“This is truly the pandemic recall — there’s no other way to describe it,” said Mark Baldassare, president of the Public Policy Institute of California. He said how governors have responded to the pandemic will define their legacies: “For governors elected in 2018, it’s not what they signed up for, but it’s what they’re going to be known for in history.”

Newsom’s early response to the pandemic, including the nation’s first statewide stay-at-home order, did not tank his approval rating among registered voters, and in September 2020 an IGS poll put it at 64%.

But by last month it had dropped to 50%. COVID fatigue was pervasive, the Delta variant was spreading, and Newsom — with regular, sometimes confusingly jargon-laden briefings — had made himself the public face of the state’s inconsistent pandemic response.

Apart from high taxes, homelessness and crime spikes, recall ads cite the pandemic-related shutdown of public schools, and billions of tax dollars lost under Newsom to unemployment fraud.