California governor gears up for recall fight as critics say they’ve reached 2m signatures

Gavin Newsom is gearing up for a recall challenge, with the California governor’s fiercest critics saying they have filed the signatures needed to call an election to remove him from office.

The Wednesday deadline to submit at least 1.5m valid voter signatures to trigger a gubernatorial recall has come two days before the anniversary of California’s first statewide shelter-in-place order. Counties now have until the end of April to verify petition signatures.

Push to recall California governor Gavin Newsom gains steam – but who’s behind it?

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The recall campaign says it has collected more than 2.1m signatures, which have yet to be verified by election officials. “We’re laser-focused on playing this out day by day,” said Randy Economy, a senior adviser to the recall campaign. “Once we get this on the ballot officially, the next phase of the campaign kicks off – and that is to gather support for the recall.”

The campaign, spearheaded by the Republican former sheriff’s deputy Orrin Heatlie, has come out against the Newsom administration’s pandemic-era lockdowns, aid to undocumented immigrants and homeless residents, relatively high taxes and spending on social programs. The effort has picked up financial support from big business donors and a few Silicon Valley venture capitalists, including the former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya.

“Well, the reality is, it looks like it’s going on the ballot,” Newsom said on Tuesday during a news conference. “We will fight it. We will defeat it.”

If at least 1.5m petition signatures are validated, the state will hold a recall election this year. Voters will be asked first whether they want to recall Newsom and then who they would choose to replace him.

Appearing on The View, Newsom said he was “worried” about the recall effort. “Of course I’m worried about it,” he said. “The nature of these things, the up-or-down question, the zero-sum nature of the question is challenging … so we’re taking it seriously.”

Democrats have signaled that they will not be running any candidates, leaving voters to choose between Newsom and three major Republicans who have entered the race so far: the San Diego mayor, Kevin Faulconer; the conservative activist Mike Cernovich; and John Cox, who lost to Newsom in 2018 by 23 points.

“California Democrats are going to be totally behind the governor, 100%,” said Drexel Heard, a Democratic political strategist based in Los Angeles. And without another Democratic or progressive candidate on the ballot, the party is betting that most voters in the blue state will stick with Newsom over conservative alternatives.

Although the governor’s approval ratings have taken a hit since an early-pandemic peak, he still seems to have the support needed to prevail. Analysts also expect his approval to tick up, with the majority of Californians on track to get vaccinated by the early summer, the state’s public schools set to reopen and economists predicting that the state’s economy will rebound faster than the rest of the US.

“Barring something really dramatic happening, or some major scandal, I think it’s unlikely that Newsom will lose the recall,” said Mindy Romero, founder and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California.

Gubernatorial recalls in California are rarely successful. Gray Davis, the only California governor who has ever been recalled, was in a far more precarious position in 2003, on the heels of an electricity crisis and facing a $38bn budget deficit. He lost the recall to Arnold Schwarzenegger.