Adam Kinzinger Piles On GOP For Losing California Recall Election

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This week, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) spoke out to highlight takeaways of the failing — and now definitively failed — campaign by Republican commentator Larry Elder to replace California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, who faced what’s known as a recall election on Tuesday. That election posed the simple question for voters of if they wanted to recall Newsom, meaning remove him from office, and in a follow-up question on the ballot, voters had the opportunity to select their choice to replace Newsom. As of early Wednesday, nearly 64 percent of reported votes in the race were in favor of keeping Newsom as governor.

Although the outcome obviously wasn’t known for sure until late on Election Day, by the time that Election Day began, polls had made clear that Republicans had fumbled the race. As Kinzinger pointedly put it:

‘Note to leaders: persuasion still has a place, and a base strategy on fear only draws out the loser candidates.’

Kinzinger offered this observation as questions loom about the 2024 presidential race. Donald Trump has yet to confirm whether or not he’ll run for the presidency again, although he’s seemed to suggest that such is his intention. At a recent get-together in New York City, Trump suggested that campaign finance laws were to blame for his delay in confirming his intentions for the 2024 race, although it’s not immediately clear what he may be talking about. Trump filed the paperwork formalizing his intentions to run for re-election on the day that he was inaugurated as president in 2017 — there was no delay at that time.

In the time since, Trump has continued to claim that he was the rightful winner of last year’s presidential election, despite the complete lack of meaningful evidence in support of this notion and the fact that every credible authority directly involved in the electoral process has confirmed that last year’s results were secure. In every single state, arrays of officials have reiterated that systematic election fraud was not present. Trump’s insistence on claiming otherwise gives prospective voters little to latch onto other than conspiracy theory-driven grievances and anger, even as Americans face real problems like the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic turmoil associated with the crisis. As these issues unfold, Trump consistently seems more focused on whining and putting together utterly bonkers narratives about what supposedly really happened.