Big donors fuel effort to remove California's liberal gov. from office as one fed-up company sends $500G
By Morgan Phillips | Fox News
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The California governor’s days could be limited thanks to a growing effort to invoke a statewide referendum.
A campaign to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom is picking up steam after individual donors offered tens of thousands of dollars each and they scored $500,000 from an Irvine-based consulting firm.
Prov 3:9 LLC contributed $500,000, and Sequoia Capital's Douglas Leone and his wife Patricia Perkins-Leone contributed roughly $100,000.
Since 1911, Californians have attempted to recall their governor 55 times, but were successful only in 2003 against Gov. Gray Davis, who lost his special election to Arnold Schwarzenegger. That effort was propelled into the spotlight after Rep. Darrell Issa donated $2 million. After Prov 3:9 became the first major donor in the effort to recall Newsom, other big donors may step forward.
Fed up with the Democratic governor’s shutdown orders, which some found erratic, Rescue California organized to circulate petitions that call for Newsom’s governorship to be recalled and a special election to take place, well before the next governor’s race in November 2022. Newsom, currently in his first term, has not yet said if he plans to run again.
Rescue California needs a minimum 1,495,709 valid signatures to recall the governor, and the group says it’s collected some 800,000 so far.
Thomas Liu, listed as the manager of Prov 3:9, told Politico: "We have our beliefs in terms of the direction the state needs to go, and we felt that this effort was worthy of our contribution."
The effort to recall Newsom was launched on June 10. In November, a judge extended the signature deadline to March 17, 2021, after supporters argued their deadline should be extended 120 days due to COVID-19 hindering their efforts.
Anne Dunsmore, the campaign manager and finance director of Rescue California 2021, told Fox News earlier this month that the effort was a "citizen tide" against the missteps Newsom had taken during the pandemic.
"Closing the beaches and closing the parks really was the beginning, that I saw on the ground, of the beginning of the end for him, as far as people taking the recall stuff seriously," Dunsmore said.
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 the public grew weary over subsequent health orders that have shuttered schools and businesses and a massive unemployment benefits fraud scandal.
Dunsmore said things came to a head with the governor’s ill-advised dinner at the French Laundry in Napa Valley, an establishment that features a white truffle and caviar dinner for $1,200 per person.
Photos of the dinner – a birthday party for a Newsom confidante who also is a lobbyist – emerged showing the governor without a mask at a time when he was imploring people not to socialize with friends and wear a face covering when going out and being around others.
Harmeet Dhillon, co-chair of the Republican National Lawyers Association, similarly argued that the governor’s hypocrisy has fueled a general discontent in California that has allowed the recall effort to gain momentum.
"I think with a full three months plus left to go and with people all over California in both parties being very angry at the governor, particularly with his hypocrisy, particular with the fact that his children get to get educated and everybody else’s largely do not in most urban areas, these are the things that are fueling discontent here in California," Dhillon said. "The hypocrisy of allowing lobbyists secured exemptions – like film crews get to operate, but restaurants don’t get to operate – these types of inequities are really fueling the energy behind this grassroots movement."
California campaign to fire Newsom nears threshold needed for ballot
By Bradford Betz | Fox News
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A recall campaign to oust California Gov. Gavin Newsom is nearing its required threshold to qualify for a statewide ballot.
Over the weekend, recall organizers said they have collected 1.2 million of the needed 1.5 million signatures needed by March 17 to qualify for a ballot.
Per state law, petition sponsors must gather the signatures of 12% of the voter turnout in California’s previous statewide election, which is about 1,495,709 names.
Rescue California, one of two main groups organizing the campaign, says their goal is to collect 2 million signatures to account for the fact that many of the signatures will inevitably prove invalid.
San Diego’s KUSI reported Saturday that California’s Secretary of State has confirmed 84% of the signatures collected so far are valid.
This is the sixth recall effort the Democratic governor has faced in two years. Once considered a pipe dream in the solidly blue state, this latest recall effort gained traction in the last year because of growing discontent over the governor’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the economy.
"It's absolutely gaining traction. We're getting petitions from not only Republicans but from Democrats and Independents," John Cox, Newsom's 2018 Republican challenger who recently launched an exploratory committee to challenge the governor again in 2022, told Fox News last week. "This has just gone on too long -- the mismanagement that has accompanied this pandemic."
Public frustration mounted in November when the governor was photographed at the upscale French Laundry restaurant in Napa amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Newsom recall crossed line from ‘possibility to probability’ as campaign nears threshold, organizer says
By Bradford Betz | Fox News
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With just over a month to go, the campaign to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom has nearly reached the required number of signatures needed to qualify for a statewide ballot.
As of Sunday, Recall Gavin 2020 – one of two committees organizing the effort – says petitioners have gathered more than 1.4 million signatures out of the necessary 1,495,709.
The campaign will need to gather signatures well above the number to compensate for the signatures that will inevitably be invalidated. Their deadline is March 17.
