RUTHFULLY YOURS

The campaign to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom has collected 1,950,000 signatures, Katy Grimes of the California Globe reports, far more than the 1.4 million signatures needed to qualify the recall for the ballot. A full 1.6 million signatures were collected entirely by volunteers, and according to organizer Orrin Heatlie, 31.5 percent of the signers were “other than Republicans.” As the recall effort surges, Democrats turn up the volume against it.

“Right-wing Republicans in CA are trying to recall Gavin Newsom for the crime of telling people to wear masks and for listening to scientists during COVID,” tweeted Sen. Bernie Sanders. “Extremist Republicans have done enough to undermine democracy already. We must all unite to oppose the recall in California.”

Joe Biden opposes the recall, and the effort is “inappropriate,” according to California Rep. Karen Bass, once on Biden’s short list for vice president. Bass, a Fidel Castro fan, told reporters Newsom has done “the best he could.”

When Newsom shut down the state in March of 2020, he hailed the leadership of Nancy Pelosi, his one-time aunt. The legislature granted Newsom extraordinary powers and he has since ruled as an autocrat. Newsom imposed draconian regulations, spent more than $1 billion on masks from a Chinese company, then cavorted with lobbyists sans mask at the upscale French Laundry restaurant.

Californians were already suffering under the repressive Assembly Bill 5, a virtual declaration of war on independent workers. Despite a plea from California’s leading economists and political scientists, Newsom declined to suspend the measure during the pandemic. As businesses shut down, the governor and Democrat-dominated legislature gave Californians no relief from the nation’s highest income and sales taxes.

As ABC News reported in January, on Newsom’s watch “as much as $31 billion in California unemployment funds have been paid out to scammers.” As a result of that scandal, Orrin Heatlie explained, even people who voted for Newsom “feel abandoned.” Before the scandal hit, Newsom had set his sights on the White House.

“He’s really smart. He’s a big and creative thinker, and I find that very energizing, to think about what’s possible.” That was former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers, upon her appointment as Gov. Newsom’s economic and business adviser. Californians have reason to wonder about the “creative thinker,” but “what’s possible” is Gov. Newsom as president of the United States. Since election as governor in 2018, Newsom has been acting like it’s a done deal.

Gavin Newsom is a crony of recurring governor Jerry Brown, who appointed Newsom’s father as a judge. Newsom is on record that Brown has the greatest political mind “in our lifetime.” Since Brown’s presidential runs in 1976, 1980 and 1992 all ended in failure, Newson would doubtless like to make up for his idol’s failures.

Once in office as governor, Newsom flew off to El Salvador, one source of the imported electorate he showers with benefits such as government-paid health care and in-state tuition.  Like Brown before him, the carefully coiffed governor has soft spot for criminals.

In March of 2019, Newsom reprieved all 737 murderers on California’s death row, the worst of the worst, serial killers, cop killers and the like. All had been convicted by a jury of their peers, and exhausted the appeal process. Newsom is not a judge or attorney, and offered no new exculpatory evidence in any case.

During the unemployment scandal, the state paid out $421,370 to death row inmates alone, including serial killers Cary Stayner and Wayne Adam Ford, child-killer Isauro Aguirre, and Scott Peterson, convicted in 2004 of murdering his pregnant wife Laci. The scandal has now exceeded $30 billion and nearly two million Californians want Gavin gone.

California Democrat Party boss Rusty Hicks branded the recall the “California coup being led by “right-wing conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, anti-vaxxers and groups who encourage violence on our democratic institutions.” As Ben Christopher of CalMatters helpfully clarified, “a recall campaign is a democratic mechanism written into the California constitution that allows voters to remove an elected official by popular vote.”

In 2003, Californians used the democratic mechanism to recall Democrat Gray Davis, who couldn’t even keep the lights on. Since then, Democrats have expanded their imported electorate through the “motor voter” plan. When illegal aliens get drivers licenses, the DMV automatically registers them to vote. Since 2015, at least one million “new” voters have been added to the rolls. Last year, by order of Gov. Newsom, every registered voter got a mail ballot.

If it qualifies for the ballot, as seems likely, the recall election needs careful monitoring. On Sunday, Californians got a hint of what could be coming. Antifa thugs showed up at the recall rally at the state Capitol, an early attempt at voter suppression. California also allows ballot harvesting, the deciding factor in the election of Kamala Harris as state attorney general in 2010.

Signatures for the recall are due at county registrars by March 17. If each step of the recall takes the maximum amount of time, the recall election would take place between October 6 and 26 of 2021. As Trump likes to say, we’ll have to see what happens.