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      Caitlyn Jenner reportedly considering run for California governor

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterCaitlyn Jenner, the TV star and Olympic champion, is reportedly considering a run for California governor.The Axios reporter Jonathan Swan on Tuesday reported that Jenner is working with GOP fundraiser Caroline Wren to explore running against the California governor, Gavin Newsom, in an impending recall election. Maggie Haberman of the New York Times said on Wednesday that former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale is advising Jenner on building her team.The recall campaign against Newsom, a Democrat, is spearheaded by Republicans who opposed the governor’s pandemic-era business shutdowns, as well as his immigration and tax policies.The campaign said in March it had filed the signatures needed to call an election to remove Newsom from office. If election officials are able to validate at least 1.5m signatures by the end of this month, the state will hold a recall election this year. Voters will choose first whether they want to recall Newsom and then who they would like to replace him.The recall campaign gained traction amid the previous coronavirus surge, with support from big business donors and a few Silicon Valley venture capitalists. The Republicans currently running against Newsom include the former San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer; the conservative activist Mike Cernovich; and John Cox, who lost to Newsom in 2018 by 23 points. Strategists say that none of these candidates have an easy path to victory in a state that leans heavily Democratic.Some recall supporters say that a big-name Republican like Jenner would change the dynamics of the race. In the 2003 recall of former California governor Gray Davis, it was the actor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s decision to run against Davis that helped energize the effort. Schwarzenegger ultimately replaced Davis.Jenner, a former Olympic medalist who starred in Keeping Up with the Kardashians, has been critical of Donald Trump’s views on trans rights, but has ultimately aligned with the Republican party on many major issues. Wren, who worked for Trump’s 2020 campaign fundraising committee and helped organize the rally that preceded the 6 January Capitol attack, connected with Jenner through a GOP nonprofit focused on LGBT issues, according to Axios.Democrats in California and in DC have aligned themselves with Newsom. The progressive Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has thrown his support behind Newsom, and Kamala Harris – a longtime friend of the California governor – appeared alongside him Monday during her visit to the state and praised him as “a real champion in California and outside of California”.The governor’s approval rating dropped from an early-pandemic peak, but it remains relatively strong in recent polls. A recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found 56% of likely voters would oppose a recall. More

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      California’s Governor Was Tested by the Pandemic. Now a Recall Looms.

