People protest Governor Newsom’s home defense order in front of Los Angeles City Hall in Southern California on May 1, 2020, calling for a quick reboot of the economy.
After five unsuccessful recall drives, California conservatives’ push to remove Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom from office has recently gained new momentum.
According to Politico, California Republicans have launched several recall campaigns against Newsom in the past, all of which failed because they failed to collect enough valid signatures from voters within the deadline. The latest recall campaign has nearly 840,000 signatures as of Dec. 14, more than half of the threshold to start a recall vote.
Newsom has recently drawn criticism for his epidemic measures, and California Superior Court Judge Gregory Pulskamp on Dec. 10 severely rebuked his epidemic ban and ruled to overturn “all COVID-19 restrictions that do not treat places of worship on an equal footing with businesses such as Wal-Mart and movie production companies.
Newsom also attended a private indoor birthday party with his wife at a Napa wine country restaurant on Nov. 6, in flagrant violation of his own guidelines for protection against the Chinese Communist virus (Wuhan pneumonia). After the incident was kicked up by the media, Newsom came under a lot of criticism, especially since he had only a few days ago encouraged Californians to abide by the party limit, preferably no more than three people.
According to Fox, these circumstances led some California Democrats to silently line up to sign next to the recall campaign for the governor.
The governor is his own worst enemy, and every day he does more and more things that make him more and more controversial,” said Randy Economy, a senior adviser to the recall campaign. In California, he has become a problem. In the last nine months, he has shut down the fifth largest economy in the world, and everyone in California should be outraged by that.”
Ikonami said the action is nonpartisan and nonsectarian, and includes supporters of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vermont) and fans of President Trump (R-Vermont). The recall needs to gather 1.5 million signatures by mid-March 2021 to reach the threshold of co-signatures needed to start a recall vote. Ikonami expects to reach the cosignature goal by mid- to late-January next year.
The Sacramento Bee reported that on Dec. 2, California Republican Party Chairwoman Jessica Patterson confirmed in a fundraising email that the party’s board of directors had voted to support a petition to remove Newsom from office. The Libertarian Party of California also announced its support for Newsom’s recall in October.
A spokesman for Newsom’s office did not respond to the governor’s recall campaign.
Newsom has appointed his own staff amid recent stumbles, hiring former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers as director of the Office of Business and Economic Development and California political veteran Jim DeBoo as a senior adviser.
California has launched dozens of campaigns to remove incumbent governors over the past century, but has succeeded only once, in 2003, when Democratic Gov. Gray Davis was replaced by Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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