The poll comes as 58 provincial registrars in California are now working to verify whether Newsom’s revocation has the 1.5 million valid voter signatures needed to be eligible for a fall election. While Steyer opposed the repeal, saying in a statement that it was “a clear attempt by the IDP to take back control of the state and drive away the progressive momentum”, he was relatively quiet on the pressure . He has not yet tweeted about the recall once this year mentioned Newsom in a tweet: a thread linked to the governor’s state of the nation address.
A Steyer spokesman told a POLITICO reporter that he wanted to speak to him last week, that they should return “by the end of April”. The Foreign Minister’s office says the deadline for registrars to ratify signatures for the revocation is April 29.
Steyer declined to comment. But a source close to him said late Tuesday that he would be “very, very surprised if he looked at the recall letter.”
Steyer’s decision to position himself as a possible replacement suggests, however, that he entertained the possibility. This is at least one of the few concrete examples of a Democrat weighing the opportunities and landscape of a post-Newsom California. Antonio Villaraigosa, Newsom’s primary opponent in 2018, ignored questions about the recall and took no formal steps to test his viability.
The feeling among political strategists and officials across the state is that many Democrats are waiting to see what Newsom’s political pulse will be by late summer, when they will have to decide whether they want to enter the race.
It is already speculated that there may be hundreds of candidates in the race because the steps to qualify are so low – only $ 4,000 or 7,000 signatures in a state with 39 million people. This is the same threshold as 2003, when the then government. Gray Davis was recalled, and Arnold Schwarzenegger emerged from a field that included a child actor and film star.
Newsom’s team warns Democrats not to oust the governor, arguing that even one serious candidate from his party running in the election will provide a clear alternative to Newsom and encourage voters to vote for the recall. .
Sean Clegg, a leading strategist for Newsom, recently issued a public reprimand over Villaraigosa, claiming that the former mayor, who was his one-time boss, would ’embarrass himself and poison his legacy forever if he left the gang is. ‘ And Clegg has another crush on the Democrats, who are publicly targeting the governor. “No free shots on Gavin Newsom,” Clegg wrote on Twitter.
But the aggressive attitude worries some Democrats.
Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, Newsom’s political mentor, said Democrats should “do everything in their power to make a reminder happen,” the recall letter said.
“You can not take the risk of Democrats losing the governorship,” Brown said in a recent interview with POLITICO. “You literally have to protect it … and it could be that the Democrats you put in can announce that they are completely against the repeal.”
Steyer has been a prominent presence in top democratic circles for many years now, as he has used the fortune he has earned as a hedge fund manager and has begun to apply it to progressive causes, including environmental promotion. He spent hundreds of millions of dollars electing Democrats, and at one point considered a liberal counterweight to the Koch brothers. In California, he sank millions more for successful voting initiatives.
Steyer and Newsom, though coming from San Francisco, are not very close. But as governor, Newsom has appointed Steyer co-chair of an industry and economic council with a blue ribbon – a star-studded panel that includes agendas like Bob Iger and Disney CEO Tim Cook.
For Newsom, the move was seen by some as a clever attempt to keep Steyer and his political ambitions in check. The panel was disbanded and later criticized by business leaders as a toothless effort that yielded few, if any, serious policy changes.
This would not be the first time Steyer has considered presenting himself as an alternative to a more well-known Democrat in the state. In 2015, a week after incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris launched her U.S. Senate campaign, Steyer quietly told potential supporters that he was considering jumping on an unorthodox promise in the race to serve only one term if he could not achieve unspecified goals affecting the environment, economy and education within six years.
Two years later, Steyer told close allies he was looking seriously at campaigning against Senator Dianne Feinstein. At the time, he said he did not think Democrats were confronting Donald Trump aggressively enough. “Have they forgotten their moral duty not to allow America to act in such a way that every soul on this planet is hindered?” he wrote in an email to a friend.
Rather, Steyer became one of the most outspoken proponents of accusation early in Trump’s presidency (long before it actually happened). His investments in the campaign helped him compile a massive email list of Democratic voters. And even though he told a crowd in Des Moines that he would not run, he ended up just doing it. Despite the millions of email addresses and large amounts of personal wealth to spend, his candidacy did not hold up. He focused his attention squarely on South Carolina, hoping the state’s primary voters would turn to him as an alternative to Senator Bernie Sanders. They rather went with Joe Biden.