Trump supporters shout slogans as they carry a sign calling on the Government of California to recall Gavin Newsom during a protest against a stay-at-home order amid the Covid-19 pandemic in Huntington Beach, California, 21 November 2020. | AP Photo / Marcio Jose Sanchez
OAKLAND – Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, is set to face a by-election, based on an official update on Friday indicating that proponents have collected more than enough valid signatures.
Supporters say they had submitted 2.1 million raw signatures by Wednesday’s deadline, which would push them at the current rate above the 1.5 million valid signatures threshold, with a comfortable surplus.
The California State Department’s first post-deadline deadline portrayed reality Friday. Proponents have submitted 1.2 million valid signatures by March 11. The state has not yet processed a block of about 400,000 raw signatures, which is likely to yield enough valid signatures to qualify the organizers’ validity rate by 82 percent.
While the state still has weeks to ratify an election, any sense of tension evaporated when Newsom himself admitted that the recall election was likely this week. After months of exceeding the subject, the Democratic governor embarked on a national media tour and set up a national network of prominent defenders such as Senator Elizabeth Warren and Stacey Abrams, voting rights advocate.
“The reality is that it looks like it’s going to vote,” Newsom told reporters in California on Tuesday.
Assuming supporters have collected enough signatures, voters are likely to go to the polls sometime in the fall. They will be asked two questions: whether Newsom should be retained and who should replace him.
The coronavirus fueled the repeal, sparking frustration among voters and enabling proponents of the repeal to get a critical extension in court. Critics have pointed to closed schools and closed operations as evidence of Newsom’s alleged fecklessness. Several Republicans have already declared their candidates because the national IDP has poured in money to unsettle Newsom, while the Republican Governors Association launched a fundraising bill this week.
Newsom and its allies pointed to California’s weakening infections and relatively low mortality rates as signs of success, and they pushed the recall as an attempt by right-wing extremists and supporters of former President Donald Trump.