Newsom in office cited his management of the pandemic and support for vaccine mandates — and fears that his leading Republican opponent would reverse them — as key in their decision to support him during interviews with New York Times reporters across California on Tuesday.

Ms. Psaki said the president was planning to call the governor to offer his congratulations on Wednesday afternoon.

Mr. Biden campaigned on Monday with Mr. Newsom in Long Beach, where he dismissed the governor’s top Republican challenger, Larry Elder, as a “Trump clone,” and praised Mr. Newsom’s commitment to imposing tight restrictions intended to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Defeated in the recall, Larry Elder looks to a future in conservative politics.

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Though he did not win the recall election, Larry Elder was the leading Republican vote-getter in all 58 California counties.Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Times

If there was a breakout star of California’s recall election, it was Larry Elder, a conservative talk radio host who, over the course of the spring and summer, turned himself into a bona fide Trump-era political celebrity.

Mr. Elder was the leading Republican vote-getter in all 58 California counties. Statewide, he was first on the question of who should replace Gov. Gavin Newsom if he were removed from office, with the only exception being in San Francisco, where a little-known Democrat had 21 percent of the vote early Wednesday.

Mr. Elder has appeared on Fox News 52 times this year and won a platform that he is unlikely to relinquish. Last month, he told a local television reporter in Sacramento that is he is “very likely” to run for governor in 2022, when Mr. Newsom will be facing re-election. His 47 percent vote total on the replace Newsom question makes him a formidable foe against any other Republican candidate.

Yet as Mr. Elder has captured the heart of California’s Trumpian base, his candidacy demonstrated the limitations of that strategy. Mr. Newsom coasted to a recall victory with a margin nearly identical to President Biden’s 2020 victory in California; Mr. Elder did not bring any new voters to the Republican Party in a state where Democrats hold a nearly two-to-one voter registration advantage.

Winning office may not be the goal.

Conservative figures can make a good living on Fox News appearances, and Mr. Elder is skilled at communicating with a right-wing audience from his years on the radio. There is a list of candidates who have lost high-profile races only to transform themselves into political celebrities with large platforms as they seek office again: Democrats Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Beto O’Rourke in Texas and Republicans John James in Michigan and Sean Parnell in Pennsylvania among them.

Mr. Elder’s spokeswoman, Stephanie Marshall, on Wednesday morning declined to comment about his future plans. She wouldn’t say if his vow to run again remained operative. During a concession speech on Tuesday night, Mr. Elder didn’t address 2022 but told his supporters to “stay tuned.”

“We may have lost the battle,” he said, “but we are going to win the war.”

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In somber victory remarks, Newsom warns: ‘Trumpism is not dead.’

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Newsom Remains Governor After California’s Recall Election

Gov. Gavin Newsom gave a victory speech after defeating California’s Republican-led recall vote in a landslide.

We are enjoying an overwhelmingly “no” vote tonight here in the state of California. But “no” is not the only thing that was expressed tonight. I want to focus on what we said yes to as a state. We said yes to science. We said yes to vaccines. We said yes to ending this pandemic. We said yes to people’s right to vote without fear of fake fraud or voter suppression. We said yes to women’s fundamental constitutional right to decide for herself what she does with her body, her fate and future. And so I’m humbled and grateful to the millions and millions of Californians that exercise their fundamental right to vote and express themselves so overwhelmingly by rejecting the division, by rejecting the cynicism, by rejecting so much of the negativity that’s defined our politics in this country over the course of so many years. I just want to say this, tonight I’m humbled, grateful, but resolved in the spirit of my political hero, Robert Kennedy, to make more gentle the life of this world. Thank you all very much. And thank you to 40 million Americans, 40 million Californians, thank you for rejecting this recall.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom gave a victory speech after defeating California’s Republican-led recall vote in a landslide.CreditCredit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s five-minute victory speech came not to a crowd of cheering supporters like the one he addressed with President Biden Monday night in Long Beach, but to a group of reporters gathered in Sacramento.

