The Case for Recalling Gavin Newsom
2021-03-21 · Guest: Kevin Kiley (California State Assemblyman) · 52:07
Recall movement of Governor Gavin Newsom
Bob Zadek interviews California State Assemblyman Kevin Kiley about the movement to recall Governor Gavin Newsom. They discuss Newsom’s use of emergency powers during the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact of school and business closures, the controversial AB 5 legislation, and allegations of corruption in state contracting.
Topics: Gavin Newsom, California Recall, COVID-19, Executive Overreach, School Closures, AB 5, Independent Contractors, California Legislature, Kevin Kiley, EDD, Non-delegation doctrine
Speakers: Bob Zadek, Kevin Kiley
Introduction to the Recall Movement [00:22]
Bob Zadek: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show in all of radio. Thank you so much for listening this Sunday morning. I haven’t checked the Chinese calendar, but I suspect if we would, we would find that 2021, or perhaps 2020—it may be a fiscal year—but this period of time must be on the Chinese calendar the year of the impeachment/recall. Because what have we going on? We have former President Trump impeached a couple of times. We have Governor Cuomo in New York staring down the barrel of an impeachment. And of course, we have the subject of this morning’s show, Governor—hopefully former Governor—Gavin Newsom in California, who is presently on—will be, we hope, on the ballot for the first in about a decade, California’s recall effort to recall the governor and replace him with somebody else.
So this seems to be the failure, the fall of the authoritarian chief executives. We’ll see what history does with it. The California recall effort, the subject of this morning’s show, is quite interesting. California has shown itself to be willing to relegate governors to the ignominy of being recalled, being fired. About a decade ago, Gray Davis was kicked out and replaced by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. We will see what happens with the current recall effort. It is interesting on so many levels. It is, of course, a microcosm of what has gone on in other states around the country, that is, the misbehavior of the governor, which invited the recall, which made the governor a target for the recall. And California, of course—folks around the country tend to pay attention to California because in many ways, California could be subtitled “Coming to a State Near You.” California is often the first in the nation for stuff, good and bad. We will find out if we are first in the nation in recalling governors because of their mishandling of the COVID and other misdeeds.
To help us understand all of this, I am fortunate, we are all fortunate, and I am delighted to welcome to the show Kevin Kiley. Kevin is a member of the California State Assembly. He was elected in 2016 and re-elected in 2018. He has led, and truly led—he has been the heart and soul of the recall effort, which appears to be, appears to be—I don’t want to jinx it—successful. We don’t know yet. Right now we’re in the counting stage, as you will all learn. But how did we get here? What’s special about Gavin Newsom, both in a good and bad way—mostly bad? What’s special about Gavin Newsom that justifies, if it does, his being recalled as opposed to simply letting the voters decide what should happen to him in the next election? So Kevin, welcome to the show this morning. The story of the recall of Gavin Newsom is quite an interesting story. It gives us all lots and lots of faith that, in fact, grassroots movements can succeed if they have the right leadership and the right goal. So Kevin, welcome to the show this morning.
Kevin Kiley: Thank you very much, Bob. Great to be on.
Grassroots Origins of the Recall [04:34]
Bob Zadek: Now, Kevin, there you were, you were a second-termer in the California State Assembly. You were a Republican. You didn’t have a whole lot of friends as you looked to your left and looked to your right in the chamber, I suspect. And there you were, second-termer, not exactly in the leadership of the house, destined to be in the leadership of the Assembly, but not yet there. So tell us about why—how did you become involved? What made you possibly think that you could succeed, that it was the highest and best use of your time, as they say, to devote even five minutes to something that appeared to be such a long shot as the recalling of a powerful Democratic governor in an overwhelmingly Democratic state?
Kevin Kiley: Yeah, well, you know, I should say, I wasn’t the person who started the recall, and I wasn’t even one of the people who was involved in the early stages of it. That was ordinary citizens. I mean, it was the people of California. This is a citizens’ movement that sprang up and gained momentum in response to Gavin Newsom’s unprecedented abuses of power during the COVID-19 era. And you know, when I decided that I would get involved, it was really just to be—to contribute in any way I could to that citizens’ movement and to lend my voice to it. But that’s what’s made it so powerful, is this isn’t something that’s led by politicians like me; it’s led by ordinary people who, you know, are saying enough is enough, who have been disenfranchised, who have been dispossessed, who have been told for a year that they don’t get to play any role as citizens in our government and in decisions that have, you know, profound impacts on their daily lives, that everything should just be up to one person, as we’ve witnessed that, you know, lead to the worst outcomes here in California for any state during the whole COVID era. And by the way, this is just in some sense an extension of trends that existed before COVID-19, as our government had become more and more centralized, as more and more power had been taken away from citizens and local communities. So I, you know, saw on the one hand, you know, the extraordinary and unprecedented harm that Gavin Newsom was causing through his abuses of power, and on the other hand, you know, the unprecedented citizens’ movement that was—that grew up in response to it. And that’s, you know, why I decided to become involved, is that I really feel that this has the potential to be transformational and to set California on a new course.
