Is recall election a real threat to Gov. Gavin Newsom? Here’s what experts say

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One week before the deadline, organizers of the campaign to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom claim they will have the nearly 1.5 million signatures needed to put a recall on the ballot in 2021.

If the recall qualifies, Newsom will confront yet another frustrating challenge. But will the recall be anything more than an annoying distraction? In this episode of the California Nation podcast, I talk to three political experts about the looming reality of a recall.

Jessica Levinson, a political commentator and professor at Loyola Law School, said a recall campaign will likely fail to unseat Newsom — as long as things don’t take a turn for the worse.

“If there is a huge problem with the vaccine rollout ... if there’s a surge in variants and we are potentially facing another lockdown ... if there’s another big problem with unemployment insurance or if there’s a real economic downturn ... if he goes to the equivalent of French Laundry again, then I think he’s vulnerable,” Levinson said.

Mike Madrid, a veteran Republican political consultant, agreed that the recall is unlikely to end Newsom’s career. Its backers, however, can use the governor’s failures to further damage him.

“We’re just not seeing a lot of good governance,” Madrid said. “I think Californians don’t feel like somebody who is capable of leading the state is actually at the helm.”

Garry South, a veteran Democratic consultant and former Newsom adviser, said voters will cut the governor some slack. While he’s made mistakes, South said, he’s also been forced to deal with a historic pandemic. Besides, South said, the recall will only get onto the ballot due to political trickery.

“The only reason it’s going to qualify is that an idiot judge in Sacramento, who Trump had appointed and had nominated for a federal judgeship, gave the proponents of the recall an unprecedented 120-day extension,” South said. “Without that 120-day extension, this thing wouldn’t have come close to qualifying.”

Even if the recall can’t defeat Newsom, it will put him on the defensive and disrupt his agenda.

“I think it puts more pressure on him to say, even though it’s under local control, ‘let’s make sure we open schools,’” said Levinson. “Obviously, he was going to have to tackle the pandemic, he was going to have to tackle vaccines, he was going to have to tackle reopening schools, but it seems to have given all of those things a greater urgency.”

Madrid and South both agreed that Newsom will face increased pressure from progressives who may see the recall as an opportunity to leverage their support and force him to keep his lofty promises.

“Gavin Newsom, during his primary election, laid out a whole litany of a fantasy list of America’s progressive left, promising them everything from single-payer healthcare to the end of homelessness as we know it,” Madrid said. “None of this has come to fruition.”

A recall would force Newsom to dig deep, connect with voters and defend his administration while also trying to govern an unpredictable state.

“He is what he is, and you’re not going to get Bill Clinton out of Gavin Newsom,” South said. “I think he’s doing the best he can, honestly, with a very, very difficult situation.”

This story was originally published March 11, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Is recall election a real threat to Gov. Gavin Newsom? Here’s what experts say."