The recall of California Gov. Gavin Newsom will officially move forward as organizers collected 1,719,900 verified signatures, well above the required 1.5 million needed to force a new election. While the petition collected well over 1.7 million signatures, only 43 were officially withdrawn. This is the second time in California’s (out of 55 attempts) that a campaign successfully triggered a recall election.
Many Republicans have already lined up to challenge the Democratic governor, including former Mayor Kevin Faulconer, Olympic Caitlyn Jenner, entrepreneur Major Williams, and political candidate John Cox, who lost to Newsom in 2018.
The Department of Finance announced that they will start estimating the costs of the gubernatorial recall and send the projections to Newsom, the lieutenant governor, the secretary of state, and the chairperson of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. They will have 30 days to review and comment before the secretary of state certifies the sufficiency of the signatures.
The recall efforts were started by residents frustrated by Newsom’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, high taxes in the state, re-openings, and crime concerns. He came under fire when breaking his own COVID-19 restrictions to dine maskless at a party at the state’s most expensive , The Laundry, and ordering businesses to close while keeping his own winery, Plumpjack Winery, open.
Recall campaign manager Anne Dunsmore said that the laws Newsom endorsed favored illegal immigrants over Californians and created a state with the highest taxes, highest homelessness rates, and lowest quality of life. She adds that he wants to impose additional burdens on rationing our use, removing the protections of Proposition 13, and restricting parental rights.
Newsom recently misled the public about the progress his has made wildfire prevention efforts, with state Assemblyman James Gallagher saying that it seems to be “just one thing after another with this governor” and that he is finally going to be held accountable for his disastrous leadership.
“This hits really close to home for me. I represent Paradise, a town that was decimated by a wildfire in 2018. We have kept saying that we need to put more investment into fuel reduction. These fuels have built up in our forests over the decades, mostly because we’ve got rid of any kind of forestry management in California. The governor keeps telling everybody that he’s putting all kinds of money into wildfire prevention. And as it turns out, it’s been a fraction of what he’s been stating to the California public,” Gallagher said.
Despite pledging to reform California’s approach to wildfire prevention, a National Public Radio report found that there was little evidence that the governor actually put his plans in motion, with Newsom slashing about $150 million from the department’s budget. Do you remember when former President Donald Trump talked about the poor management practices in California? Looks like he was right.
Kevin Paffrath, a California real estate agent looking to replace Newsom as a Democrat, called this an opportunity for Californians to pick a free-trial governor for a year and said that people are“better off trusting anybody than Gavin Newsom. “Unless, of course, we want to keep seeing billions of dollars going into a funnel and get wasted,” he adds.
With record homelessness and the highest tax rates in the nation, it’s no wonder that more people are leaving California than going there. Democrats have been running California into the ground for decades, but to Newsom, it’s still the “Trump supporter’s” fault for his recall efforts. California might be turning red.
