California Politics

Anyone who follows presidential elections knows that California is reliably Democrat. So why did President Biden bother to fly out to California in the days before the recent recall election and urge voters to keep Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom in office? Newsom ended up keeping his seat by a large margin. So was that whole “reverberate around the nation” thing hyperbole after all? California politics expert Raphael Sonenshein says there are some pretty big implications from that election. He’s executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)