Opinion: Wildfires, drought, recall — catastrophic summer awaits California

Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, and it is Saturday, April 24, 2021. Today is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, and President Biden is reportedly poised to call the murder of an estimated 1 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire more than 100 years ago a genocide (this why that’s a really big deal, especially in Los Angeles). Let’s take a look back at the week in Opinion.

It’s happening again. Not more than 18 years past our last gubernatorial recall circus — and 13 measly months away from our regularly scheduled primary election — California will once again subject its sitting governor to a possibly abortive vote of no confidence and, if a simple majority says he should be recalled, replace him with whichever of an undetermined number of candidates garners a plurality of the vote. Last time California did this, in 2003, there were 135 candidates on the ballot seeking to replace Gov. Gray Davis, but the one you probably remember best is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Also running were Cruz Bustamante, the lieutenant governor who would go on to make his unverified personal weight-loss journey the centerpiece of arguably the most most pitiable campaign for insurance commissioner in state history; former child star and actor Gary Coleman; and adult film actor Mary Carey.

Every candidate I just listed finished in the top 10, and Carey has said she will run again this year — so you can see what awaits California for the rest of 2021 (never mind schools reopening, keeping COVID-19 at bay, grieving the state’s 60,000-plus pandemic dead and so on).

Already, Caitlyn Jenner — the former Olympian and Kardashian-adjacent TV personality — has announced her candidacy, giving the 2021 recall its requisite Republican celebrity with minimal government experience. In his op-ed column this week, Nicholas Goldberg lists all the reasons why replacing Gov. Gavin Newsom with a celebrity like Jenner is a spectacularly bad idea.

With the historical parallels, it might feel like the recall is a scripted affair: California is deeply in crisis (the pandemic now, a massive budget deficit and energy disruption then), and exiled Republicans smell the blood of a vulnerable governor in the water. But there are also important differences: In 2003, then-Gov. Davis, known for pushing ethical limits on fundraising while in office, was reviled by Republicans but also disfavored by plenty of his fellow Democrats. In his reelection campaign the year before, Davis had spent lavishly in the primary — the Republican primary, that is, blanketing the state in attack ads against moderate Republican Richard Riordan, effectively selecting an unelectable, far-right conservative as his opponent in the general election.

This recall might end differently than the last one did in 2003, but California will still be forced to relive the trauma — the circus-like field of replacement candidates, the distraction for the sitting governor from doing his job, and worst of all, the celebrity buzz and publicity that hijacks our collective attention, diverting it from the needs of Californian’s most vulnerable residents. The state is on the precipice of what may be a historically catastrophic drought and a disastrous wildfire season, and all of it will be viewed through the warped political lens of a recall election. Brace yourself.

Derek Chauvin’s guilty verdict isn’t America’s exoneration. The former Minneapolis police officer’s murder conviction for suffocating George Floyd is welcome, but it does not exonerate America for the state-sanctioned violence that targets people of color, says The Times Editorial Board: “It would be foolish to take delight in the verdict, or in the criminal sanctions that Chauvin will face in eight weeks. We Americans collectively recruited, hired, trained, armed and paid him (and others like him) to do what he did, and we were fine with it, as long as we were spared the details.” L.A. Times

A guilty verdict isn’t enough. What brought about Chauvin’s handcuffing and remanding into custody this week wasn’t police or judicial reform; rather, it was a series of historical accidents that resulted in all nine-plus minutes of Floyd’s murder being recorded, taking away the ability of police to cover this up and walk away, writes LZ Granderson: “This is why I wonder about justice in those police killings that were not, by chance, recorded on video. The ones where there wasn’t a 17-year-old around to film the death. Cases like that of Freddie Gray, who died from spinal injuries he received while in police custody six years ago this week. Six officers, not one conviction.” L.A. Times

More on the Chauvin conviction: The gratitude Nancy Pelosi expressed toward George Floyd sat somewhere between awkward and offensive, but it brought into sharp focus the all-too-real phenomenon of Black martyrdom in America, writes Sewell Chan. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) took to our op-ed pages to defend herself against Republicans’ charges that she had compromised the Chauvin trial’s integrity or possibly even incited lawlessness, charges that Michael McGough says were a wild overreaction by the GOP. Columnist Robin Abcarian notes that Waters was never the issue in the Chauvin trial.

“Anglo-Saxon,” as interpreted by ignorant cowards: Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Ga.) wanted to start a Trumpist “America First Caucus” that revered the country’s “uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions” — never mind that, among other things, one of the most quintessentially Anglo-Saxon political traditions is monarchy, or that America owes its founding ideals and government structure to France, the capitalists of 18th century Holland and the ancient Greeks and Romans, writes Jonah Goldberg. L.A. Times

A judge cannot just rule away homelessness, but he can inflict more harm than help even if his intentions are good. Federal Judge David O. Carter ordered Los Angeles to offer housing to every unsheltered person on skid row by the fall, and to set aside $1 billion for the effort — but this is no panacea. “Giving homeless people — including the disproportionate number of Black people in that population — interim shelter may get them off a dirty sidewalk, at least temporarily, but it won’t be enough to put them on a path toward some semblance of a sustainable, decent life,” writes the editorial board. “The problems of homeless people on skid row, and across this region, require more than one judge’s preliminary injunction.” L.A. Times