Wednesday marks the long-awaited deadline for the recall organizers against California Gov. Gavin Newsom to turn in their signatures, in hopes of ousting the Democrat.
Recall organizers have collected more than 2 million signatures, far exceeding the required 1.5 million needed to trigger a recall election in October. However, the secretary of state’s office must still verify those signatures, more of which could be submitted to county election officials today.
What’s next?
- Elections officials must complete their review of signatures by April 29. Over 80% of the signatures collected have so far been validated.
- The recall proposal must also go through a 30-day window in which supporters can withdraw their names from the petition, giving Democrats a chance to campaign in hopes of convincing people to nix their support.
Earlier this week, Newsom announced a countercampaign, encouraging people to donate in a bid to halt the recall effort he claims is led by “a partisan, Republican coalition of national Republicans, anti-vaxxers, Q-Anon conspiracy theorists and anti-immigrant Trump supporters.”
The campaign has gotten the help of large donors, mostly located in Los Angeles, Irvine, and the Bay Area. The efforts have also sparked an interest among GOP hopefuls who see an opening for them to pursue a gubernatorial run next year.
Who may run in the recall election?
- Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer
- John Cox, a previous Newsom challenger and California businessman
- Doug Ose, an ex-GOP lawmaker who represented the state’s 3rd District around Sacramento from 1999 to 2005
- Major Williams, a former Pasadena mayoral candidate
Outside of the recall, Newsom would have been facing reelection in 2022. With the support of other Democrats, he is determined to take the recall on, though he expressed concerns about it earlier this week.
“I won’t be distracted by this partisan, Republican recall — but I will fight it,” Newsom tweeted Monday. “There is too much at stake. Getting Californians vaccinated, our economy safely reopened, and our kids back in school are simply too important to risk.”
What prompted the recall?
Started in June 2020, the recall campaign was largely sparked by Newsom’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, including the implementation of some of the strictest lockdowns in the country.
California has now had more than 3.6 million COVID-19 cases and more than 56,000 deaths attributed to the disease, according to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 tracker.
Over the past year, the Newsom administration greenlighted business openings and closures on and off, based on the severity of the virus’s spread. A regional lockdown order put in place late last year triggered the shutdown of restaurants and businesses for two months to help limit the strain on intensive care units at hospitals.
The governor also wasn’t helped by the optics of him being caught last year dining out at an upscale Napa Valley restaurant, maskless and in a group bigger than the one recommended by his own orders.
Voices on the ground
Hildy Langewis, a Californian who left for Idaho due to the high cost of living, previously told the Washington Examiner during a phone interview in February that she didn’t understand Newsom’s approach to the state’s lockdown, which she frequently returned to prior to the pandemic.
“It’s all political. It has nothing to do with the pandemic. It’s just total government control,” Langewis said. “They cannot justify closing small businesses and allowing the large businesses to stay open. There’s no justification for that. When your Home Depots and your Walmarts and your Costcos are open but all the little guys have to be closed, it doesn’t make sense.”
Janet Chandler of Burney, a rural mountain town in northern California, said the pandemic heightened people’s interest in the recall.
“Gov. Newsom’s reaction to it, which was totally unconstitutional, brought a lot of people to the realization that this man is not a good governor for California,” Chandler told the Washington Examiner last month.
Most northern counties exceeded their goals of signature collections early, but the movement has spread throughout other parts of the state considered to be strong blue bastions.
Leonard Moty, a Shasta County board supervisor in northern California, however, said he personally thought the recall push was led by a small but vocal minority who long opposed Newsom even before the pandemic.
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“They consider him as the devil that’s destroying California, and those calls aren’t super loud, but there’s a loud, minority vocal group that talks about recall,” Moty, who considers himself a moderate Republican, told the Washington Examiner in a February phone interview.
Newsom, 53, took office in 2019, after a strong victory against Republican Cox in the 2018 election. Prior to becoming governor, Newsom served as lieutenant governor and spent more than a decade in local government, including his tenure as mayor of San Francisco.
