In October 2003, I was working at the CBS affiliate in Bakersfield, California, helping produce our political coverage. It was an exciting time to be in both news and politics.
On our set, country music icon Buck Owens, presented Arnold Schwarzenegger with an autographed guitar. I remember so vividly the energy and excitement that filled the atmosphere. There was a palpable feeling that this could be a fresh start, both for the state but also for the Republican Party.
During his victory speech, Schwarzenegger declared that he would “reach out to Republicans, to Democrats and independents, to those who supported the recall and those who did not, those who supported me today and those who did not. I want to reach out to everybody, to young and old, rich and poor, people of all religions, all colors and all nationalities. I want to be the governor for the people. I want to represent everybody.”
In many ways, the recall election of 2003 was a battle between the state’s more moderate and conservative factions. Schwarzenegger became the standard-bearer for the moderates while then-state Sen. Tom McClintock ran as the conservative choice.
That was the last time the Golden State would elect a Republican governor.
Two decades later, the portrait of the Republican Party is far different. In 2003, Kevin McCarthy was the Assembly Republican leader who attached himself to Schwarzenegger and helped lead the fight for the “moderates” in the party. Today, McCarthy, House minority leader, has wrapped himself in the cloak of conspiracy theories and anti-democratic identity politics.
Schwarzenegger calls the effort that McCarthy has embraced to overturn a free and fair election “crazy and evil.” Such rhetoric is enough for you to get kicked out of McCarthy’s leadership team — just ask Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. In two decades, Schwarzenegger has gone from being the standard-bearer of the Republican Party to an outcast who probably couldn’t beat a figure like now-Rep. Tom McClintock in a GOP primary.
In what has become a familiar cycle, this iteration of the Republican Party will make a lot of noise, raise a lot of money, generate a lot of headlines and ultimately lose.
It’s what happened nationally in the 2018 midterms. It’s what happened with the presidential race in 2020, and it’s what happened in the Georgia Senate races that delivered the Democrats a majority in the Senate in January. Time and again, Republicans have run to the extreme right, pandering to the politics of fear and division, only to lose. They have mastered the ability to seize defeat from the jaws of victory, leaving behind a party that year after year is growing more radical, and also becoming smaller.
This second gubernatorial recall election should be instructive for Republicans nationwide. If recent history is any indication, the GOP will continue the failed cycle of learning the wrong lessons from defeat and continue its embrace of extremism and conspiracy that will serve to only alienate it further from the mainstream of this country.
Kurt Bardella is a senior adviser to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and a former aide to California Republican Congressmen Darrell Issa and Brian Bilbray.