As California Democrats struggle to make sure that Gov. Gavin Newsom survives the recall ballot measure currently before voters, they have one very potent issue they can deploy. Newsom has mandated vaccines for health care workers and school employees, with the requirement that they submit to weekly testing if they still shun vaccination. The Republican most likely to become governor should Newsom be recalled, however, right-wing talk show host Larry Elder, opposes not just vaccine mandates but mask mandates as well.

To say that Elder’s position isn’t a popular one in California is to understate. Indeed, across the country, the far-right elected officials who oppose such mandates are now taking a beating in the polls. In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who’s signed a new law forbidding school districts from mandating masks for children, and tried to ban cruise ships from requiring vaccines, has seen his approval rating drop from positive to negative and now trails his most likely Democratic gubernatorial opponent when matched up against him in polling on next year’s election. The same polling shows his position forbidding schools to mandate masks to be widely unpopular.

Nationally, a new Axios-Ipsos poll shows that 66 percent of the public oppose the kind of state laws that DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have signed forbidding local officials from establishing mask mandates, with 77 percent opposing their efforts to withhold funds from municipalities and school districts that violate those laws by requiring masking. Public sentiment in California is surely even more opposed to such initiatives, even as Elder has rejected mandating both masks and vaccines.

According to The Atlantic’s invaluable Ron Brownstein, recent polling from the COVID States Project shows that 95 percent of vaccinated Democrats (and about 80 percent of Democrats have been vaccinated) and 63 percent of vaccinated Republicans (about half of Republicans have been vaccinated) support the government requiring people not just to mask up but to be vaccinated, too.

With public opinion increasingly tilting toward greater governmental mandating of vaccines and masks, it’s good to see many leading unions following suit. Last week, the governing board of the American Federation of Teachers voted unanimously to direct its locals to work with employers on establishing the particulars of vaccine mandates. While some unions have encountered pushback from a minority of their members on the issue of mandating vaccines for health care, school, and other public-sector and frontline employees, the unions’ concern for their members’ and the public’s health—and a growing realization that Republicans’ support for vaccine resistance is an issue that their Democratic allies will be campaigning against—is solidifying labor’s support for mass vaccinations, a cause for which AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka emphatically voiced his support just days before he died.