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Long Shot Newsom Recall Drive Gets Serious in California
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Long shot Newsom recall drive gets serious in California [politico.com]:
1. THE GOP ESTABLISHMENT IS BACKING IT: The California Republican Party and its chair, Jessica Milan Pattersonhave endorsed it [twitter.com]. So has the entire CA GOP House caucus, according to Rep. Devin Nunes, who said as much last week — and said the party is helping to fire up the recall push. “We're encouraging people to sign the petitions,’’ Nunes told KMJ host Ray Appleton [kmjnow.com]. “The California delegation as we sit today is … in favor of it.’’
Newly reelected Rep. David Valadao confirmed the move. “We all support it,” he said. “Our campaign offices all had the petitions there. A lot of our events had folks there gathering signatures.’’ And conservative darlings like Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee are also on board, with Gingrich agreeing to do Zoom calls and fundraising. Which leads us to...
2. THEY’VE GOT FUNDRAISING MUSCLE: Anne Dunsmore, a veteran GOP fundraiser based in Irvine whose fundraising work helped elect Rep. Mike Garcia in CA-25, told POLITICO she’s now a recall campaign manager and lead fundraiser, and is working her proverbial Rolodex hard. So far, Gingrich’s efforts and online fundraising have only produced small donations. But what concerns Democrats is the notion that all the GOP needs is a couple of wealthy political types, party insiders or business moguls — even from another state — to sign on; after all, dropping $1 million into this effort could be a bargain price for an avalanche of national publicity on Fox, OAN and Newsmax, which are already covering Newsom heavily...
3. THE BAR IS INCREDIBLY LOW: “California’s governor faces one of the easiest recall requirements in the country,’’ said Joshua Spivak, a senior fellow at Wagner College’s Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform. “Voters only need to gather the signatures of 12 percent of voter turnout in the 2018 election – in this case, 1,495,709 signatures. California also grants 160 days to gather them. In other states, the signature percentage requirement is more than double and the time to gather is less than half.” And, he said, “thanks to the use of initiatives, California has a well-developed signature-gathering industry that can get a recall on the ballot.”
Plus, the California GOP has one more advantage, as compared to backers of the failed recall of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. “Wisconsin law requires the elected official to face off in a new election — where he was facing a clear opponent. In California, Newsom would not face an opponent. The vote is simply a yes or no as to whether he should stay in office, with the replacement race further down the ballot.” Which means...
