Signatures to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom have been gathered and submitted, and now supporters say they’re confident California’s top politician will lose his seat.
“I do believe the recall will qualify and the governor will lose it,” Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner told The Epoch Times March 22. “Whoever goes in will take office knowing that the public is watching, and the public is very much unwilling to continue the policies of the past.”
The campaign to recall Newsom received more than 2.1 million signatures, surpassing the minimum verified 1.5 million signatures required by the March 17 deadline. The petitions must be verified by the state before the recall can move forward.
Recall efforts were launched last June, and organizers have said a significant portion of signatures came from people displeased with Newsom’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
If enough signatures are verified, a recall election will be held in 60 to 80 days.
The special election will have two boxes: one to choose to recall the governor, and the second—if voting to recall the governor—to vote for his replacement.
Wagner has said the recall’s success can be attributed to Newsom’s “unresponsive” actions.
“He is erratic in his COVID responses,” he said. “He is governing far to the left of the majority of the population, even in a blue state, because he is empowering the worst anti-democratic, poorly thought-out policies of the left.”
The majority of people involved with the recall are not right-leaning, but “middle of the road or somewhere to the left here in California,” he said.
“We’re seeing Democrats, not a large number, but certainly a significant number of Democrats and a larger number of no party preference folks signing the recall petition as well,” Wagner said.
“It’s not purely a Republican, Democrat thing. It’s a good governance versus bad. And right now, Newsom is the poster child for bad governance.”
Orange County political insider Shawn Steel, a Republican National Committee member, said the recall is a “desperate move” by Californians to reclaim the state’s dignity and keep its middle class.
“It was the governor’s reaction to lock down, close down California that has ruined tens of thousands of businesses and millions of lives and make a lot of people poor, and push people out of California,” Steel told The Epoch Times.
Only one governor has ever been recalled in California history: Gray Davis in 2003.
Steel also said that the recall is nonpartisan, as many people who have signed are doing so as a result of poor governance.
“Most of the people that have signed it are not really political. The vast majority of people that have signed it are people that have been personally burned by the governor,” Steel said.
