Recall Talk expands for Newsom in California as governors under siege

Voters would be asked two questions: whether Mr Newsom should be recalled, and if the recall passes, who is expected to end the remaining year or so as governor.

For now, fellow Democrats have closed ranks around Mr Newsom, accompanying him on appearances and generously praising his handling of the pandemic. The Biden administration also came to the aid of the governor, with White House press secretary Jen Psaki emphasizing this month that President Biden “clearly opposes any effort” to recall the governor.

The governor himself avoided the “R” word. “I’m focused on the vaccine issue,” he recently told reporters who asked about the recall effort. Mr Newsom’s team, however, noted that recall attempts are not unusual in California: revocation petitions have been filed against every governor for the past 61 years.

Only one recall succeeded – in 2003, when post-9/11 fears and power outages from energy deregulation helped Republicans persuade voters to fire Gray Davis and hire Arnold Schwarzenegger, who then faced to his own blitz of recall attempts.

Dan Newman, political adviser to Mr Newsom, pointed out that after the 2003 petition qualified for the ballot, 135 candidates came forward, including Arianna Huffington, ex-child star Gary Coleman and Mary Carey, then a film actress. pornographic. “Some people estimate that we could have 10 times as many candidates as in 2003,” he said, noting that such a special election would cost around $ 100 million.

Already three Republicans – Kevin Faulconer, the former mayor of San Diego; conservative activist Mike Cernovich; and John Cox, who lost to Mr Newsom in 2018 – have announced their intention to challenge the governor, and Richard Grenell, who was the acting intelligence chief of former President Donald J. Trump, would not rule it out during a recent appearance on Newsmax.

But the recall effort also exploited broad bipartisan malaise, with the virus claiming an estimated 50,000 lives in the state. Through the pandemic, Californians have glimpsed their governor not only as their state’s lucky son at the peak of his game, as he was when he was elected, but also as a pale-faced, all-too-human guy trying to stay. calm on a livestream.