CalMatters - By Christina Livingston, Luis Sanchez, Special to CalMatters

In the weeks leading up to California’s recall election, Gov. Gavin Newsom warned voters that the Republican-led effort was about turning California into Texas or Florida.

Republicans in those two states have made COVID-19 a political issue and, in the process, contributed to unprecedented spikes in COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths. When Texas outlawed abortion, the governor’s appeal and his message became more urgent and the stakes very real. 

But, the defeat of the recall showed that California could follow the playbook for multi-racial democracy carved out by organizers in another Southern state, Georgia. With that same playbook, we defeated a right-wing attack meant to roll back the progress we are making in California. In his victory speech, Newsom stated that our values were on the ballot and named economic justice, social justice, racial justice, environmental justice as “values where California has made so much progress.”

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