He dispensed with the typical laundry list of thanks to key political allies and instead sought to frame the entire recall campaign as the latest battle in a broader fight against the forces aligned with former President Donald J. Trump.

“Democracy is not a football, you don’t throw it around,” Mr. Newsom said. “It’s more like an antique vase. You can drop it, smash it into a million different pieces. And that’s what we’re capable of doing if we don’t stand up and meet the moment and push it back.”

Mr. Newsom’s triumph over the recall, he essentially said, was less a cause for celebration than it was an excuse to exhale. A California campaign that Democrats framed as one between the science of the pandemic, multicultural democracy and abortion rights didn’t leave the governor with much room for a victory lap.

The issues he mentioned at the beginning of his speech — promoting vaccines, diversity and women’s rights — are reflected in much of California’s current policy. This wasn’t a campaign Mr. Newsom ran with a platform of moving the state forward; it was a continuation of his warning that if Republicans take control, they would usher in a dystopian, Trump-inspired wasteland.

“We may have defeated Trump, but Trumpism is not dead in this country,” Mr. Newsom said. “The Big Lie, the Jan. 6 insurrection, all the voting suppression efforts that are happening all across this country, what’s happening with the assault on fundamental rights, constitutional rights of women and girls, it’s a remarkable moment in our nation’s history.”

In California, where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two to one, this message was more than enough to carry the day, with a blowout margin that mirrored the 2020 presidential election result in the state.

Newsom’s successful strategy could hold lessons for Democrats in 2022.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, at a campaign event with President Biden in Long Beach, Calif., on Monday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

A key reason that Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat in his first term leading California, will remain in office is that, in a deeply liberal state, he effectively nationalized the recall effort as a Republican plot, making a flame-throwing radio host the Trump-like face of the opposition to polarize the electorate along red and blue lines.

Mr. Newsom found success not because of what makes California different but because of how it’s like everywhere else: He dominated in California’s heavily populated Democratic cities, the key to victory in a state where his party outnumbers Republicans by five million voters.

The recall does offer at least one lesson to Democrats in Washington ahead of next year’s midterm elections: The party’s pre-existing blue- and purple-state strategy of portraying Republicans as Trump-loving extremists can still prove effective with the former president out of office, at least when the strategy is executed with unrelenting discipline, an avalanche of money and an opponent who plays to type.

“You either keep Gavin Newsom as your governor or you’ll get Donald Trump,” President Biden said at an election-eve rally in Long Beach, making explicit what Mr. Newsom and his allies had been suggesting for weeks about the Republican front-runner, the longtime radio host Larry Elder.

By the time Mr. Biden arrived in California, Mr. Newsom was well positioned. Yet in the days leading up to the recall, he was warning Democrats of the right-wing threat they would face in elections across the country next November.

“Engage, wake up, this thing is coming,” he said in an interview, calling Mr. Elder “a national spokesperson for an extreme agenda.”

California, which has not elected a Republican governor since the George W. Bush administration, is hardly a top area of contention in next year’s midterms. Yet for Republicans eying Mr. Biden’s falling approval ratings and growing hopeful about their 2022 prospects, the failed recall is less an ominous portent than a cautionary reminder about what happens when they put forward candidates who are easy prey for the opposition.

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A recall Newsom made about Republicans may provide him little longterm political benefit.

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Scott Walker greeted supporters after surviving a recall election in Milwaukee, Wis., in 2012.Credit...Narayan Mahon for The New York Times

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California modeled his campaign to beat back the attempt to recall him on that of the only other American governor to defeat a recall: Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Republican who retained his office in a 2012 vote.

But while Mr. Newsom, like Mr. Walker nearly a decade ago, was successful in energizing his party’s base to vote in an unusually timed contest, his methods were decidedly different.

Mr. Newsom framed the contest around the idea of a Trump-inspired Republican power grab. The signs displayed at his events, his advertising and campaign literature said “stop the Republican recall.” The statewide Democratic push was to “vote no” on the first question on voters’ ballots, whether to remove him.

