The campaign to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom is gaining support and donations from citizens across the state and Newsom himself is starting to take the effort seriously. He has beefed up his political and governor’s staff with veterans of California and national politics as he appears to see a recall election as more than a possibility.
Newsom is a failure, a hypocrite, and has acted stupidly during the pandemic. And California voters may have wearied of his incompetent management.
Newsom originally received some praise for his aggressive approach with the nation’s first stay-at-home order last spring. But there is growing criticism over extensions to the order, and his admission last month that he dined at an opulent restaurant in Napa Valley while telling state residents to spurn social gatherings and stay home. The public shaming continues for his ill-advised dinner at the French Laundry, an establishment that features a white truffle and caviar dinner for $1,200 per person.
The governor has since apologized, but some are growing tired of the rules.
The hypocrisy of locking down the state while going out for a night of partying with his rich friends would probably have been a minor political embarrassment except for the absolute futility of the lockdown. Los Angeles hospitals are overflowing with patients despite the severe lockdowns. It’s a bad sign when citizens simply stop listening to directions and go off on their own.
“This is about citizens who are tired of being dictated to every single day and being told, ‘You cannot go outside,’ ‘You cannot do this,’ ‘You cannot do that,'” said Randy Economy, a senior adviser to the recall effort.
Organizers would need to collect roughly 1.5 million valid signatures.
A Newsom spokesman says the campaign by Trump supporters is a waste of of money, adding the governor would rather focus on getting through the homestretch of the pandemic.
It’s not just Trump supporters, as Fox Nation host Tammy Bruce points out. Bruce helped lead the recall of Governor Gray Davis in 2003 and has seen the signs before.
“The concern is that Gavin Newsom is doing things that benefit that lobbyist and those interests as opposed to benefiting the people of California,” Bruce told co-host Griff Jenkins.
“How do you know?” she added. “Because the people of California are in dire straits and Gavin Newsom and his friends are not.”
Bruce said “it’s the economy, the handling of COVID, the corruption, this lobbyist guy. Californians don’t like it and I think it’ll be successful.”
The incompetent management of the state includes an eye-popping $2 billion in fraudulent unemployment checks sent to prison inmates in a state hard hit by pandemic job losses. The state unemployment office is still adding up the losses.
But it’s the Newsom lockdowns that have supplied most of the ammunition for recall supporters.
Anne Dunsmore, the campaign manager and finance director of Rescue California 2021, told Fox News in December 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.
It’s a daunting task to collect 1.5 million signatures during a pandemic, which a judge recognized—he granted a 120-day extension to recall organizers. But Newsom didn’t become governor by accident. He will be a formidable campaigner with the media on his side and opponents being portrayed as anti-science ignoramuses.
At this point, the odds of a successful recall are long but not impossible. People will not soon forget the insult of being locked down while the man who ordered the restrictions blatantly disregarded them and dined out with his lobbyist pals.
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