Gavin Newsom’s Pandemic Regrets Tour

This month marks five years since the special election to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The outgoing governor recently told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he “almost lost” that contest, which stands at odds with the facts.

On Sep. 14, 2021, Newsom prevailed with 61.9 percent of the vote, identical to his 61.9 percent margin of victory for governor in 2018. Few, if any, journalists, math professors, or Las Vegas insiders wondered about the odds of such a result. The governor was not troubled.

“I want to focus on what we said yes to as a state,” Newsom told supporters in Sacramento. “We said yes to science. We said yes to vaccines. We said yes to ending this pandemic. We said yes to all those things that we hold dear as Californians, and I would argue as Americans. Economic justice, social justice, racial justice, environmental justice are the values where California has made so much progress—all of those things were on the ballot this evening.”

As Newsom saw it, the same issues that launched the recall carried the day in 2021. That would be the governor’s rigid COVID regime, which he now regrets. As Newsom told Tapper, “The idea that we closed beaches was insane in hindsight.”

As Californians will recall, Newsom declared a state of emergency on March 4, 2020, and by the end of the month, the governor had shut down Malibu beach, the Santa Monica Pier, and all beach bathrooms and bike paths. In early April at Malibu, police arrested a solitary paddleboarder for refusing to come out of the water.

Far from a mere “idea,” the closings were part of the governor’s draconian COVID policy. Newsom also shut down schools and told CNN they were taking “too long” to reopen. The Los Angeles Unified School District “refused” to reopen, Newsom said, “and I regret that.” Parents, students and taxpayers will recall no such second thoughts at the time, and there’s more to remember. 

The governor’s guidelines for gatherings prohibited the participation of more than three households and the host “should collect names of all attendees and contact information in case contact tracing is needed later.” In effect, the policy recruited Californians as government snitches.

“Seating must provide at least 6 feet of distance (in all directions—front-to-back and side-to-side) between different households,” the guidelines mandated. Face coverings were mandatory, even when singing or chanting, and so on, all reinforced by Gov. Newsom.

“Going out to eat with members of your household this weekend?” the governor tweeted in early October 2020. “Don’t forget to keep your mask on in between bites. Do your part to keep those around you healthy.” In November, the governor partied sans mask with lobbyists at the upscale French Laundry in Napa.

“Just boneheaded decision,” Newsom told Tapper. “Just stupid decision.” If Californians thought “wrong” would be more appropriate, it would be hard to blame them, and there’s a backstory here.

In April, 2020, Gov. Newsom announced a $1 billion deal for masks with the Chinese company Build Your Dreams (BYD), which at the time did not manufacture protective gear. The governor kept details of the deal secret, even from fellow Democrats.

The mask deal was missing from Newsom’s list of regrets to CNN. So was the $30 billion unemployment fraud scandal, with convicts and fraudsters cashing in. For more on Gov. Newsom’s Covid performance, see this link. In 2026 moving forward, it’s all about memory against forgetting.