Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses state elections. The biggest off-off-year election is the CA recall.
Few issues united the four Republicans on stage like their disdain for public health mandates.
“I happen to have great faith in the ability of people to make decisions of their own,” said [former Rep. Doug] Ose, who spoke with the technical knowledge of a longtime lawmaker and, at times, a table-pounding indignation. “Instead of giving people mandates, we need to give them options.”
[Assemblyman Kevin] Kiley denounced the “hoopla” of the lotteries the governor rolled out to entice vaccine-wary Californians to get inoculated and warned of the “steps we’re taking towards mandates and passports.”
Late last month, Newsom announced that state employees and health care workers would be required to get vaccinated or be subject to regular COVID testing.
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Despite being infected with COVID early on in the pandemic, Cox said he opposed the governor’s recent action to coax health care workers to get vaccinated. He also asserted that people who have already contracted the disease don’t need the vaccine, contrary to guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
[Kevin] Faulconer, who has long distinguished himself across California GOP-dom as a relative moderate, stressed that he and his entire family had been vaccinated and he encouraged everyone who hasn’t been to get the jab, too. But encouragement is as far as the state should go.
“I do not favor mandates, I favor education,” he said. “You’re not going to mandate your way out of the coronavirus.”
Evidently, that wasn’t quite far enough for co-moderator Hugh Hewitt, a conservative commentator, who asked Faulconer whether he would outright ban schools from requiring students to wear masks.
“I will look into doing it, 100%,” said Faulconer without unequivocally saying that he would.