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      In California, both Republicans and Democrats say the threat of a recall election has shaped Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent responses to the coronavirus pandemic.SACRAMENTO — Things have been looking up in California. Vaccines will soon be available to everyone over 16. Los Angeles schools are about to bring hundreds of thousands of students back to classrooms. Disneyland, dark for a year, will throw open its gates in just a few weeks.At the state capital, however, the coronavirus pandemic still clouds Gov. Gavin Newsom’s horizon. Soon, the secretary of state is expected to announce that a campaign to recall him has officially qualified for a special election.Led by Trump stalwarts, amplified by Republican National Committee money and fueled during the pandemic by Mr. Newsom’s own political missteps, the recall initiative is widely regarded as a long shot. Putting it on the ballot requires roughly 1.5 million signatures from disgruntled voters, a drop in the Democrat-dominated bucket of 40 million residents.But even if Mr. Newsom prevails, the pandemic has both tested and tarnished him politically.The tall, telegenic heir to the “fifth-largest economy in the world,” as his predecessor Jerry Brown routinely boasted, Mr. Newsom has lost some of the benefit of California’s doubt. His approval rating has dropped by more than 10 points since May, when 65 percent of Californians trusted his handling of the pandemic. Critics even within his own party have questioned whether his recent decisions have been motivated by public health or the recall attempt.The campaign against Mr. Newsom has highlighted the differences between the powerhouse California that elected him and the virus-battered California he now governs. Longtime political analysts see hidden weaknesses in his polling: The state may not want to recall him, they say, but his popularity has suffered, and his political fortunes are linked more closely than ever to the ebb and flow of the virus in his state.“When you’re evaluating an executive — be it a mayor, a governor, a president, whatever — there are really only a couple of basic questions,” said Mike Madrid, a former political director of the state Republican Party and a co-founder of the anti-Trump group the Lincoln Project.“Are the lights on? Are the trains running on time? And in this case, how have you managed the global pandemic?”At the moment, Mr. Newsom’s report card is mixed.California has record budget reserves, one of the nation’s lowest rates of new virus cases and a vaccine rollout that, after a rocky start, has started to gain steam. But the state also has lagged behind the nation in school reopenings and has the third-highest unemployment rate.A mobile coronavirus vaccination site in the Chinatown neighborhood of Los Angeles. Mr. Newsom’s future is largely tied to California’s ability to control the coronavirus.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesEpidemiologists have warned that the virus may return as the state reopens, but right now, cases are at levels not seen since mid-October. More than 30 percent of the population has received at least one vaccine dose and 30 percent have survived an infection and developed some level of natural immunity.[See how experts graded California’s vaccine rollout.]Barring a fresh surge or a runaway variant, the pandemic could soon be in California’s rearview mirror. A recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that three-quarters of Californians believe that the worst of the crisis is behind them, and 56 percent of likely voters would oppose a recall if an election were held now.“In the face of an unprecedented global health crisis, Governor Newsom has followed the science and moved aggressively to keep California safe,” said Nathan Click, one of the governor’s advisers. “His actions saved countless lives and have earned him the trust of Californians.”Recall attempts are common in California and typically fail. The governor’s defenders say this one would never have met the signature threshold had a judge not granted an extension because of the state’s shutdown, one of many ways the recall and the pandemic are inextricably linked.On Thursday, Mr. Newsom received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in Los Angeles in a livestreamed event after his administration expanded eligibility to all Californians age 50 and older. Mr. Newsom, 53, showed not one iota of worry about the recall, never mentioning the subject and, after taking off his suit jacket to receive the shot, flexing his muscles in his dark T-shirt.“It has been an extraordinarily challenging year — so much fear, so much anxiety,” Mr. Newsom told reporters. “But now, growing optimism, not only here in Southern California, but throughout our state.”Yet critics and political allies alike said the threat of the recall had indeed loomed large, and had appeared to shape the governor’s pandemic response.In early March, as Los Angeles was just recovering from a brutal winter surge, Mr. Newsom tried to accelerate the reopening of classrooms with sweeping legislation and critical tweaks in the state’s health rules. Then he delivered his annual State of the State address from an empty Dodger Stadium, as if it were a campaign speech.Mr. Newsom gave his State of the State address inside an empty Dodger Stadium.Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockHe cited the millions of vaccines the state had administered and the billions of dollars in pandemic aid that he was directing to small businesses. But his language channeled the California labor groups and progressives on whom the state’s Democrats rely to mobilize voters.“When this pandemic ends — and it will end soon — we’re not going back to normal. Normal was never good enough,” the governor said. “Normal accepts inequity.”Days later, after the recall proponents publicly estimated they would exceed 2 million signatures from voters favoring his ouster, he announced that California would be changing its notoriously complex, color-coded system of health restrictions. When the system was devised, life without the threat of Covid-19 seemed so remote that the state’s least-strict designation was caution-tape yellow. But now, the governor said, he was adding a hopeful new “green tier,” a sudden move his critics tied to the recall effort.“Before the threat of a recall the governor told us there was no green because we could never be normal again,” tweeted Jon Fleischman, a former executive director of the California Republican Party. “It’s funny how his science turned out to be political science.”Similar accusations have arisen from some would-be allies.Dr. Jeffrey V. Smith, the Santa Clara County executive, took issue with the governor’s plan to dedicate 40 percent of first vaccine doses to vulnerable, poorer communities as determined by a state index.Mr. Newsom presented the plan last month as proof of his determination to ensure that rich Californians did not crowd the poor out of access to scarce vaccinations. But the policy change also helped Mr. Newsom politically.A new tweak in the system for determining health restrictions let a county move into a lower tier once a critical mass of vaccinations had been administered in disadvantaged ZIP codes. Many of those targeted ZIP codes were in Los Angeles, where teachers’ unions were refusing to return to classrooms until the county was out of the strictest level of health rules. Parent groups, meanwhile, were demanding in-person instruction.Dr. Smith — whose Bay Area county has plenty of poor people but virtually none of the targeted ZIP codes — said the vaccine targets were part of a “fake equity plan,” based less on fairness than on Mr. Newsom’s desire to open up Los Angeles.“What’s really going on has nothing to do with distribution,” said Dr. Smith, who serves in a nonpartisan position but said he identifies as a Democrat. “It has to do with the governor’s desire to buy himself out of the recall election by reopening Southern California as fast as he can.”It is unclear how much voters will care about Mr. Newsom’s mix of motivations. Californians, who overwhelmingly opposed former President Donald J. Trump in the last election, are unlikely to replace a Democratic governor if their main alternatives are limited to the current challengers, who are Republican supporters of Mr. Trump.Conservative activists in Pasadena gathered some of the roughly 1.5 million signatures needed to trigger the recall election.David Mcnew/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIf a recall is placed on the ballot in a special election that most likely would be held in the fall, voters will be asked two questions: Whether Mr. Newsom should be recalled, and if so, who should finish the 14 months or so remaining in his term. So far, no Democrats have stepped up as an alternative, and party leaders from progressives such as Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont to centrists such as President Biden have sought to maintain that united front.The politicking to come is expected to be expensive, national and corrosive. Recall proponents and their allies say they have raised about $4.1 million, including large contributions from major Republican donors, the state Republican Party and potential candidates such as John Cox, a San Diego businessman who lost to Mr. Newsom in 2018.The governor’s team has reported about $3 million in contributions, including about $400,000 from the state Democratic Party, $250,000 from a union representing state government engineers, $125,000 each from the agricultural magnates Stewart and Lynda Resnick and more than $500,000 in small-dollar online donations in the 48 hours after the governor started a website called Stop the Republican Recall.Supporters of Mr. Newsom portray the initiative as the work of Republican extremists. The leader, the governor has said, believes that the government should “microchip migrants.”Orrin Heatlie, the retired Northern California sheriff’s sergeant who is the recall’s lead proponent, wrote a 2019 Facebook post that read: “Microchip all illegal immigrants. It works! Just ask Animal control.”Mr. Heatlie acknowledged in an interview that he wrote the post, but he said that it was not meant to be taken literally and that he intended it as a “conversation starter.”He said Mr. Newsom brought the recall on himself by imposing too many restrictions early in the pandemic and dining at an elite wine country restaurant while asking Californians to quarantine last fall.Darry Sragow, a longtime Democratic strategist, predicts that Mr. Newsom will survive the recall. But he added that the governor’s numbers indicate that his troubles with voters are not over.Last month, pollsters at Emerson College and Nexstar Media Group asked Californians about the 2022 election. If they could, would they vote again for Mr. Newsom?More than 58 percent of registered voters said they preferred someone new.Shawn Hubler More