School Closures and Special Interests [07:31]
Bob Zadek: I sure agree with you. But what we have—observers from outside of California might say, “Well, what you have here is you have a governor who made,” as Gavin Newsom would say, “he made mistakes.” And of course, politicians always say the indirect “mistakes were made,” not “I messed up,” although he did confess at least to the French Laundry. But what’s the headline here? If the headline is “Governors did a bad job,” that doesn’t get a lot of attention because many governors, one way or another, did a bad job. But a recall is kind of an extreme measure, and therefore, what are the extreme evidences of misbehavior that warrant the extreme, if you will, punishment or reaction, a recall, as opposed to simply let the voters decide in the next gubernatorial election?
Kevin Kiley: Right. And a remedy is an extraordinary—recall is an extraordinary remedy. I agree with that. And it’s why, you know, it’s not one that I turn to lightly. I tried to work with the governor, I tried to get him to reverse course, but he has refused. And while he might say he makes—has made mistakes, you know, he wasn’t really specific about that. The mistakes continue to this day. And so in a nutshell, what this governor has done is he’s taken extraordinary emergency powers and has abused them for personal political gain. He’s taken the shared sacrifice of millions of people and cashed it in for his own self-promotion. Give you one example of that is the school closures. You know, California has had the most severe school closures of any state in the country. And you know, if the governor says “mistakes,” well, the mistakes are being made right now. We are 50th out of 50 in getting our kids back to the classroom. Every other state has done a better job, and the vast majority of them have done a much better job of getting their schools up and running again. But in California, that has not been the case because of the power that Gavin Newsom’s largest campaign donor, the California Teachers Association, has over his decision-making. And so here you have a governor who has caused just incalculable harm to millions of California kids at the behest of his biggest campaign contributor that he wants to keep happy for his own political purposes. I mean, if that is not something that merits the extraordinary remedy of a recall, then I’m not sure what does.
The Arrogance of Power and the “French Laundry” [10:04]
Bob Zadek: Gavin Newsom is a professional politician. And professional politicians, I suspect—not being one, I’m only guessing—are constantly, automatically making calculations every time they take any public political step. They’re making a calculation: how will it enhance their career goals? And Gavin Newsom, I suspect, does it automatically, instinctively, every minute of every day. Help us understand—and of course, it’s a guess, but this is an opinion show, guesses are valuable, especially if the person offering the observation is in a position to know a lot more than the average person, and you are in such a position. Since the school closure decision—and it’s not a decision, it’s multiple decisions governing 30-plus million people, so it’s a whole attitude—what was going on, do you think, in Newsom’s—was he just—I don’t mean to be abusive, and I don’t know a better way to express it—was he just really making stupid decisions, or did he make a calculation that went wrong? Did he have no choice? Was he just really bad at being a governor? It’s almost inconceivable that you can make a mistake that bad. After all, you have access to information, you have access to polls. So help us understand how we got into this pickle in so far as school closure is concerned.
Kevin Kiley: Well, we got into it because the California Teachers Association, the state’s biggest spending special interest, saw this as their Super Bowl, that getting into a state of a long-term school closure would then allow them to extract everything they’ve ever wanted to negotiate out of that eventually. So, you know, Newsom had himself said, I believe it was in early July of last year, that he wouldn’t do a statewide school closure order because every district is unique and distinct. And I told his office that there is absolutely no evidence to justify a statewide school closure order, and in fact, all the evidence points in the opposite direction. But then the CTA, California Teachers Association, weighed in, they put pressure on him, and he did a complete 180 and ordered almost every—the vast majority, it was over 95% of schools, or the student—you know, schools serving 95% of students to be closed for the coming school year. And that’s why we’re still in the situation that we’re in. And it’s why, you know, even though you’ve had, you know, every other state has taken steps in this direction, or, you know, a lot of states have 100% of their kids in school, the evidence is extremely clear. Just a few days ago, 650 physicians in California wrote the governor a letter. Even in places like San Francisco, the city is suing the school district. And yet Gavin Newsom has been unwilling to really take any meaningful step to get schools open again. Even the other West Coast states, Washington and Oregon, they have ordered their schools open. But, you know, Gavin Newsom is so, you know, committed to serving the interests of his special interest groups that this all doesn’t—hasn’t moved the needle at least as far as he’s concerned.
