As Governor Newsom stares down the barrel of the pending recall, we wonder if he has given any thought to what he might have done to forestall or, at least, lessen the odds of being bounced.

Probably he has not. To all appearances, the governor seems genuinely to believe that the recall is a “Trump inspired” assault on what he calls “California values.” Judging from his record, the values he holds dear are high taxes, a high cost of living, a high poverty rate, a high unemployment rate, water shortages severe enough to require mandatory rationing, and regular power outages on hot or windy days.

The reality is that anger is running deep in California and not just among the roughly 6 million state residents who voted for Donald Trump. A recent poll found that 54% of Hispanic voters were in favor of the recall.

That must have shocked the governor and thrown his campaign team’s “get out the vote” strategy into chaos. “What if,” they must have been thinking, “we turn out the vote and it turns us out?”

Among the long list of taxpayer frustrations with this governor and, indeed, the state in general, are the huge lost opportunities of what could have been done during the year of the pandemic but was not. For example, the governor claimed credit for what was, in his calculation, a $70 billion budget surplus. (The Legislative Analyst’s Office checked his math and pointed out that the surplus was only $35 billion, but that’s still a big number). Regrettably, those tens of billions of dollars have been frittered away.

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