Newsom recalls the effort closer to voting
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s effort is getting closer to the vote as 1.1 million signatures are sent; Remember that Randy Economy, a senior consultant with Gavin Newsom, joins Fox and Friends Weekend.
Former Newport Beach Mayor Will O’Neill took to Facebook on Friday to draw attention to the use of “ordered payments” by California Governor Gavin Newsom, a technically legal but highly opaque practice that it can generate countless amounts of “donations” for preferred projects by politicians and nonprofits.
O’Neill, who was mayor of the coastal city of Orange County between 2019 and 2020, asked readers to imagine that they are running a company, and Newsom asks for a donation “for a cause you care about”.
“It looks like extortion, right? No, perfectly legal. It’s called ‘orderly payment,’ wrote O’Neill.
Under California law, payments requested in excess of $ 5,000 must be reported. But, unlike political donations, there are no limits. The practice is relatively obscure and rarely used. In 2019, for example, the Newsom administration reported only $ 12 million in payments requested.
But in 2020, during which the COVID-19 pandemic broke out and the governor’s emergency powers were expanded, payments to various entities – at Newsom’s request – skyrocketed to an incredible $ 226 million, according to data from the Practices Commission Fair State Policies (FPPC).
Behested’s payments jumped to $ 226 million in 2020 – up from $ 12 million a year ago.
(FPPC)
In 2020, Newsom raised $ 45 million from Blue Shield of California and Kaiser Permanente for its housing initiative. Blue Shield President and CEO Paul Markovich later served as co-chair of the governor’s COVID-19 Test Task Force. And last month, the governor chose Blue Shield and Kaiser Permanente to help manage vaccine distribution in California.
Since the outbreak, Verily Life Sciences – which under the same parent company as Google – has received up to $ 44 million in three separate contracts from the governor’s Emergency Services Office to operate COVID-19 test sites.
O’Neill cited reports from CapRadio, a Sacramento NPR affiliate, showing that, between 2018 and 2019, UnitedHealth donated $ 220,000 to political committees controlled by Newsom, which later awarded $ 492 million in contracts to UnitedHealth subsidiaries in bidding and accelerated situations.
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Bloom Energy, a California-based company, contributed about $ 85,000 to Newsom between September 2018 and October 2020, CapRadio reported. In March 2020, the company received a $ 1 million non-bid contract – later raised to $ 2 million – to refurbish fans, according to the outlet.
CapRadio also reported that Chinese manufacturing company BYD made two $ 20,000 contributions to Newsom between March 2018 and November 2019. In April 2020, the company received an almost $ 1 billion non-bid contract for masks.
In his Facebook post, O’Neill included a quote from Bob Stern, a registered Democrat and former general counsel of the California FPPC, who said: “I really think the governor has very poor knowledge in terms of receiving great campaign contributions and provide sole – make contracts for companies that were giving him those contributions. ”
“‘Heard’ is a way of saying it. What would you call it? ‘” O’Neill.
ARCHIVE: California Governor Gavin Newsom shows a bottle of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center in Los Angeles.
(AP)
It is not the first time that the former Republican mayor has called the Democratic governor. Last May, when California – like the rest of the country – was in a strict block to curb the spread of the coronavirus, O’Neill criticized Newsom for his order to shut down beaches in Orange County.
During an appearance on “Tucker Carlson Tonight”, O’Neill accused Newsom of closing 43 miles from the beaches of Orange County, “not because of data, but because of politics.”
“In our local hospital, we have 475 beds. They never treated more than 25 people at any given time, and yesterday they were treating nine people, and only one percent of their fans were being used.”
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The criticism of ordered payments comes as Newsom faces the likely prospect of a revocation election because of his draconian response to the pandemic. Recall that Gavin 2020 senior consultant Randy Economy told Fox News on Sunday that the campaign collected more than 1.72 million subscriptions. This is more than 200,000 over the threshold required to qualify for a vote, but organizers are planning 2 million signatures by the March 17 deadline to compensate for invalid signatures.
“Our work continues … we will not stop (until) the last March 17th,” Economy told Fox News. “We are excited about progress and this movement is changing politics as we know it here in California and across America.”
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Fox News made several attempts to contact Newsom’s press office with a request for comment on the recall, but received no response.