Centralization and the “New Progressive Era” [13:38]
Bob Zadek: Now, that’s understandable—I mean, it’s not sensible, but it’s understandable to succumb to the pressure of your largest donor. But Governor Newsom enraged the entire state with his closures and his color-coding, this moronic system of color rainbow color-coding of various swaths of the country in so far as closures of restaurants and hair salons and gyms and all of the other small businesses in the state. So but there he wasn’t being told to do so, or he wasn’t following the instruction of large donors. So that decision seemed utterly irrational. I mean, how could any—how could you possibly think you were right by taking a state larger than most countries and treating it like it’s a monolith, like it’s all exactly the same? So can you give us any insight into this insane decision-making regarding small business, consumer-facing businesses in the entire state, so that rural Redding, California, or small towns up near the Oregon border are treated the same as downtown LA and San Francisco? Can you give us any insight? Because that, to me, he can’t even in his mind defend the decision by being, “Well, I had to succumb to the needs of my large donor.”
Kevin Kiley: Right. Well, although it is true that, you know, the more powerful special interests have done a lot better, that, you know, big business has done okay, whereas small businesses have been absolutely crushed. Or if you look at, for example, Hollywood got an exemption from Newsom’s lockdowns, and even, you know, in particular, the lobbyist who was being feted at the French Laundry that night, who Newsom describes as a dear friend of 25 years, apparently succeeded in using his influence to get that exemption on behalf of his Hollywood clients. So there is still that dynamic present in the shutdowns as well. And then you have to also look at Newsom’s statements from the earliest days of this, on April 1st, saying that he saw the coronavirus as a chance, an opportunity, he said, for a new progressive era, an opportunity to reshape the way we do business and the way we govern. He said around that time on, I believe it was on The View, that because of COVID, we’re going to all have to get used to adopting a more regulatory mentality. And so I think that when you look at that in the context of a process of centralization and continuing regulation at the state level that had been proceeding at a pace in California for many, many years, sort of the ability to fast-forward that process and establish the role of the state as this kind of all-powerful regulator and dictator of economic and personal activity is something that you need to sort of bear in mind in looking at how this all happened. Now, I’m not going to try to get inside of Gavin Newsom’s head as to why he’s continued to impose the strictest lockdowns in the country, even though we’ve had some of the poorest COVID-era outcomes. But, you know, I think that for whatever reason, he seemed to just sort of buy into this idea that wall-to-wall lockdowns were the only—or were the one thing that was going to assist us with getting through and limiting the spread of COVID-19. And even as other governors have responded to the growing data that that is not the case, Newsom has just continued to almost double down on it. And so you’re right, it is totally irrational. And I could list 10 things right now that California has been the last state in the entire country to open, and yet we’ve also had some of the poorest overall public health outcomes.
The Passivity of the California Legislature [17:49]
Bob Zadek: Now, you have written quite a bit in your blog, and it’s been observed—well, let’s back up. Obviously, California’s governmental structure, like the federal government, is one of—it almost seems laughable to suggest, but I will—checks and balances, with three co-equal, co-equal, underline equal, branches of government: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. And they all have a role to play, but none is paramount over the others. So here we have clearly, and you’ve written about this quite a bit, what Gavin Newsom has done, and other governors, and indeed our president from time to time, has asserted executive power and replaced the legislative power with the executive power, all pursuant to vaguely written, poorly written, ill-thought-out statutes involving emergency powers. But from what I observe about practicing politicians, they jealously guard their prerogatives. They value the power they have and the role they have to play in government. The California Legislature, of which you are a part, therefore you have, of course, intimate and firsthand experience, was so passive during all of this. Why would a body full of people who fought very hard to be in the legislature then minimize and trivialize their very occupation by ceding so much power to the governor? After all, it’s fair to say, in general, the only power a governor has is power granted to the governor by the legislature. And if the legislature grants power, they can take it back. So the legislature wasn’t required to be as passive as they were. What accounts for that?
