California Gov. Gavin Newsom Recall Effort Qualifies

A recall effort organized by Republicans against California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has reached the number of valid signatures required for the state to hold a recall election, the California secretary of state reported Monday. The state is now all but certain to be holding a gubernatorial recall election later this year, for only the second time ever in the state’s history.

Newsom, a first-term governor who was elected in 2018, is facing the largest test of his political career.

Last year, a group of largely Republicans dissatisfied with Newsom over issues such as handling of COVID-19 restrictions, the wildfires, and myriad issues, began an effort to try and get Newsom recalled from office.

One of just 19 states to allow for recall elections, California law allows for any elected official to be subjected to a recall election, if proponents of the recall gather a number of signatures equal to 12% of the total votes cast in the previous election for that office. Based on the results of the previous gubernatorial election, about 1.5 million signatures were necessary for the effort to qualify.

Two conservative groups, the organizers of the petition who also got funding from the Republican National Committee, announced in March that they had collected well over 2 million signatures before the state-stipulated deadline that signatures for such a petition had to be collected by, and sent them to California’s secretary of state for verification. On Monday, the office of the secretary of state announced that more than 1.5 million valid signatures had been tallied, officially surpassing the required amount needed to hold a recall election.

The recall election will be held sometime later this year, most likely in November, and under California law, all voters will receive a ballot in the mail. The ballot will ask two questions: whether or not Newsom should be recalled at all, and if recalled, who should become the next governor.

This recall election is only the second recall election to ever be held in California’s history, the last being then-Gov. Gray Davis’s recall election back in 2003, which saw Republican and movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger voted in as governor of California.

Considering California is one of the most Democratic-leaning states, the fact that a practically Republican-led recall would succeed might seem unfathomable. But gathering 1.5 million votes in a state with 39 million people really isn’t difficult — over 5 million people voted for Donald Trump in this state in the 2020 election, the largest raw vote from any state Trump received in the election (even though Trump lost the state by almost 30 points).

In fact, California is a very lopsided state. Outside of the Bay Area, the Los Angeles metropolitan area, and San Diego, a substantial percentage of the state’s population, mostly concentrated in the Central Valley, Northern California, and Western California, are extremely rural and Republican.

The fact that this recall election qualified underscores that even major partisan strongholds such as California are not free from political polarization rocking the country, especially with hot-button issues like COVID-19 restrictions, despite the fact that it was organized by a California GOP that had not won a single statewide election in 15 years.

Now, just because this election qualified, though, does not mean that a Republican is on his or her way to becoming the next governor of California. Yes, this might have been the outcome in the last recall election, but consider how much the state has changed over the past 17 years. It went from voting for Democrat Al Gore over George W. Bush by just over 11% in the 2000 presidential election (and only voted for Democrat John Kerry by about 9% in the 2004 election) to consistently voting for Democrats in statewide elections by margins of upward of 30 points. The population growth the state has seen, coupled with a tech sector that has greatly increased its presence in the state over the last two decades, means that a Republican governor being elected to succeed Newsom is simply unlikely and possibly even downright impossible.

In addition, in 2003, registered Republicans accounted for 35.3% of all registered voters in the state, while today, that number has drastically decreased to 24.1%. And only 9 million voters participated in that recall election, while 17.8 million voted in the 2020 election. Universal mail-in voting means that turnout is likely to remain fairly high.

In fact, considering the efforts the California and national Democratic Party has been pushing into making this recall seem like a Republican power-grab, whether or not Newsom will even be recalled remains a question. High-profile nationwide Democrats, including President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, California’s own U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, voting-rights advocate Stacey Abrams, a number of congressmen and congresswomen representing the state in the House, as well as Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., all came out in support of Newsom.

Also, virtually every poll has shown that California voters are not in favor of recalling Newsom. The Public Policy Institute of California, a well-respected pollster based in the state, conducted a poll in March of 1,174 likely voters showing that 56% of those interviewed backed Newsom, favoring “no” in a recall, with just 40% of those polled supporting the recall, with a margin of error of about 4%, clearly indicating that voters are unsupportive of the effort.

The institute has also conducted a poll showing that 52% of the California public approved of Newsom, while only 23% approved of Davis back in 2003.

Even a Republican internal poll conducted by Probolsky Research showed that in a sample of 900 likely voters weighted by vote propensity and a margin of error of about 3%, just 35% of people would back the recall effort, with 53% opposing. If even a GOP internal is showing such disfavorable results for the recall, it underscores the point that the recall just is not likely to succeed.

Despite the longshot odds, some Republicans have announced bids to try and run for governor. Caitlyn Jenner, a longtime Republican, former Olympian, and reality TV star, has announced that her name will be on the recall ballot. Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, a Republican, will also be on the ballot. Besides them, a number of other Republicans and even Democrats are all getting their names listed on the ballot, just in case the recall qualifies.

Though it is unlikely that Newsom will be recalled, it serves as a stark reminder to California Democrats — and, to an extent, Democrats in other deep blue states — that no state, no matter how safe, is guaranteed that only Democrat-backed proposals will make it through.