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      Ex-Trump aide tweets 'executive orders' after Google lists him as president

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      Richard Grenell, a former acting director of national intelligence turned potential Republican candidate for governor of California, gleefully seized on an error by Google on Saturday, promising “a plethora of executive orders” after the search giant listed him as “President of the United States since 2021”.The former Trump aide also took a low shot at the actual president, Joe Biden, tweeting: “I will run up the stairs without tripping.”Biden stumbled dramatically on Friday, as he climbed the stairs to Air Force One. On Saturday, before noticing his accidental promotion by Google, Grenell complained about media coverage of Biden’s fall including criticism of Donald Trump Jr’s decision to tweet a gif showing his father knocking Biden over with a golf ball.“Washington DC types are killing humour and laughter,” Grenell claimed.Few Democrats or Washington officials found much to laugh about in Grenell’s time as acting director of national intelligence.In February last year, one unnamed former official told Vanity Fair his appointment “clearly, unambiguously” represented “the politicisation of intelligence” and said the former ambassador to Germany was Trump’s “guardian against fact”.In the event, Grenell filled the role for three months before being replaced by John Ratcliffe, a former congressman many observers thought similarly unqualified and inappropriately partisan.On Saturday, Grenell’s first tweeted “executive orders” as the Google-anointed president, if not the actual one, included the demand that a liquid natural gas terminal “be built ASAP on the west coast of the United States (preferably in California)” and that “multiple desalinisation plants [and] new nuclear power plants be built in California”.“Oh,” he added, “and Eric Swalwell hereby loses his security clearance.”Swalwell, a California Democrat who briefly ran for the presidential nomination in 2020, was a House manager in Trump’s second impeachment trial. Republicans have sought unsuccessfully to remove him from the House intelligence committee, over reports of links to a suspected Chinese spy.By lunchtime on the east coast on Saturday, Google had fixed its mistake.Grenell seems more likely to run for state than national office. Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, is the subject of a recall attempt. In February, Grenell was reported to have discussed a run with Trump.Speaking to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida, Grenell said: “And of course, if a public official is still failing to deliver on their promises, and if you can’t limit their term or recall them in time, there’s always one other option. You can run against them yourself.” More

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      California governor gears up for recall fight as critics say they’ve reached 2m signatures

