We are continuing to closely follow the movement to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom. It appears the petition gatherers have been very busy.
On Monday, the signature count stood at 1.7 million. Less than a week later, it is now 1.8 million and counting.
Even the state’s leading Democrats are conceding that a recall vote is likely.
California Lieutenant Gov. Eleni Kounalakis said Thursday that Gov. Gavin Newsom would likely face a recall election before the end of the year over his handling of the pandemic and willingness to lockdown large parts of the state’s economy.Organizers for the campaign announced yesterday that they had collected more than 1.8 million signatures, or roughly 300,000 more than is necessary to trigger a recall election. They need to collect more than is necessary in case some signatures do not belong to registered voters.Newsom drew widespread flak for flouting his requests for people to keep a wide berth from others during the pandemic.
The 1.8 million level is a significant milestone: It represents the lowest total the organizers felt would allow the vote to make the ballot, allowing for the rate of signature rejection anticipated. The effort seems to be on track for making the target of 2.0 million signatures.
It is difficult to argue which governor has been most ham-handed, in terms of implementing pandemic policies that were ineffective while clinging desperately to emergency powers they were granted by citizens genuinely afraid of the novel virus from China. But Newsom is a strong contender for the title.
For example, California recently became the 50th state to allow outdoor youth sports to resume and is also the last state to allow indoor youth sports to resume.
Furthermore, California is the only state continuing to ban gyms, museums, weddings, and charity functions from resuming normal operations.KUSI News has routinely attempted to hear the “science” that justifies this, but San Diego County Health, led by Supervisor Nathan Fletcher, refuse to give an answer.
San Diego officials have been reduced to pleading with Newsom to allow fans to attend the opening day of baseball in the city.
As the 2020 MLB season approached, Supervisor Jim Desmond is pushing to get fans back in the stands for Padres Opening Day.Thursday morning, Desmond published a letter that he is sending to Governor Gavin Newsom, asking him to allow fans to return to Petco Park for upcoming sporting events, and the highly anticipated Padres Opening Day.The letter read, “I’m asking you to allow limited attendance to all San Diego Padres home games starting with Opening Day on April 1. With a 25% capacity, for example, 10,611 San Diegans would be able to enjoy Opening Day, safely socially distanced. Many other cities and teams have changed the way they operate to keep their fans safe, by limiting areas where they can congregate and making masks mandatory.”
There are signs that the press is seeking to gin-up more fear in the state. The recent focus of many news items is the “new strain” that is supposedly more infectious and lethal.
The variant is also present in other states, but its prevalence among more than 2000 samples collected in California swelled from 0% to greater than 50% between September 2020 and late January, according to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).“This variant is concerning because our data shows that it is more contagious, more likely to be associated with severe illness, and at least partially resistant to neutralizing antibodies,” says senior author Charles Chiu, an infectious diseases physician and sequencing expert at UCSF. The data suggest the new strain “should likely be designated a variant of concern warranting urgent follow-up investigation,” the authors write in their preprint, which has not been peer reviewed and which they say is expected to be posted online soon.
Yet cases are plummeting, and the number of new cases is 87% below its peak. Continuing vaccinations, as well as more people recovering from natural infections, may mean that herd immunity is on track for the spring (as has been suggested by a doctor at Johns Hopkins University).
Perhaps Newsom’s political career will be the one of the last victims carried off by the pathogen?
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