Essential California March 9, 2021 Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Tuesday, March 9, and I’m writing from Los Angeles. A little over a year ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom gave a very different State of the State address from the one he’ll deliver Tuesday. It was Feb. 19, 2020. There had only been a handful of known coronavirus cases in California, and a CDC official’s warning that we prepare for a “significant disruption of our lives” wouldn’t come for another week. Every inch of the Assembly Chamber at the State Capitol appeared packed with people, with even more up in the balcony. At the time, Newsom had the highest approval ratings he’d seen since taking office, and the mood was jubilant as he prepared to address a joint session of the Legislature. Just before the governor entered the room, a group of people lining the back aisle jokingly formed a human arch with their arms, as if for him to walk through. During his nearly two-and-a-half-minute walk from the door to the dais, the governor shook countless hands and embraced at least a dozen people. Watching the footage in 2021 is surreal and anxiety-provoking — a strange artifact of pre-pandemic life, preserved during a moment when the virus was probably already silently spreading in the state. Newsom began his 2020 address by declaring that — “by any standard measure, by nearly every recognizable metric” — the state of California was “not just thriving but, in many instances, leading the country, inventing the future, and inspiring the nation.” It was a very different time. The state had seen 118 consecutive months of job growth and the bulk of the speech was devoted to homelessness, the crisis the governor identified as the state’s chief priority for the year to come. The word “coronavirus” was not mentioned once. Fortunes have shifted dramatically, and often tragically, during the ensuing 384 days. The state has emerged on the other side of its brutal third surge but remains badly battered. Many California students have not seen the inside of a classroom for nearly a year; 9% of Californians were out of work in December; and the state’s vaccine rollout has been plagued with issues. Newsom is now a politician in jeopardy, facing the real threat of a recall election in the fall. [See also: “What you need to know about the attempt to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom” in the Los Angeles Times] When the governor delivers his third State of the State address Tuesday evening, it will be in a nearly empty Dodger Stadium, redolent with symbolism. The tens of thousands of empty seats at the ballpark-turned-coronavirus-testing-center-turned-mass-vaccination-site will be a somber reminder of the more than 54,000 Californians who have died from COVID-19. As our Sacramento bureau chief John Myers reported, Newsom’s staff said the ballpark’s capacity is roughly equivalent to the number of COVID-19 deaths in California. But the stadium location will also symbolize the easing of restrictions: California recently announced that fans will be allowed to attend Major League Baseball games, and the Dodgers could sell 11,200 tickets for their April 9 home opener if the county advances to the less restrictive red tier. It’s too soon to know what the next few months will look like for Newsom, or whether he’ll have to do battle on California ballots in the fall. (After the March 17 signature-gathering deadline for the recall effort, local election offices will have until April 29 to complete their review of the recall petitions.)