Early this week, opponents of California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced they had acquired enough signatures to trigger a recall election. According to a recent count, they’ve gotten two million people to sign up with a week still to go until the March 17 deadline. That should have them comfortably beyond the 1.5 million recall threshold, given that, according to the California Secretary of State’s Office, roughly 83 percent of the earlier batch of signatures were considered valid.
For the first time since 2003, California will stage a special election that will determine the fate of its Democratic governor. Gubernatorial recalls are rare and successful recalls are rarer—there have been only nine such attempts in the state’s 170-year history, and just two have succeeded. Still, given the sheer volume of signatures, it’s clear that this campaign is a legitimate threat to Newsom’s post. Already, national Democrats, including Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, are circling the wagons in defense of the governor, who has not infrequently sparred with progressives on things like fracking and health care.
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