Under the Wisconsin recall rules, however, instead of a yes-or-no question on removal followed by a menu of alternatives, voters faced a one-on-one contest between Mr. Walker and Mayor Tom Barrett of Milwaukee. And Mr. Walker had long built an political identity as a bulwark against the state’s once-powerful labor unions, where were decimated by reforms that Mr. Walker ushered into law in 2011.

Mr. Walker’s supporters planted yard signs across the state that read “I Stand With Walker,” an affirmation that his campaign adopted both for the 2012 recall and for his 2014 re-election bid. Each of those contests was far more of a referendum on Mr. Walker’s tenure in office than the California recall was of Mr. Newsom’s stewardship.

That was true in part because California Republicans failed to offer an alternative to Mr. Newsom who was palatable to independent voters, much less to moderate Democrats who may have been frustrated with Mr. Newsom’s handling of the pandemic.

The leading opponent, the conservative talk-show host Larry Elder, embraced Trumpism to an extent that he became nearly a parody of the former president’s supporters, appealing to what in California remains a narrow hard-core base.

For Mr. Walker, beating back the recall led to an easy re-election two years later. Though his presidential campaign in 2016 turned out to be a far better idea in theory than in practice, the recall victory helped give him the image of a conservative giant-killer, which in some circles he still retains.

Like Mr. Wallker, Mr. Newsom, who plans to seek re-election next year, has long had designs on running for national office. The question for him now is how much of a springboard the recall effort will be, when he didn’t make any of it about himself.

How the recall attempt made it to the ballot.

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Mike Netter and Orrin Heatlie, proponents of the recall, led a meeting in Folsom in February.Credit...Max Whittaker for The New York Times

Although Gov. Gavin Newsom’s critics started their recall attempt because they opposed his stances on the death penalty and immigration, it was the politicization of the pandemic that propelled it onto the ballot as Californians became impatient with shutdowns of businesses and classrooms.

Initiated by a retired Republican sheriff’s sergeant in Northern California, Orrin Heatlie, the recall was one of six conservative-led petitions that began circulating within months of Mr. Newsom’s inauguration.

Initially, Mr. Heatlie’s petition had difficulty gaining traction. But it gathered steam as the pandemic swept California and Mr. Newsom struggled to contain it. Californians who at first were supportive of the governor’s health orders wearied of shutdowns in businesses and classrooms, and public dissatisfaction boiled over in November when Mr. Newsom was spotted mask-free at the French Laundry, an exclusive wine country restaurant, after urging the public to avoid gatherings.

A court order extending the deadline for signature gathering because of pandemic shutdowns allowed recall proponents to capitalize on the outrage and unease.

Recall attempts are common in California, where direct democracy has long been part of the political culture. But only one other attempt against a governor has qualified for the ballot — in 2003, when Californians recalled Gov. Gray Davis on the heels of the Sept. 11 attacks, the dot-com bust and rolling electricity blackouts. They elected Arnold Schwarzenegger to replace Mr. Davis as governor, substituting a centrist Republican for a centrist Democrat.

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Some Californians are seeking ways to curb recalls after Tuesday’s election.

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Voters waiting to enter a polling site at a library in Huntington Beach, Calif.Credit...Allison Zaucha for The New York Times

Detractors of California’s special election, which Gov. Gavin Newsom won on Tuesday, say the recall process is democracy gone off the rails, a distraction from crises that require the government’s attention, and a waste of hundreds of millions of dollars.

California’s forests are on fire, with wildfire smoke sending thousands of residents fleeing. Towns are running out of water from severe drought. And some rural hospitals are packed with coronavirus patients.

Many voters who went to the polls on Tuesday said the election was an unwelcome distraction that preoccupied Mr. Newsom and, some critics said, might have prevented him from taking on tough decisions.

“This recall is so dumb,” said Frankie Santos, a 43-year-old artist who voted in Hollywood on Tuesday. “It’s so not a good use of resources.” She said that if she could have scrawled “absolutely no” to recalling Mr. Newsom without invalidating her ballot, she would have.

