(Gage Skidmore – CC License)
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact across the world of politics and many governors across the country are being closely evaluated for their performance in protecting their state’s citizens.
Governor Gavin Newsom is currently facing off against the ‘Recall Gavin 2020 Petition’, which now has accumulated nearly two million signatures for the recall petition, likely more than enough to initiate a special election to challenge the governorship of California Democrat Gavin Newsom.
The efforts to remove Governor Newsom of California initially started in the middle of the pandemic in June of 2020. A series of events have led towards the eventual collection of more than two million signatures, most of which still need to be checked and verified before an election can be triggered.
The verification of signatures is periodically updated on the California Secretary of State’s website. You can view all eight of the reports here. Political betting markets like PredictIt are currently projecting that a recall election has an 88% chance of qualifying in 2021 within the State of California.
More than two million signatures in support of the recall will likely be collected and submitted before the deadline finally arrives on March 17th. Just under 1.5 million of these signatures will need to be verified in order to begin the process of scheduling and planning the recall election.
The odds of successfully recalling Governor Newsom are probably more unlikely than anything else, but it seems as if anything might be possible during a special recall election, even in the Democratic safe haven of California.
A few candidates from the Republican Party have already announced their plans to launch their campaigns and challenge Governor Newsom in the recall election. Presumably, the leading candidate so far is San Diego’s former Mayor, Kevin Faulconer.
One of Governor Newsom’s past challengers has also launched a campaign for the presumptive recall election. John Cox will likely appear on the ballot once again in the 2021 recall election, although he was heavily defeated in November of 2018.
No candidate wants to face a recall election during their term in office. Governor Newsom would have probably been the last person that you would have imagined to face a recall election. Suddenly, he’s become the most-likely and this chain of events was only triggered by poor decisions and scandals that developed over the course of weeks and months.
The coronavirus pandemic seemed to be avoiding California when things were getting really bad for the rest of the country, but unfortunately, things really started coming off the rails towards the end of 2020 and Governor Newsom reacted by enacting strict stay-at-home orders for nearly all of the state’s residents and forced many different non-essential businesses to close with very little relief for extended periods of time.
Things did not get much better for Governor Newsom when he was spotted at ‘The French Laundry’ restaurant in Napa Valley on November 6th, breaking his very own rules and regulations that he put into place for the state’s residents.
The chain of events throughout the coronavirus pandemic have led Governor Newsom down a controversial path that can now only be resolved with a special recall election. California voters will now have the final word as to whether or not he will have the ability to complete his very first term in office.