Anne Dunsmore, campaign manager and finance director for Rescue California – the other committee organizing the effort – said she is confident they will gather enough signatures in time.
In an interview with Fox News, Dunsmore said Rescue California has within the last week deployed paid signature gatherers who have already collected 52,000.
She said "it’s highly possible we could get to 1.5 or 1.6 (million signatures) by the end of this week" but their ultimate goal is 2 million signatures.
Should organizers gather and validate enough signatures, the state’s Lt. Gov. would be obligated to select a date for a special election. Dunsmore estimated that the date will be somewhere between mid-August and late September.
"Once that election (date) is selected, the ballot will have two things on it. One, a thumbs up or a thumbs down on the recall, and (two), the replacement," Dunsmore said, adding: "If 82% of the (1.8 million) signatures that we submit are valid than we only need 1.8 million signatures. We’re aiming for 2 million. So I think we should have more than enough."
Dunsmore said that the recall campaign crossed the line from "possibility to probability" in the couple of weeks and that Newsom’s actions during that time suggest he is starting to take the threat more seriously.
"I think prior to that and even during the French Laundry (incident), his staff reportedly was sitting there saying, ‘Don’t worry about it,’ and he was thinking, ‘I need to work about it,’" Dunsmore said. "I think his very obvious default is to go to political messaging rather than policy planning. And this is he started to have problems because it has created inconsistent decisions, and hypocritical decisions, and very transparently poor decisions."
Fox News has made repeated attempts throughout the recall campaign to reach Gov. Newsom’s office for comment but has received no response.
Not long ago, the notion that liberal favorite Newsom could be ousted by voters in the heavily Democratic state who elected him in a landslide two years ago would have appeared farcical. But the slippery politics of the pandemic and a tangle of confounding decisions on vaccines and reopening businesses and schools have conspired to make the first-term Democrat look vulnerable.
California voters weary of restrictions that have cut them off from jobs, classrooms and friends, combined with anxiety from the continuing threat of the coronavirus, could create a volatile mix at the ballot box. Newsom also has weathered a public drubbing for dining out with friends and lobbyists at a San Francisco Bay Area restaurant last fall, while telling residents to stay home.
More recently, an ever-expanding fraud scandal at the state unemployment agency has his leadership during the pandemic under even closer scrutiny.
Democrats outnumber Republicans in California by nearly 2-to-1, hold every statewide office and dominate the Legislature and congressional delegation. But some see signs of a shifting tide in the Golden State,
Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who formally launched his gubernatorial bid last week to challenge Newsom, had argued that voters are eager for a change after years of Democratic rule. Recent polling by the Public Policy Institute of California has found that among likely voters, Newsom is losing ground with independents, Latinos — even his fellow Democrats.
There were cautionary signs in the November election that the state might not be as rigidly Democratic as registration numbers suggest: Voters rejected an attempt to reinstate affirmative action, as well as a proposed tax increase on commercial and industrial properties. Republicans also recaptured four congressional seats they lost in 2018.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Newsom takes aim at leaders of recall effort
Ashley Zavala - KRON 4
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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KRON) – Wednesday is the deadline for organizers of the effort to recall Governor Newsom to turn in the necessary signatures for the issue to head to voters.
“We’re anticipating that they’ve got the signatures,” Governor Newsom said.
Governor Gavin Newsom coming to grips with the likelihood 2021 will be another election year in California with the recall effort against him.
The governor Tuesday taking aim at leaders of the effort saying they’re far right, Trump supporters.
“Look at the actual reasons they themselves listed. It has to do with immigration, the browning of California. It has to deeply with our values, the things we hold dear. I’m not just fighting for me, I’m fighting for you, for the values of this state,” Newsom said.
“This campaign is not about the people leading this recall, this campaign is about Governor Newsom,” Randy Economy, Senior Advisor Recall Gavin Newsom, said.
Proponents of the recall say of the nearly 2.1 million signatures collected so far, about 38% of them include Democrats, no party preference, and other non-Republican registered voters.
“This is about the people who have signed the petition, the ones who are going to go ahead and be the final judge and jury on this campaign,” Economy said.
Newsom’s visit to a Bay Area school Tuesday was his first public appearance since kicking off an anti-recall campaign the week of the proponent’s deadline.
An email sent out by the campaign Tuesday launched a 72-hour fundraising drive, requesting at least $3 contributions to stop the recall.
“What took him so long? He dismissed the recall campaign for nine months. He laughed us off, he didn’t make any mention to us and now he’s in complete freakout mode,” Economy said.
The governor warned this will cost taxpayers.
“I have great respect for people who disagree with me, but this is a sideshow, this is a circus, it’s going to cost $100 million,” Newsom said.
Proponents of the recall say they plan to release the final number of signatures collected Wednesday after 5 p.m.
The Secretary of State’s office will have until April 29th to verify the signatures.