Anthony Rendon, the speaker of the State Assembly, and other legislative leaders have already said discussions were underway to place a constitutional amendment regarding recalls before voters in 2022.

“This is a system that was put in place 100 years ago,” said Mr. Rendon, referring to the current recall rules. “We’ll be asking if this is what’s best for the state.”

The election, which is costing the state $276 million to administer, has at times had a circus atmosphere to it, not least when one of the 46 candidates on the ballot brought a large bear to a campaign rally.

No one in the state’s Democratic leadership is suggesting the elimination of recalls, which are baked into the State Constitution. But many are vowing to make it more difficult for them to qualify for the ballot, or to change the rules on how a successor is chosen.

Scenes from polling places across California.

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With more than nine million ballots already cast early or by mail, Californians, from Mendocino County to Monterey Park, came out to cast their votes and determine Gov. Gavin Newsom’s fate. In Laytonville, the local Lions Club served as a voting center.

People lined up to vote outside the Central Library in Huntington Beach in Orange County, while election workers delivered registrar supplies. Richard Thompson, an assistant election manager, prepared for Election Day in the Redwood Playhouse in Garberville, Calif.; and one voter in Anaheim was accompanied by her young child as she cast a ballot in the recall election.

Statewide, some 13 million ballots were left to be cast or postmarked on Election Day, but the race was expected to have high turnout overall for an off-year election.

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How a 29-year-old YouTuber earned more votes in San Francisco than Larry Elder.

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Kevin Paffrath speaks during a debate between candidates in the California recall election in Sacramento last month.Credit...Pool photo by Scott Strazzante

Kevin Paffrath, a 29-year-old real estate broker and star of the “Meet Kevin” YouTube channel, pulled off perhaps the only real political stunner in California’s recall election.

In all but one county in California, the top vote-getter to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom was Larry Elder, the conservative talk-radio host and Republican front-runner. That one exception was the City and County of San Francisco.

Mr. Paffrath managed to nab 21 percent of the vote in San Francisco on the ballot’s second question, which asked who should replace Mr. Newsom if he was successfully recalled, according to election results data. Mr. Elder won 20 percent of the vote and Kevin Faulconer, the Republican moderate and former mayor of San Diego, earned 11 percent.

Votes were still being tallied on Wednesday, but statewide, Mr. Elder won nearly 47 percent of the vote on the replacement question, and Mr. Paffrath was in second place with nearly 10 percent.

So how did a political novice with little name recognition — a personal finance guru and father of two who studies Plato and Aristotle — do it?

The answer, some say, can be summed up with one letter: D.

Mr. Paffrath is a Democrat, while Mr. Elder and Mr. Faulconer are Republicans. That seemed to make all the difference in liberal San Francisco.

“I think it was mostly the ‘D’ — absolutely,” said Jason McDaniel, an associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University.

Mr. Paffrath disagreed, and said there was a little more to it.

In a phone interview on Wednesday, Mr. Paffrath at times expressed excitement about the results but also disappointment that the recall had failed and Mr. Newsom had kept his job.

He said that he believed his strong showing was because of a higher level of frustration in San Francisco with “homelessness, forced schooling and unaffordable housing,” all of which were tenets of his platform.

He also said he may have been helped by a demographic he cultivated with his social media background.

“The vast majority of my viewers are between 25 and 45,” Mr. Paffrath said of his YouTube channel, on which he dispenses advice in videos such as “Top 5 Stocks to Buy NOW!” “So it’s possible that maybe we got more traction in the tech community because of the financial education videos that I make on YouTube.”

He said that he’s mulling a run for governor in 2022 or 2026.

Mr. Paffrath said his campaign emerged out of frustration — watching his friends and family leave California because of what he called the many failures of the state, including a high cost of living. Mr. Paffrath said his mother moved from California to Utah in 2012 because of affordability issues.

“If we don’t fix it, in 20 years my 3-year-old and 6-year-old are going to look at me and say, ‘Dad, why did you raise us in California? The state’s bankrupt. You should have moved us to Texas or Florida,’” Mr. Paffrath said. “I have nightmares about that.”

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