Shawn Steel, a Republican National Committee member, said the campaign to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom is very likely to make its way onto next year’s ballot. This is in part due to a judge’s order to extend the signature collection deadline to March 2021, and with over 845,000 signatures already verified out of the 1.5 million needed.
Steel co-founded the recall effort against past California Gov. Gray Davis in 2003, which led Arnold Schwarzenegger to be elected. It is one of the only two successful recalls against a governor in U.S. history. Steel said Newsom’s inconsistency toward his own stay-at-home order is one of the three reasons he believes made the recall possible.
In addition, under Newsom’s watch, it is estimated that as much as $2 billion has been spent on fraudulent pandemic unemployment cases, mostly involving prisoners, according to the Sacramento Bee.
However, a spokesperson for the Democratic Party of Orange County told The Epoch Times that the recall is a political stunt and highly unlikely to succeed.