Elder was distracted from the reasons people wanted the recall in the first place. Instead of hammering on why we needed to recall nuisance (masks lockdowns and keeping kids home from school) he decided to win the candidate choice. The recall failed because Elder and the other candidates were running for the office and nuisance ran against being recalled. It was easy for him to scare his base about the evil conservatives that let him walk on the Covid restrictions.
You are spot on!
Newsom ran against Trump, even pushing BS that the whole recall was about Trump voters refusing to accept the election. He won by 22%. What the Rs ran on didn’t matter because...CA.