Kevin Kiley: Yeah, it’s a great question, and it’s a very important point, is that we have witnessed a seizure of power by Gavin Newsom, but at the same time, we witnessed a surrender of power and an abdication of responsibility by our legislature. The legislature took most of last year off and simply stood by as Gavin Newsom declared—and he’s declared this several times in our lawsuit against him—that the state of emergency, quote, “centralizes the state’s powers in the hands of the governor,” which is nonsense. Our system of government has never worked that way, emergency or not, and it’s never contemplated an executive who can simply make new laws by fiat and skip over a legislative process. So you did have legislators, even from some of the earliest months of this, who were outspoken about the governor’s autocratic mode of handling COVID-19, but there was never any willingness to this day on the part of the legislature’s leaders to actually step up and assert our branch’s prerogatives as a co-equal branch of government. Now, so why is that the case? Well, I mean, you could float a few theories. You could say, well, if legislators are still getting paid, even if they weren’t working, why, you know, what’s the rush to get back? There’s that. There’s perhaps the idea that our legislature is captured by the same special interests that have captured this governor and dictate his decisions. And it’s actually just a lot easier for those interests, like the CTA, to have one person to deal with, Gavin Newsom, than having to wrangle 120 different legislators. So having one-man rule has worked out pretty well for them. And kind of a related point is that, you know, given the capture of our legislature by special interest groups, that’s in fact how a lot of legislators got there, is they were selected by these interest groups specifically because of their subservience to them. And so as a matter of sort of what the institution is adapted to, it’s adapted to rubber-stamping rent-seeking schemes cooked up by special interest groups. It’s not well-adapted to, say, confronting the novel challenges of a contagious virus and the complex response to that. It’s not adapted to sort of complex problem-solving and thoughtfulness and discussion and debate. And so this presented something that our legislature just wasn’t up to the job for.
Lawsuit Against Executive Overreach [23:39]
Bob Zadek: And what’s interesting, as we discuss the tension between the power that resides in the legislature unless they cede it, in this case to the governor, and therefore we were discussing the tension between executive and legislative, you mentioned, and I’m now going to ask you to expand upon and help us understand what you did, you mentioned the role of the judicial. This is almost a civics course, this discussion. But now you introduced, happily—I didn’t have to ask a question, you just did it—you made reference to your successful litigation. So here you are, you’re a member of the legislature, you’re not happy with the executive, so you go to the third branch of government, the judicial, and you actually brought a lawsuit, and you took on quite a powerful opponent in doing so, I must say. So there must have been a bit of a gulp—this better be right. But tell us about the lawsuit you brought, what was the theory of the lawsuit, and what was the process by which you prevailed, and how solid was the victory?
Kevin Kiley: We filed it in early June of last year, so really just a few months into this. It was me and James Gallagher, who’s another California legislator, were the two plaintiffs, and we’re also acting as our own attorneys in the case. We litigated the whole thing ourselves. And you know, we had seen the governor just issuing executive orders in bunches, usurping the power of the legislature and the legislature standing by and letting it happen. And by the way, that’s an important point, is that the legislature cannot even willingly surrender its powers. That’s not the way our system of government works. Even a legislature that wants to give away legislative powers is forbidden from doing so by the Constitution.
Bob Zadek: It’s called the non-delegation duty. It’s a non-delegable duty, right?
Kevin Kiley: Exactly. That’s exactly right. Yep. And so we had, you know, tried to get our branch of government to step up, we’d tried to get the governor to act more responsibly, had not had success on either front. So as you say, we then turned to the third branch of government, the courts. This was after one executive order the governor had issued that overhauled the whole election, which was still five months away. But we were just using that one as a challenge to the broader idea or the broader legal theory that the governor was acting under, that the state of emergency centralizes all of the state’s powers in his hands. And so we ended up getting a trial date October 21st, and then the decision came a couple weeks later whereby we prevailed. The superior court ruled that Gavin Newsom had violated the Constitution and abused his emergency powers with that particular executive order. The judge noted that he had done so with several other orders as well. Even Gavin Newsom agreed that the decision cast doubt on dozens of his emergency actions. And the judge issued a permanent injunction restraining him from issuing any further such unconstitutional orders. So at present, that case is before the court of appeals, but, you know, we thought it was a very important moment to at least, you know, establish the idea that this is not a one-person government, that the other branches of government still matter in California, and in particular, the representative branch, our legislature, which is supposed to be the vehicle for the people of the state to be able to have a say in their own government.
