Yes and yes.
Most likely the dems employed fraudulent practices, but it wasn’t really necessary. They were never going to turn Newsom out. American voters simply don’t have the numbers in CA anymore.
They fired up the fraud machine with stealing ballots from mailboxes, prevoting Republicans’ ballots for them, etc. but at the same time the Democrats who were opposed to the governor realized that if he lost the winner was almost certainly going to be Larry Elder. The Republican people coalesced around him while no Democrat candidate got the majority of the Dems. Then the Democrats decided they would rather keep their tyrant and hypocrite than have a black Republican as governor for a year.