LETTER FROM SAN FRANCISCO
He resumed his candidate stick. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, has returned to the campaign, and it is not to defend his record – contrasted – in the fight against Covid-19. This time, it’s about saving his post, threatened by one of those joys of Californian democracy: the recall procedure (recall) which allows an elected official to be dismissed before the end of his mandate.
Elected in 2018 (with more than 60% of the vote), Gavin Newsom will in all likelihood have to come back to voters, a year before the normal date. It will cost California taxpayers more than $ 80 million (68 million euros), but some, on the Republican side, are very impatient.
The supporters of the “recall” had until March 17 to submit 1.5 million signatures of voters demanding a new ballot. They filed 2,117,730, a sufficient number to compensate for any disputes or retractions. The election office has six weeks to verify signatures; the state assembly will then discuss the cost of the procedure. It will be up to the Secretary of State to fix the date of the ballot.
The election should not take place before November but the media are already licking their chops. The “recall” is going to be the big business of the back to school, if only because the vice president and former attorney general of California, Kamala Harris, is a friend of Gavin Newsom – they have had parallel climbs in San Francisco.
A poll of a particular mode
According to political scientists, the Californian election will turn into a “Proxy war” for 2022 and the midterm elections, for which supporters of Donald Trump dream of revenge in 2020. The Republican Party has contributed $ 250,000 to the operation to collect signatures against “Gavin”, presented as an apprentice -dictator who took advantage of the health situation to “Picking the winners and losers of the pandemic”.
In a state where Donald Trump received only 34% of the vote, the Democratic governor should have no difficulty in winning. The coalition that organized the sling is unlikely to attract independent voters if it does not expand beyond the current grumpy (anti-vaccine, pro-QAnon, anti-immigrant).
But the Californian “recall” is a poll of a particular mode, which allows all the surprises. Two questions are submitted to voters simultaneously: are you in favor of the governor’s recall? If so: who do you prefer to replace it? The list of contenders can go on and on. In 2003, during the recall of Gray Davis, a fairly unpopular Democrat, challenged at a time of comparable frenzy over the energy crisis and Californian bureaucratic red tape, the candidates for succession were 135. The winner was Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Terminator.
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