Bob Zadek: What’s fascinating about—well, first a question if I may, Kevin. As plaintiff, were you suing in your capacity as citizens or as members of the Assembly? Which package of rights were you asserting were damaged to you as a plaintiff?
Kevin Kiley: We were asserting a usurpation of legislative power, that we as lawmakers were having our prerogatives deprived, or we were being deprived of our prerogatives as legislators and then, you know, by extension, the people that we represent.
Bob Zadek: So you had to overcome a standing issue, which I think the court, if they wanted to go the other way, they probably could have comfortably said you don’t have standing, you can’t show enough damage. That may have been what the court could have done, but the court did not duck it, which is fascinating. And I think it was 7-0, wasn’t it? It was a decision—not a jury trial, and I think it was unanimous, wasn’t it, at the trial level?
Kevin Kiley: Well, so for the superior court, it’s just one judge. Although I’ll note that there was a different judge earlier in the case who had given us a favorable ruling, and then Newsom ousted him from the case. So then we got a new judge, Judge Sarah Heckman, and she ended up ruling for us ultimately as well. Now before the appeals court, it’s going to be a three-judge panel.
Bob Zadek: How could Newsom have—he couldn’t have just ousted a judge. He could have asked that the judge recuse his or herself. He couldn’t just, as the monarch, oust a judge, could he?
Kevin Kiley: Well, yeah, he used a particular type of motion that any litigant can file claiming prejudice against your interest is the term. And that’s what Newsom claimed because this judge had ruled against him. He said that suddenly this is a sign that he’s prejudiced against the governor, which is a pretty outrageous thing to claim.
The “Bill of Particulars” Against Newsom [28:08]
Bob Zadek: So what we have is, it’s to me fascinating, and it’s appropriately the subject of classroom study. It shows in one case, in one instance, how the interplay of all three branches of government in a matter that is of great importance to all the citizens of the state of California—it almost gives one faith that our system of checks and balances actually work. It is—it ought to be taught in all the schools, at least how the system should work if it is working properly. This shows every system was put in stress against—or every branch of government was put in opposition and stress in conflict with another branch, and it all got sorted out peacefully and produced at least, Kevin, from our standpoint, it found the correct result. It’s almost a miracle. So it’s a great story to tell about how the process—how the government ought to work if it’s working properly, even though the source of the problem was the maladministration by—in Sacramento. But we got to at least in that regard to the right result.
Now, the complaint against Newsom in the recall effort—when I read it, the first thing that came to my mind was, of all things, it’s like reading the third paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. In the Declaration of Independence, we first—we through Jefferson’s pen, Jefferson’s quill pen, we assert our rights that we have that no government can take away. And then, in order to explain to the world why we, the founders, are in the right, we listed the Bill of Particulars against the king, so that the rest of the world would be in sympathy with our position as we declared independence. And in the recall effort, there is an extensive Bill of Particulars. And I said it’s like what we did vis-a-vis King George III in 1776. It read the same way. So the point I’m making is, of course, that yes, Newsom grossly mishandled the COVID. But his wrongful acts go well beyond that during his stewardship. And you have listed many of them—you being you collectively, those who have worked so hard in the recall effort. The complaints against Newsom go well beyond simply mishandling COVID, which can be chalked up if you wanted to make an excuse, “Well, no one knew what was going on, we were learning on the job, we had no precedent, we were relying upon the science.” I’ll get back to that, Kevin, because I know you want to talk about that. “We were relying upon the science.” But Newsom’s misdeeds, what Newsom did that justify recall, go well beyond COVID, even though COVID was so mishandled it would have been enough. So you also mentioned AB 5, which I have done a show on, maybe more than one show on California’s AB 5. So tell us Newsom’s role in that and why that gets added to the list of reasons for the recall of Newsom.
