California Governor Gavin Newsom kicked off an effort to save his administration on Monday, called “Stop the Republican Recall.”
Newsom is facing a likely recall, given that opponents have collected over 2 million signatures before the Mar. 17 deadline. They needed about 1.5 million to force a recall; hundreds of thousands of additional signatures were collected to ensure that the recall effort would survive any challenge to the validity of the signatures submitted to the Secretary of State.
Newsom has received support from national Democrats, including President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
However, Newsom’s prospects are unclear, after his approval rating collapsed over the winter, thanks to new coronavirus restrictions — and the perception that he himself was skirting them, after attending a friend’s birthday dinner at the elite French Laundry restaurant with well-connected lobbyists.
A poll released Monday by Nexstar Media Group’s six California Television Stations and Emerson College showed California evenly split on the prospects of recalling Newsom. Several Republicans and Democrats have shown interest in running to replace him.
On Monday, Newsom tweeted: “I won’t be distracted by this partisan, Republican recall — but I will fight it. There is too much at stake. Getting Californians vaccinated, our economy safely reopened, and our kids back in school are simply too important to risk.”
In his “State of the State” address last week, Newsom admitted mistakes but struck an optimistic tone about the state.
The “state of the state,” he said, “remains determined — and I mean, determined.” He took a swipe at his critics, saying that they were motivated by partisan agendas and “outdated prejudices rejecting everything that makes California truly great.”
He added: “California — we’re not going to come crawling back, we will roar back.” Newsom also appealed to his supporters on the left, saying that when the pandemic was over, “we are not going go back to normal. Because I think we all agree that normal was never good enough.” The path back, he said “must also be a path to close those [economic] inequities” and “unacceptable disparities.” He added: “There’s no economic recovery, no economic recovery without economic justice.”
Later, Newsom retweeted a video from the “Stop the Republican Recall” Twitter account (@), featuring Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA):
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