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      California’s governor Gavin Newsom is gearing up for a recall challenge, with his fiercest critics saying they’ve filed the requisite signatures needed to call an election to remove him from office.The Wednesday deadline to submit at least 1.5m valid voter signatures to trigger a gubernatorial recall has come two days before the anniversary of California’s first statewide shelter-in-place order. Counties now have until the end of April to verify petition signatures.The recall campaign says it has collected more than 2m signatures. “We’re laser-focused on playing this out day by day,” said Randy Economy, a senior advisor to the recall campaign. “Once we get this on the ballot officially, the next phase of the campaign kicks off – and that is to gather support for the recall.”The campaign, spearheaded by the Republican former sheriff’s deputy Orrin Heatlie, has come out against the Newsom’s administration’s pandemic-era lockdowns, aid to undocumented immigrants and homeless residents, relatively high taxes and spending on social programs. The effort has picked up financial support from big business donors and a few Silicon Valley venture capitalists, including the former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya.“Well, the reality is, it looks like it’s going on the ballot,” Newsom said Tuesday during a news conference. “We will fight it. We will defeat it.”If at least 1.5m petition signatures are validated, the state will hold a recall election later this year. Voters will be asked first whether they want to recall Newsom and then who they would choose to replace him.Appearing on The View, Newsom said he was “worried” about the recall effort. “Of course I’m worried about it,” he said. “The nature of these things, the up or down question, the zero-sum nature of the question is challenging … so we’re taking it seriously.”Democrats have signaled that they will not be running any candidates, leaving voters to choose between Newsom and three major Republicans who have entered the race so far: the San Diego mayor, Kevin Faulconer; the conservative activist Mike Cernovich; and John Cox, who lost to Newsom in 2018 by 23 points.“California Democrats are going to be totally behind the governor, 100%,” said Drexel Heard, a Democratic political strategist based in Los Angeles. And without another Democratic or progressive candidate on the ballot, the party is betting that most voters in the blue state will stick with Newsom over conservative alternatives.Although the governor’s approval ratings have taken a hit since an early-pandemic peak, he still seems to have the support needed to prevail. Analysts also expect his approval to tick up, with the majority of Californians on track to get vaccinated by the early summer, the state’s public schools set to reopen and economists predicting that the state’s economy will rebound faster than the rest of the US.“Barring something really dramatic happening, or some major scandal, I think it’s unlikely that Newsom will lose the recall,” said Mindy Romero, founder and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California.Gubernatorial recalls in California are rarely successful. Gray Davis, the only California governor who has ever been recalled, was in a far more precarious position in 2003, on the heels of a massive electricity crisis, facing a $38bn budget deficit. He lost the recall to the actor and bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger. More

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      Adam Schiff: will the Democratic star of Trump's impeachment trial be California's next top cop?