AB 5 and the War on Independent Contractors [32:10]
Kevin Kiley: Well, AB 5 is one of the most corrupt laws that’s ever been passed in the United States. It’s been described as an enormous payout to the unions, the massive union conglomerates that put Newsom in power. And with a single stroke of his pen, Newsom deprived tens of thousands of people at least in California of their ability to earn a livelihood. You know, the bill banned, in many—in most cases, being an independent contractor or being your own boss. And so sort of the most common example, which has now actually been exempted out by a ballot initiative, is Uber and Lyft drivers. It was really going after them, but it’s ensnared literally hundreds of other professions. You know, everyone from interpreters and translators and folks like tutors—maybe you’re having trouble getting a tutor right now with distance learning; AB 5 might be the blame for that. Even the likes of, you know, mall Santas and birthday clowns have been ensnared by this. And so there was this incredibly powerful movement that sprang up even before COVID against AB 5 to repeal the law because it was doing so much harm. Newsom refused, he refused even to acknowledge all of the victims of the law. And then when COVID-19 came around and we had a stay-at-home order, the law was even more damaging because a lot of the jobs that were no longer allowed or legal in California were precisely the sort of thing you could do from home—freelancing-type things, independent writing or photography or recipe writing or whatever the case may be. And even a lot of healthcare professionals, actually, like nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists, medical interpreters, they were being kept off the front lines to deal with COVID because of AB 5. And so we amped up our pressure then, that we need to get rid of—we need to at least suspend the law to help us get through COVID. Newsom refused to do that. And to the contrary, what he did is he and the massive special interests behind the law who had written the law, they started immediately scheming to use the crisis to pound the law in and to ruthlessly enforce it.
So I’ll give you a couple examples. The EDD, which we know has been a disaster with unemployment checks, continued to conduct audits of small businesses during the COVID shutdown looking for violations of AB 5 to then administer fines for, even retrospectively. I asked them to cut that out and stop doing the audits, and they refused. What they then did is when the federal government came through with the CARES Act and agreed to provide unemployment assistance for freelancers, which isn’t normally available, the Newsom and the EDD still tried to shoehorn them into the regular unemployment system so then you as an independent contractor would be forced to give the names of your business partners, folks that you contract with, and then the state would be able to then pounce and audit them and hit them with fines. And the result was actually a lot of independent contractors had to wait months longer than necessary in order to get their unemployment benefits just because Newsom and the EDD were scheming to use this opportunity to go after independent contractors. And then, incredibly enough, as California was supposedly facing a budget surplus—you know, around $50 billion—Newsom devoted $21 million last year, he found as a line item in the budget, to specifically enforce AB 5, to send three different state agencies to go after independent contractors and to take away even more people’s livelihoods. So it just sums up everything that is wrong with California policy and as embodied in the corruption of Gavin Newsom, that he signed the most corrupt law in the state’s history that went after some of the most vulnerable people in our society, and then during this unprecedented crisis, he used his extraordinary powers and he used this moment of crisis in order to up the ante for his special interest benefactors at an enormous cost to ordinary Californians.
Bob Zadek: And just a minor supplement, EDD is the Employment Development Department. It is California’s regulatory agency that, among other things, manages unemployment and taxation and payroll taxes. That’s—it’s a very powerful agency in Sacramento, and that was the agency that Kevin was referring to as taking the lead under Newsom’s direction in making sure nobody dared to actually do the heinous act of taking control of your life and becoming voluntarily an independent contractor. And I’m always reminded of the bill, California’s AB 5, which attempted to put Lyft and Uber, as well as other similar gig economy employers, out of business. Lorena Gonzalez, who was your colleague, of course, in the Assembly—she’s from San Diego—and when she conducted a hearing when the Uber and Lyft drivers were complaining they were going to lose their jobs, she shrugged it off by saying, “It’s not a very good job anyway.” So she had the nerve to tell somebody else that the job they wanted, that they were willing to serve, that they liked, was in her mind, in her vantage point from Sacramento Assembly, it’s not a very good job. Nothing to me, Kevin, expressed the arrogance more directly than that one thoughtless shrug of her shoulder. “You don’t have a very good job anyway.” How dare she tell somebody who voluntarily elected to be an Uber driver that they don’t have a very good job. And so I couldn’t agree with you more that AB 5 is a huge, a huge overreach of legislative power to legislate to prohibit, under pain of sanctions, somebody from voluntarily accepting employment from an employer, in this case as an independent contractor, from somebody who they want to serve at a price they’re willing to accept, to criminalize that behavior. Talk about what is the opposite of freedom—that’s it. And the scary part is, Kevin, as we know, is that now in Washington, just as an aside, a one-sentence aside, the goal in Washington now in the Biden administration is to nationalize, in effect, AB 5 and to make it the law of the land. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed on that.
