Late Wednesday night, the group organizing the recall of California Governor Gavin Newsom announced it had collected over 2 million signatures.
Orrin Heatlie, Chairman of The California Patriot Coalition, RecallGavin2020 Committee said in a statement, “The People of California are speaking loud and clear. We have cleared another milestone. Politics as usual in California are over as we know it to be.”
About 1,500,000 signatures are needed to trigger a recall election under state law. From the start, organizers have set out with a goal of collecting 2 million signatures in order to assure they had enough verifiable submissions. The total number collected thusfar is 2,060,000, according to the campaign’s senior advisor Randy Economy.
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“The People are in charge of California, not political operatives,” Economy tweeted. “The People are changing California.”
We Did It California! 2,060,000 signatures to #RecallGavin2020. The People are in charge of California not you @GavinNewsom. pic.twitter.com/6zThrWwSUU
— RANDY ECONOMY (@EconomyRadio) March 11, 2021
The signatures will be looked at by officials in each of California’s 58 counties to ensure their legitimacy. According to a California Patriot Coalition press release, 1,871,573 signatures have been pre-verified internally through an outside third party vendor. The signatures will now go to registrar of voter offices in each of California’s 58 counties for verification there. The press release says that 1,800,000 signatures have already been turned in to county officials.
Organizers have until March 17 to gather signatures.Election officials have until April 29 to verify them. If more than 1,497,000 are valid,
Earlier media reports pegged validations by local officials running above 80%, supposedly a high number which, if it continues, would mean the effort will more than qualify. If there is a recall election, it will most likely be in November and feature just two questions on the ballot: “Should Gavin Newsom be recalled?” and another asking voters to choose a replacement.
When asked about the recall, Newsom has repeatedly demurred, saying he was focusing on the work before him as governor. But in his State of the State speech Tuesday night, he seemed to speak directly to the recall effort: “So to the California critics, who are promoting partisan power grabs and outdated prejudices and rejecting everything that makes California great, we say this: We will not be distracted from getting shots in arms and our economy booming again.”
The governor has been barnstorming the state for weeks visiting Covid-19 vaccination clinics and announcing the reopenings of schools in the state, theme parks, restaurants and generally loosening the restrictions that have many Californians so angry.
Newsom has done a great job. He has taken responsibility for his mistakes. Reached out for help in areas he was not equipped to address, reevaluated his plan as the information or people indicated and listened
To what the people were saying while always putting the people’s safety and well being first.
Thank you Newsom!
Strategically, this is a massive misstep by the GOP, and will probably have the same result as the more justifiable attempted recall of Republican governor Scott Walker in Minnesota in 2012. Walker defeated the recall effort, and then won re-election in 2014, with the recall attempt being a campaign issue.
Newsom wasn’t polling well and had made some clear missteps in the pandemic (most notably the French Laundry fiasco, for which there’s no defense.) But this looks like a massive power grab, and he’s both far more adept than Gray Davis and more popular than Gray Davis. The smart play would’ve been to just run a normal campaign against him in 2022. Now the GOP’s guaranteed that Democrats will rally to Newsom’s side and will be ticked off enough to re-elect him in 2022.
You can cite all the statistics you want, but CA’s a Democratic state that doesn’t go for GOP power grabs. I see this is a self-inflicted wound that’s probably going to blow what could’ve been a very winnable election.
Hang him…
Totally out of control…California is being taxed to death….my ald truck registration went from $66 to $150 fow what?
I just changed from Democrat to Independent, and regretting my vote for Newsom. For me the final straw is his signing the SB132 into law, the gender ideology taking over public schools, the law permitting dysphoric female minors to cut off their healthy breasts and go on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones without parent consent.
Mandate school reopen NOW else I’m voting you out!!! Dangling money is not enough.