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      As the lead prosecutor in Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, Adam Schiff, the representative from southern California, became a household name, an icon of the anti-Trump resistance, and a rising star in the Democratic party. A year on, the congressman looks increasingly well positioned to be appointed as California’s next attorney general. But in Schiff’s home district, criminal justice and immigrant rights advocates say that his record as state senator and congressman, authoring legislation to increase the criminalization and incarceration of Black and brown Californians, should disqualify him from holding the position.“There’s this real disconnect,” said Jody Armour, a University of Southern California law professor who studies the intersection of race and legal decision making. “The country knows Schiff as sort of an icon. Here in California, we know him as someone who was, in many ways, one of the chief architects of mass incarceration.”Schiff has reportedly been lobbying Governor Gavin Newsom for the attorney general spot that will open up if the US Senate confirms Xavier Becerra as the health and human services secretary later this week. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has given her blessings, and reportedly even a personal endorsement.Schiff, 60, began his career at a US district court in California, first as a law clerk and eventually as an assistant US attorney, rising to prominence for prosecuting the case against a former FBI agent convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.He was elected to the California state senate in 1996, and four years later moved to the US House of Representatives. There, he served as the chair of the powerful intelligence committee, becoming one of Pelosi’s closest confidants.As the lead impeachment manager pursuing Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, Schiff’s fiery speeches gained him lavish praise from liberals, begrudging recognition from conservatives and $41m in campaign funds last election cycle.Schiff’s star power, his powerful allies in the Democratic party and fundraising prowess have set him up as a top contender for attorney general.‘Tough on crime’ recordCalifornia voters elect their top prosecutor every four years, but Becerra will be leaving his seat with a year of his term left – leaving it to Newsom to find a replacement until the next election. From there, Schiff could be in a better position than he currently is to run for US Senate, or even governor in the future.In recent years, and especially under Donald Trump, the California attorney general has become a national figure. Becerra launched more than 100 lawsuits against the previous administration, successfully sueing to block policies that would strong-arm local law enforcement to cooperate with immigration authorities, insert a question about immigration status into the US census, or end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (Daca) program, which gives temporary protection to undocumented immigrants who arrived in the US as children.Critics say Schiff’s appointment would run counter to the political progress on police reform and criminal justice made last year amid nationwide protests following the killing of George Floyd. Armour, along with a number of academics, activists and advocates in California, have asked Newsom to appoint someone else. “One person alone is not responsible for California’s incarceration crisis. But Schiff stands out for his extreme punitiveness,” they wrote in a public letter.They pointed at Schiff’s legislative proposals and votes in the California senate in the late 1990s, which were in line with the “tough on crime” attitude of politicians in that era. Schiff authored several bills to toughen up the criminal justice system and immigration enforcement, including a proposal that would have expanded the three strikes law, one that would have allowed 14-year-olds to be tried as adults, and a bill to create juvenile “boot camps” for children who commit crimes while at school. On immigration, he authored a bill that would have made the hiring of an undocumented immigrant a crime punishable with jail time.Many of the most punitive criminal justice bills Schiff introduced never became law. They failed to get enough support in the legislature or were vetoed by both Republican and Democratic governors.More recently, as a US representative, Schiff sided with Republicans in 2017 to support the Thin Blue Line Act, which would have altered the federal criminal code to add the targeting or killing of a law enforcement officer to the list of offenses that could be sentenced with the federal death penalty. The law was criticized by civil rights organizations, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and it ran counter to policies espoused by Newsom, who issued an executive order to halt executions in California in 2019.The discrepancy between Schiff’s record and California’s priorities are noteworthy, at a moment when the state attorney general will serve as a key player in debates around police accountability, criminal justice reform and immigration. Under new California law, the state’s attorney general will take on the role of investigating all deadly police shootings of unarmed civilians. And the state is continuing to challenge Trump-era policies that restricted immigrant rights.In June, Schiff did disavow Jackie Lacey, the former Los Angeles district attorney who faced fierce backlash from the Black Lives Matter movement for her failure to prosecute police violence. “This is a rare time in our nation’s history. We have a responsibility to make profound changes to end systemic racism and reform criminal justice,” Schiff said.Schiff’s office did not respond to the Guardian’s request for response to the concerns detailed in advocates’ letter to the governor. The congressman has repeatedly brushed off questions about his attorney general ambitions in national news interviews.But Armour said he wished Schiff would explicitly reckon with his record, much like Biden and Kamala Harris – herself a former California attorney general – did in the lead-up to the 2020 elections. Newsom meanwhile has remained secretive about who his final pick will be. Other top contenders include Rob Bonta, an assembly member representing Oakland who has been endorsed by the Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, and Diane Becton, the Contra Costa county district attorney. More

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      Gavin Newsom vows to 'fight' potential recall election with launch of new Pac

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      California’s governor on Monday launched a political committee to raise money to defend his seat in a potential recall election, the strongest acknowledgment to date that he expects to be on the ballot this year.
      “I won’t be distracted by this partisan, Republican recall – but I will fight it,” Gavin Newsom said in a tweet. “There is too much at stake,” he added.
      Organizers of the recall face a deadline on Wednesday to submit the 1.5m petition signatures necessary to place the election on the ballot. They say they have collected over 2m signatures far, though hundreds of thousands must still be validated by election officials.
      But Newsom’s new fundraising arm could soon send a powerful message to his possible rivals: under state rules, the governor alone is allowed to raise money in unlimited amounts, while other candidates must adhere to contribution limits.
      It’s likely Newsom will soon receive a flood of cash from his familiar Democratic constituency, including powerful public worker unions that spent millions of dollars helping install him in office in 2018.
      Newsom has lined up support from state and national Democrats to defeat the campaign against him. The committee started the drive with an advertisement attacking the recall effort as a Republican power grab.
      New Jersey Democratic senator Cory Booker said in a statement released by the committee that Newsom’s leadership during the pandemic “kept Californians safe and helped them recover financially”.
      Defeating the recall “will be one of the most important priorities for Democrats this year”, Booker said.
      Democrats have depicted the recall effort as seeded with extremists. Recall organizers claim 38% of petition signatures have come from independents, Democrats, and people who did not list their political party. That could not be immediately verified.
      Newsom for months sidestepped questions about the recall, but has more recently started to ramp up his political operation and strategy. He’s been traveling the state holding events to highlight coronavirus vaccinations, while a string of supporters have started staging online news conferences in an attempt to turn public favor his way.
      The governor made his most direct comments to date on the recall last Friday in an interview with San Francisco’s KQED news radio station, depicting the effort as a challenge to his administration’s progressive policies and not a reaction to his leadership during the pandemic that has claimed over 55,000 lives in California.
      “It’s about immigration. It’s about our healthcare policies. It’s about our criminal justice reform. It’s about the diversity of the state. It’s about our clean air, clean water programs, meeting our environmental strategies,” he told KQED.
      Newsom received high praise for his aggressive approach to the coronavirus last spring, when he issued the nation’s first statewide stay-at-home order. But in more recent months, he has faced growing public anger over health orders that shuttered schools and businesses, the state’s slow vaccine rollout, and a massive unemployment benefits fraud scandal.
      He also took a public drubbing for attending a birthday party with friends and lobbyists at the exclusive French Laundry restaurant, while telling residents to stay home for safety.
      Two Republicans have announced their candidacies: Kevin Faulconer, the former Republican mayor of San Diego, and Republican businessman John Cox, who was defeated by Newsom in 2018.
      Another name being discussed in GOP circles is Donald Trump’s then acting director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell, who has not responded to requests for comment on a possible candidacy.
      California is one of 19 states that allow voters to remove elected officials before their terms expire. Calling a recall election is fairly easy. The only requirement is to collect a number of signatures equal to 12% of the voters in the last election for the office. Recall petitions have been launched against every California governor in the last 61 years – though they are almost never successful. More