No-Bid Contracts and Corruption [38:56]
Bob Zadek: Now, Newsom’s—as if that isn’t enough, Newsom’s—the Bill of Particulars against Newsom goes even beyond that. And tell us a bit about Newsom’s contracting, because I know you have written quite a bit about that. Newsom’s contracting for personal protective equipment—masks, gloves, and the like—and how reckless, if not more serious motivations, how reckless he was in contracting for personal protective equipment and how his behavior was bad enough to make it on the list of reasons he should be recalled.
Kevin Kiley: Well, I mean, this is part and parcel of the corruption that has defined Newsom’s governorship and in particular his COVID-19 response, is that he suddenly had, you know, these extraordinary emergency powers, which he viewed as absolute. And that gave him a greater capacity to issue rewards to the special interests that put him in office and that he frankly thought he would need to run for higher office. And so, you know, we—there was a Capital Public Radio investigation that came out a few weeks ago showing a pattern where Newsom used the extraordinary power to award a no-bid contract to give massive contracts to his top campaign donors. And they identified, “Look at this, they make a big contribution, then Newsom gives a contract, then they make another big contribution.” In fact, there’s another article today—I forget the source—but going into how Blue Shield cultivated its relationship with Newsom for a long time as one of his biggest contributors, and then they got this vaccine contract on a no-bid basis. But perhaps the most egregious example is the $1 billion contract, as you mentioned, for masks with BYD China, which was given out in early April of last year behind the back of the legislature. Half the money, about $500 million, was wired in advance. This is a very shady company. They have a history of forced labor practices—there’s been reporting on that. They’re run by the Chinese Communist Party. They have a history of malfunctioning products. But their subsidiary in California is a big Newsom contributor. The president has given over $40,000 to him, and, you know, the lobbyist for that company was also involved in a lot of the no-bid contracts that Newsom gave out. So it’s all essentially telling the same story with these no-bid contracts, with the enforcement of AB 5, with the school shutdowns, with who was exempted from the business closures. Newsom’s solicitude for his biggest funders and the most powerful special interests that control our capital has been guiding the most important policy decisions every step of the way.
The “Equity” Metric and Vaccine Rollout [42:18]
Bob Zadek: One of the public pronouncements that Newsom has made more than once, of course, Kevin, as you know, is in—California did a really bad job in getting the vaccination, as they say, into the arms of Californians. It was—we did a bad job. One of the delays, the bureaucratic delays—and they were enormous—but one of the justifications, one of the delays, one of the complications was Newsom’s desire not simply to protect the health of citizens—that’s pretty straightforward, just get virus into people’s arms—but he was delayed under the umbrella of equity. He was determined to do it in a way, by the way, not that is in accordance with law—that’s an easy standard—but some soft, undefined concept of equity. Tell us, if you can, how the distribution of the virus got bogged down in an attempt to do it equitably, what that means, and how that delayed the process, if you can.
Kevin Kiley: Well, I’m not really sure what it means, frankly. This idea of equity has come to be one of those words that can mean the exact opposite of its, you know, most intuitive meaning. When it comes to the vaccine rollout, you know, supposedly in the name of equity, it was defined so narrowly who was eligible that you actually had, you know, too few people who could claim the doses that were available, and they ended up getting thrown out. And it’s one of the reasons why California for quite a while was 50th out of 50 in the nation in terms of the percent of doses being administered. And you mentioned that there’s this like sort of vague notion of equity. To this day, the sort of system or the index for defining equity is this so-called Healthy Places Index, which is a grab bag of 25 characteristics that are assessed on the level of census tracts. And it includes some very interesting factors, such as voter turnout in the last election, such as tree canopies, such as alcohol availability is one of them—so you’re actually deemed sort of more—or you score higher in terms of equity if you have more bars in your neighborhood. And then this is put into some just crazy formula to determine things like who a priority with the vaccine, or in fact, it’s part of the color-coded scheme as well, that you—this is actually a third metric that was added to the scheme a few months ago, the equity metric, so that you can actually be held back from advancing to a higher tier if you score poorly according to this Healthy Places Index, which does not seem to be measuring equity in any meaningful sense at all. Because when you look at how California has performed in the COVID era, you know, Newsom’s worst-in-the-nation school shutdowns have exacerbated our achievement gaps incredibly. I mean, we already had some of the worst achievement gaps in our schools in the country, but it’s kids in underserved communities who don’t have the best home life, they’re the ones that are struggling most from distance learning. Some are just disappearing; they haven’t been logging into Zoom at all. And, you know, that hasn’t made a difference. The schools have still been shut down. They still haven’t opened. LAUSD still not open. Same thing with the business closures, by the way. You’ve seen, you know, the stock market’s doing fine, folks who make their money through investments or, you know, off capital have been doing fine, but workers have been, you know, laid off by the millions and have been struggling. And so everything that Gavin Newsom has done during COVID-19 has just exploded the inequality that already existed in California. And so for them to somehow latch onto equity as some buzzword, I think is truly perverse, especially when it’s used as a sort of alibi for incompetence.
