Newsom makes final push in recall election, gets help from the president

In a final push on the campaign to keep his job in the face of a recall election, California Governor Gavin Newsom recruited the help of President Joe Biden Monday night. The video above shows the Monday night rally, as well as some early voters casting their ballots earlier in the day.

“The eyes of the nation, this is not hyperbole, the eyes of the nation are on California,” President Biden said. “Because the decision you’re about to make isn’t just going to, isn’t just going to have a huge impact on California, it’s going to reverberate around the nation.”

At a Monday night rally, Biden discussed Larry Elder, the leading Republican candidate against Newsom in the recall election.

“Last year I got to run against the real Donald Trump,” Biden said. “Well, this year, this year, the leading Republican running for governor is the closest thing to a Trump clone that I’ve ever seen in your state.”

Elder staged his final rally in nearby Orange County. He asked his supporters to reach out to friends and neighbors and urge them to recall Newsom.

“Make sure you have your friends vote, vote, vote, and try and get 10 more friends to vote and hit every call, make every call, knock on every door, we’re gonna win this thing if we turn out the vote,” Elder said.

Republicans have criticized Newsom for rising taxes, an unaddressed homeless crisis, as well as climbing crime rates.

“There’s no front that I can think of where this man has done a good job — not on schools, not on homelessness, not in the way he shut down this state,” Elder said earlier in the day Monday.

Recent polling has shown Newsom holding an edge in the recall election. Republicans will need a major election day turnout to catch Democrats, as nearly 8 million Californians already have cast mail-in ballots.

In recent days, Elder suggested the results of the recall election could be skewed by unspecified “shenanigans,” echoing Trump’s baseless claims of voting fraud in his 2020 race with Biden.

There has been no confirmed evidence of widespread fraud. Elder’s campaign website has linked to a “Stop CA Fraud” site where people could sign a petition demanding a special legislative session to investigate “twisted results”. This came despite the fact that no results had been announced at the time.