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      Covid-fatigued California's effort to recall Newsom may be a rallying cry for Republicans

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      Nearly a year after Gavin Newsom became the first American governor to issue a statewide stay-at-home order to combat the coronavirus, the California leader delivered his “state of the state” address from an empty Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.“Let’s allow ourselves to dream of brighter days ahead,” Newsom said on Tuesday.It was a pep talk for the state – and for himself.America’s most populous state is coming out of its most deadly phase of the pandemic, having lost more than 56,000 to Covid-19. Black and Latino communities face the brunt of the crisis. Businesses have struggled to survive lockdown restrictions. Many public schools have been closed since last March. And the state’s initially clumsy vaccine rollout has only recently picked up speed.Capitalizing on the growing frustrations of economically devastated, pandemic-fatigued residents, Newsom’s fiercest critics have mounted a recall campaign and are prepared to submit, by Wednesday, the requisite 1.5m voter signatures to trigger the vote. The campaign’s organizers say they have already found more than enough backers, and they have collected hefty checks from business developers, venture capitalists and Trump loyalists.State officials have yet to verify the petition signatures, but political analysts say that a gubernatorial recall election later this year appears more or less inevitable. “There’s going to be a recall election – simply put,” said Mindy Romero, the founder of the Center for Inclusive Democracy, a nonpartisan research organization.“What’s more complicated,” she said, “are the reasons why.”In California – one of 19 states that allow voters to remove elected officials before their terms expire – calling a recall election is fairly easy. The only requirement is to collect a number of signatures equal to 12% of the voters in the last election for the office.“So to get this on the ballot is not at all an impossible feat,” said Joshua Spivak, a senior fellow at the Hugh L Carey Institute for Government Reform at Wagner College and expert on recalls. “To opponents of the governor, it’s really appealing as something worth trying.”In 2020 alone, 11 recalls of various officials went to a vote, and eight officials were removed from office as a result, Spivak said. Recall petitions have been launched against every California governor in the last 61 years – though they are almost never successful. Gray Davis, the only California governor who has ever been recalled, was in a far more precarious position in 2003, at the heels of an electricity crisis, facing a $38bn budget deficit. He lost the recall to Arnold Schwarzenegger, who entered the race with a higher profile than any of the Republicans set to face off against Newsom this year.Republicans had already tried and failed five times to get Newsom recalled, when their sixth try, led by the retired sheriff’s deputy Orrin Heatlie, began to gain momentum last year. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, a judge gave Heatlie and his supporters more time to collect signatures. As Newsom enacted restrictions last winter in an attempt to quell the deadliest wave of the pandemic, recallers were able to rally an anti-lockdown base and win over other Californians struggling to cope with the pandemic’s protracted, devastating economic toll. It didn’t help Newsom’s case that around the same time, the governor met up with a dozen of his closest friends and lobbyists for a lavish dinner at Napa’s French Laundry restaurant.“Anytime an elected official is serving under a crisis, it is a precarious situation,” said Romero. “Faced with the pandemic, it would be shocking if the governor and elected officials didn’t receive some negative reaction.”Amid the state’s chaotic vaccine rollout, Newsom’s poll numbers plummeted. A third of voters polled by the University of California, Berkeley, Institute of Governmental Studies in late January rated the governor’s overall handling of the pandemic well, while 44% said he was doing badly.But two months have passed since the last round of major polls, and Democratic strategists are hopeful. “I think that as we start to reopen schools, as we start to get people back to work, as we get more people vaccinated, I think voters are going to take note,” said Drexel Heard, a Democratic political strategist based in Los Angeles. “By next month some baseball stadiums might be reopened,” he added – which could take the steam out a recall effort fueled by anti-lockdown fervor.Romero said she was skeptical that legitimate frustrations with the governor over the state’s policies, school and business closures, its disastrous inefficiency in doling out unemployment aid, and its slapdash vaccine rollout would rile up Democrats and moderate Republicans enough to vote him out of office, just one year before his term expires.More than a serious effort to unseat Newsom, the recall effort is probably more of a strategy to rally Republican voters, boost Republican candidates, and raise funds. “The recall can be a rallying cry, in California and across the county,” Romero said. “For the Republican candidates running against the governor, it can raise their national profiles.”In a recall election, voters are asked two questions: first, whether they want to recall Newsom, and then, who should replace him? With Democrats highly unlikely to run a candidate in the election, liberal and moderate voters who are frustrated with Newsom would be left to choose among Republicans they might agree with even less.The top contenders vying to replace Newsom include the former San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer; the conservative activist Mike Cernovich; and John Cox, who lost to Newsom in 2018 by 23 points, the largest margin in a California governor’s race since the 1950s.Recall campaigners said their effort has broad appeal. More than a third of signatories on the recall petition identify as Democrats or independents, or declined to state their party affiliation, said Randy Economy, a conservative broadcaster and ex-Trump campaign staffer with the Newsom recall campaign. “We have an angry electorate right now” and the campaign is leveraging their frustration, he told the Guardian.But in a deep blue state where less than a quarter of registered voters are Republicans, recall proponents’ far-right, anti-immigrant, anti-housing for homeless people, anti-sex education and anti-gun control platform is likely to alienate most voters, political experts said. A Wednesday evening virtual town hall featured a presentation by the conservative-aligned Election Integrity Project California, where speakers listed spurious allegations of voter fraud in line with Donald Trump and his supporters.“In order to gain relevance in California, the Republicans need to renounce Trump, they need to renounce white supremacy,” said Mike Madrid, a former state Republican party political director who co-founded the conservative Lincoln Project. “The hyperpartisan recall shows that instead, they’re happy to continue swirling down the drain.”Newsom has largely avoided public discussion of the recall effort. “The Republican recall is a partisan attempt to install a Trump supporter as governor,” said Dan Newman, a Newsom political strategist.The governor referenced the recall effort only obliquely in his Dodger Stadium address. “I just want you to know, we’re not going to change course, just because of a few naysayers and doomsdayers.” he said. More

