California Republicans have spearheaded multiple efforts to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom in the past, but the latest attempt could get an extra push because some Democrats are lining up behind it, Politico reports.
“We’ve gotten calls from Democrats who are already kicking the tires,’’ a Sacramento insider aligned with a major special interest group told the news outlet.
Newsom initially received praise for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, but his credibility took a hit in the wake of an expensive dinner he had last month at French Laundry while telling Californians to stay at home.
“What makes this different is it’s Gavin Newsom itself,” Recall Gavin Newsom senior adviser Randy Economy told “America’s Newsroom” Tuesday.
“This governor is his own worst enemy, and every day he does something more that puts him deeper and deeper into controversy, and he’s become a problem here in California. He shut down the fifth-largest economy in the world the last nine months, and every single person out there in California should be outraged by that.”
Economy said his group already has collected 820,000 signatures of the 1.5 million needed by mid-March to get the recall effort on the ballot.
Newsom revamped his staff amid the recent stumbles, naming former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers as director of the Office of Business and Economic Development, and hiring California political veteran Jim DeBoo as a senior adviser.
There have been dozens of attempts to recall a sitting California governor in the past century, but the only successful one was in 2003, when Democratic Gov. Gray Davis was replaced by Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger.
*story by Fox News