The incoming president of California’s largest state employee union said it won’t back Gov. Gavin Newsom’s attempt to avoid a likely recall election this fall due to lingering anger over union contract concessions.
Richard Louis Brown, who was elected to replace Yvonne Walker as president of the Service Employees International Union Local 1000, said union workers were angered by Newsom asking unions to accept wage cuts to mitigate the effects of the state’s projected deficit, which was induced by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That’s why I said we’re going to run his a** out of office,” he told the Associated Press.
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Brown said Newsom, who won his current term as governor in 2018 with union backing, will “need support from public sector unions to help him fight his recall.”
“[But] when I become president of Local 1000, he can look for somebody else to support him. He will not get any help from us. He’s on his own,” he vowed.
The incoming president, who has pledged to cut union dues in half and create more transparency in union affairs, said the SEIU’s tendency to back Democratic candidates is “alienating half [the] union.”
“You can’t unify your union if you’re involved in politics,” he continued.
Brown’s proposals will still need to win the support of the SEIU’s board of directors when he assumes office on June 30.
California is one of 19 states to allow voters to recall its governor. After initially enjoying high approval ratings, Newsom gradually attracted criticism for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, with many polls showing high disapproval of his state’s economic recovery and vaccine rollout.
On April 26, state officials announced recall organizers had succeeded in gaining the necessary number of signatures to force a recall, with more than 1,626,000 verified signatures collected, eclipsing the 1,495,709 signatures required.
Newsom blasted the effort as a “Republican recall” driven by “a partisan, Republican coalition of national Republicans, anti-vaxxers, Q-Anon conspiracy theorists and anti-immigrant Trump supporters,” but former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the only candidate to win the governorship in California via a recall election, advised Newsom to treat the recall as “a valve” for constituents’ frustrations.
“People have to have a way to let out their anger, and this recall is a way to let out their anger. So, now, it’s up to him to say, ‘Now, wait a minute. OK, maybe I was slow at the wheel in the beginning, but I promise you, this is the kind of governor I will be,’ and then he is going to go and now jump into more action,” he said, adding that the governor has done a “good job” in “improv[ing] his connection with the people” since the recall effort began.
Several Republican hopefuls are vying for the governorship, with former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer announcing his candidacy in February and reality television star and former Olympic athlete Caitlyn Jenner filing paperwork in April. Richard Grenell, U.S. ambassador to Germany and acting director of National Intelligence under former President Donald Trump, is reportedly mulling a run as well.
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The state’s second gubernatorial recall effort will likely take place in November.
Representatives for the SEIU did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