”Government Knows Best” and the Recall Status [46:18]
Bob Zadek: You recently published a book which was really persuasively written: Recall Gavin Newsom: The Case Against America’s Most Corrupt Governor. It is a wonderful read. It again is an item-by-item, fact-driven indictment—not in the legal sense, of course—against Gavin Newsom. And there’s a theme throughout your book, which is a theme which you identify, but we sort of know predominates progressive politics. And that is almost everything that Newsom has done has been based on the assumption that we are incapable—we being ordinary citizens—we are incapable of making the important decisions about our life, and therefore, thank heaven there is a Governor Newsom to protect us from making bad decisions, like, for example, driving for Uber, like, for example, wearing or not wearing a mask, going to a restaurant or not, going to a gym or not. We are incapable—it’s as if we need to appoint 35 million conservators for the citizens of California because we are incapable of making decisions about ourselves and about our family members. And all the stories you have told, Kevin, in the past hour, all have, if you’re looking around for yet another common and distressing theme, it’s that. It’s that government knows best about even the minor decisions in one’s life, and government will impose their view on how we ought to order our lives rather than do the reckless thing of letting us decide for ourselves. That message comes loud and clear in your blog and in fact in the recall petition. And I think if there’s one common theme in the recall, it’s “Hey, Newsom, butt out, let us run our lives.” And that request is not Democratic or Republican, it’s not ideological, it’s personal, it’s intimate. Let us run our lives, just make sure people don’t harm us, otherwise step aside. And that message in your book is loud and clear, and for that, I really thank you.
Kevin Kiley: Well, thank you very much, and that’s exactly right. And I think, you know, when Gavin Newsom is trying to control our lives by fiat, it’s a double blow to freedom. It’s on the—you know, on one level, what you just said, it’s a violation of our personal liberty as individuals to order our lives as we see fit. But at the same time, it’s a blow to our collective freedom as self-governing communities, and our ability as citizens to participate in our own government and to direct our own political destiny, which was very much bound up in our founders’ idea of personal freedom, this, you know, this notion of self-government that has been eroded for a long time but has totally collapsed this last year. And so I think that with the recall and with the ouster of Governor Newsom, which we hope will occur later this year, I hope it can be a revival of freedom in both senses: on the one hand, a revival of the idea of personal freedom, which we’ve lost so much of over the last year, but on the other hand, a revival of the idea of self-government as well.
Bob Zadek: What will—where are we procedurally? What is the status right now of the effort to recall Governor Newsom? We have two minutes left. Can you give us a real quick summary of the next events to happen and when they are likely to occur?
Kevin Kiley: Yes. So the deadline to gather signatures has passed, and the campaign has gathered in excess of 2.1 million. Already 1.2 million or so of those have been verified, and given the rate of validity that we’ve seen, it’s all but a certainty that the recall will qualify. The number of verified signatures you need is 1.5 million. So you’ll probably get an announcement, the official announcement sometime in late April, I think, that the recall election is on. The legislature has actually conspired to kind of drag out the process of a recall. They passed a bill a few years ago to stretch it out. It should happen a lot quicker, like it happened quicker during the 2003 recall. So the ultimate election is likely to not take place until later this year, maybe sometime in the fall or even November.
Bob Zadek: Well, we’ll follow this one. It may be, hopefully, we lead the country again down a different path. This is Bob Zadek. I’ve spent the past hour speaking to Kevin Kiley. Kevin is a member of the California State Assembly representing the 6th election district. He has written a fascinating book, Recall Gavin Newsom: The Case Against America’s Most Corrupt Governor. He is a shining light, has a future, hopefully, in California, if not national politics. Keep your eye on Kevin Kiley. Bob Zadek saying thank you so much, Kevin, for giving us an hour of your really busy time, and thanking my friends out there for sparing with us an hour of your time this Sunday morning. Have a nice Sunday to everybody, and I’ll be back again next week.