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      What to Know Now About the Newsom Recall Effort

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCalifornia TodayWhat to Know Now About the Newsom Recall EffortFriday: Have questions about the effort to oust Gov. Gavin Newsom from office? Here are the answers.Priya Arora and March 12, 2021, 8:45 a.m. ETGov. Gavin Newsom delivered his State of the State address at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, saying, “We will not be distracted from getting shots in arms and our economy booming again.” Credit…Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockGood morning.As Gov. Gavin Newsom delivered his State of the State address on Tuesday, it was hard not to see in it an attempt to defend his tenure against recall efforts that are gaining steam.“We won’t change course just because of a few naysayers and doomsday-ers,” Mr. Newsom said in an empty Dodgers Stadium on Tuesday. “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.”With less than a week until the deadline for supporters of the recall to collect the 1.5 million signatures required to validate the effort, Mr. Newsom may benefit from progress on the fronts where he is facing the most criticism: pandemic restrictions on businesses and school reopenings.[Read more about the State of the State address.]On Tuesday evening, the Los Angeles Unified School District and teachers’ unions reached an agreement to reopen schools for most students in the coming weeks. The district has been the only one of the nation’s 10 largest school districts not to bring back a significant number of students.And while the recall effort began with those critical of the stop-and-go lockdowns of last year, several more counties have reached the less restrictive red tier this week, meaning that indoor dining and gyms, museums and other businesses could soon reopen in several parts of the state.“I really believe he’s done a very good job under very trying circumstances,” former Gov. Gray Davis said last week about Mr. Newsom. “I can’t remember a governor since World War II who’s had so many things to deal with at the same time.”Here’s an updated look at where the recall effort stands and what comes next.How many signatures does this recall have?According to the state’s most recent report, as of Feb. 5, supporters of the effort to recall Mr. Newsom had submitted roughly 1.1 million signatures, including 798,310 signatures that had been verified by county officials. But of those, only 668,202 signatures were valid, meaning they belonged to a registered California voter.Supporters of the recall claimed to have gathered 1,927,000 signatures as of March 3, but all signatures must be verified by the state.How many signatures are needed to trigger a recall?For the recall to move ahead, proponents must submit 1,495,709 valid signatures to county election officials by March 17, the court-determined deadline, which was extended because of the pandemic. The number of signatures required is 12 percent of the votes cast in the most recent election for governor, the 2018 race when Mr. Newsom defeated the Republican businessman John Cox.How will we know how much the recall effort costs?The state’s Department of Finance will work with the Secretary of State’s office and county election officials to estimate the cost of a recall election. Once that happens, the estimate goes to top state officials and then the Joint Legislative Budget Committee has 30 days to review and comment on the costs before the signatures are officially certified.When would a recall election occur?If enough signatures are certified to trigger a recall, the state’s lieutenant governor is required to set an election between 60 and 80 days from the date of certification. That could be extended to 180 days if it would allow the recall election to be consolidated with a regularly scheduled election.[Read more about the recall election process in California.]Who might replace Newsom if he is recalled?Kevin Faulconer, the Republican former mayor of San Diego, is one of the highest profile contenders to replace Mr. Newsom. Two other Republicans — the conservative activist Mike Cernovich and John Cox, who lost to Mr. Newsom in 2018 — have also announced plans to challenge the governor.(This article is part of the California Today newsletter. Sign up to get it delivered to your inbox.)Here’s what else to know todayVaccine recipients waited in an observation area after getting their doses in Los Angeles this week.Credit…Lucy Nicholson/ReutersPresident Biden directed states to make all adults eligible for coronavirus vaccines by May 1 in an effort to speed up the inoculation campaign and reopenings. [The New York Times]Here’s what to know about California’s reopening.An independent report commissioned by the Los Angeles City Council found that the L.A.P.D. mishandled the George Floyd protests last summer. The report faulted the department for lack of planning, illegally detaining protesters and its chaotic and overly aggressive response. [The New York Times]California regulators are ordering car insurers to refund money to car owners in the state, accusing them of overcharging customers during the pandemic. [The Wall Street Journal]Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s office is withholding data on gun violence from a state-funded research institution evaluating California’s firearm regulations. The office also is directing universities to destroy records previously released by the agency. [Sacramento Bee]Mr. Becerra’s office has challenged the Guenoc Valley Project, a sprawling development in a wildfire zone north of San Francisco. But residents want it built anyway. [San Francisco Chronicle]Catch up on Democrats’ fight to get Mr. Becerra, along with Mr. Biden’s other cabinet picks, confirmed.California Republicans are already fighting over who’s best positioned to take Mr. Newsom’s job. [Politico]Michael Tubbs, the former mayor of Stockton and an advocate for a universal basic income, is joining the Newsom administration as a special adviser. [The Associated Press]Read a conversation with Mr. Tubbs from last year.A wild car chase near Diamond Bar with a 9-year-old girl in the back seat began as a road rage incident — and ended in a tense standoff. [CBS]As companies and investors increasingly say they are focused on climate and sustainability, Bitcoin’s huge carbon footprint could become a red flag. [The New York Times]A new study found that the kelp forests along Northern California have almost entirely disappeared. [San Francisco Chronicle]Before the pandemic, the crowds that flocked to Diamond Head State Monument had a negative effect on both the surrounding community and the visitors themselves. Hawaii is now reevaluating visitation levels and entrance procedures.Credit…Marco Garcia for The New York TimesCalifornia sends more visitors to Hawaii than any other state. But two-thirds of Hawaii’s residents say they don’t want tourists to return, according to a recent survey. The state is using the pandemic-related travel collapse as a way to rethink tourism and the way it welcomes visitors. [The New York Times]Willa and Charles Bruce were among the first Black people to settle what would become the city of Manhattan Beach, but the city shut down their resort in 1924. Now, the Bruce family wants their land back. [The New York Times]Watch a short video about Bruce’s Beach from last year.And finally …Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, BTS, Harry Styles, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion will be among the performers at the 63rd annual Grammy Awards on Sunday.Credit…Julio Cortez/Associated PressThis year, awards season is a moment to take a close look at the institutions giving out the awards for their tendency to give far fewer of them to women and people who aren’t white.That’s true for the Recording Academy, which puts on the Grammys, set to take place on Sunday night. The show will address a music industry that has been especially pummeled by the pandemic. It’ll feature a mix of live and taped performances.And the Weeknd, hot on the heels of a critically lauded Super Bowl performance, said he’ll boycott the awards “from now on.” He joins a growing group of Black artists, including Drake, Frank Ocean and Kanye West, who have publicly rebuked the Academy.California Today goes live at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com. Were you forwarded this email? Sign up for California Today here and read every edition online here.Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, graduated from U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter.California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More