Four Republicans hoping to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom if he falls in the Sept. 14 recall election took turns blaming the governor for the state’s problems during a debate peppered with vows to end pandemic-related mask mandates, enact massive tax cuts and abolish state and local sanctuary policies that offer protections for immigrants without legal status.

The four Republican candidates onstage — former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, businessman John Cox, Assemblyman Kevin Kiley of Rocklin and former Northern California Rep. Doug Ose — offered a bleak portrait of a state guided by the liberal policies of Newsom and California’s Democratic leadership: rising violent crime, businesses fleeing the state and homeless encampments lining city streets.

Both Cox and Ose said they favored changing California law to force treatment on homeless people who are experiencing mental illness or addicted to drugs. Kiley said as governor he would ensure law enforcement officials in California cooperated with federal immigration agencies to crack down on people entering the country illegally.

Though all four candidates were united in their opposition to mask and vaccination mandates, arguing that decisions should be left to individuals, their approaches varied.

Faulconer urged Californians to get vaccinated.

“Vaccination is how we get our way out of this. I’m vaccinated, my family’s vaccinated. And if we don’t want to be dealing this with our kids and our grandchildren, we have to take action,” he said. “But I do not favor mandates, I favor education. You’re not going to mandate your way out of the coronavirus.”

Cox, who said he had tested positive for the coronavirus earlier in the pandemic, said there shouldn’t be mandates because many people have already had the virus and have antibodies.

“They don’t need the vaccine. They shouldn’t get the vaccine,” he said, directly contradicting the recommendations of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.

Kiley criticized Newsom’s response to the pandemic, including the rollout of vaccines and lotteries to encourage vaccination.

“It is a perfect case study for the perversity of California politics, you know, using bright lights and cash giveaways and state control as a mirage for a broken state government that fails to serve California in the most basic way,” he said.

The two most well-known Republicans in the race were missing from the debate, held at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda.

Olympian-turned-reality television star Caitlyn Jenner was in Australia filming “Celebrity Big Brother.” The campaign of talk radio host Larry Elder, who has topped the field of replacement candidates in recent polls, said he had a scheduling conflict and did not want to participate in a GOP firing squad.

If the candidates who showed up were worried about Elder, they didn’t show it.

“I was on his show a lot in 2018,” said Cox, who unsuccessfully ran against Newsom in the gubernatorial race that year. “He said I would be a great governor.”

Faulconer joined the others onstage in castigating what they called the teaching in California schools of critical race theory, which focuses on the broad effect systemic racism has had on the lives of people of color in the U.S.

“The U.S. is not a racist country. The more folks that stand up and speak truth to that I think the better off we’re going to be,” Faulconer said.

The candidates pledged to use the office to retool state government, rescind Newsom’s declaration of a state of emergency to respond to the pandemic and change appointees who determine education policy.

But given the Democrats’ supermajority in both chambers of the state Legislature, which provides the ability to override any veto by the governor, none of them would have much power to force changes in state law or reshape the state’s budget.

Cox said he supported former President Trump’s effort to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. When discussing how he would address homelessness, he said that “a lot of people living on the streets” need to be placed in conservatorships.

The businessman’s recall campaign, mostly funded by himself, has sought to make a spectacle of the state’s problems — beginning with a bus tour in which Cox brought along a 1,000-pound Kodiak bear intended to symbolize the need for aggressive change.

Kiley, elected to an Assembly seat from the Sacramento suburbs in 2016, has gained a following during the pandemic among Newsom’s critics for challenging the governor’s use of emergency executive powers. He and a fellow Republican legislator lost a legal battle over Newsom’s executive orders last year to modify state election rules in response to COVID-19 — a battle that has endeared him to some of the party’s most die-hard conservative followers.

Last week, Kiley leaned on his experience as a former teacher in Los Angeles in embracing a nascent effort to place a measure on the November 2022 statewide ballot that would authorize vouchers for families to send their children to the school of their choice.

Ose argued he had the skill set as an elected leader to tackle problems such as the state’s unemployment insurance program, which has been plagued by billions of dollars in fraudulent unemployment claims and delayed benefit payments for those out of work. Ose said he would run the agency like a successful business and make sure that Californians didn’t spend hours on hold when calling for assistance.

“Just answer the damn phone,” Ose said.

The candidates’ performances Wednesday may play a pivotal role Saturday when the California Republican Party will decide whether to endorse someone in the race.

Voters will be asked two questions on the ballot for the Sept. 14 recall election: Should Newsom be recalled, and who should replace him if he is recalled?

Forty-six candidates will appear on the ballot, but only a handful have assembled campaigns and raised notable sums.

The 90-minute face-off was moderated by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, KTTV-TV Channel 11 anchors Christine Devine and Elex Michaelson and former U.S. national security advisor Robert C. O’Brien.

Times staff writer John Myers contributed to this report.