Only 1,497,000 signed, verified petitions need to be collected to call for an election that will give California voters the chance to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom or not but campaign founders went above and beyond, collecting 2,060,000 signed petitions.
That’s because Recall Gavin 2020 organizers aren't taking any chances.
“We're dealing with registrar recorder offices that have political bias who may or may not even be supportive of what we're doing,” said Randy Economy, senior advisor and official media spokesman for RecallGavin2020.com “They are going to comb through every single signature and they will throw things out if you don't have a dot on top of your i.”
Some 1,871,573 signatures have been pre-verified internally through an outside third-party vendor, according to Economy, and 1.8 million signatures have been turned into 58 different county registrar of voter offices.
A recall allows for an elected official to be removed from office before their term limit is up by a public vote but first signatures collected are required to be verified with the Secretary of State much like a ballot initiative, according to media reports.
Economy told the Southern California Record that the movement has been successful because California residents are disgruntled.
“Gavin Newsom shut down the wrong things,” he said. “He didn't need to shut down mom and pop businesses, restaurants, and the independent-minded businessmen and women who are entrepreneurial. He demanded everybody work from home. When people started working from home, the productivity level went down to nothing. People need to go to work. They need to go to offices. They need to do things and he took it upon himself to be the end-all and sole authority. The collateral damage that he caused is reprehensible, which is why the recall is on fire.”
Gov. Newsom indirectly alluded to the recall during his state of the state speech last week at Dodger Stadium when he said, “So, to the California critics who are promoting partisan power grabs and outdated prejudices and rejecting everything that makes California great, we say this: we will not be distracted from getting shots in arms and our economy booming again. This is a fight for California’s future.”
Final certification of signatures begins at the end of the petitioning period on March 17 at which time Gov. Newsom and his supporters are given 30 days to petition against the recall.
“The reversal process is very complicated but people can sign an affidavit and a legal document saying that they would like to have their signature removed,” Economy said. “It's not a simple process but we're hearing rumors that there is going to be an active attempt from Gavin Newsom and his supporters to try and get enough affidavits signed but it would probably have to be more than 600,000 reversal affidavits to be effective.”
As the number of COVID cases has begun to drop, Gov. Newsom has tentatively reopened the economy of certain counties, according to media reports, but the commitment to the recall is unwavering.
“The recall is the only reason he's opened up the economy,” Economy said. “Gavin is fighting for his political future. He knows that he's the most hated politician in America right now. He did it by himself, for himself and to himself. He put himself in this predicament and we're going to go ahead and make sure that we do everything in our power to get him out of office.”
So far, an election date has not been certified by the secretary of state and the Lieutenant governor but if the required signed petitions are gathered and verified, a recall must take place as a special election within 90 days, according to the Secretary of State website.
"We don't have anybody in mind to take Gavin’s place as governor,” Economy added. “We’re going to reserve the right step into the process to ensure that the best person can come forward. We're not doing this campaign right now just to turn it over to anybody. We'd like to be able to be very thoughtful and we want to weigh into the process since it's our campaign.”