A recall campaign against California Governor Gavin Newsom is gaining momentum as the state struggles to cope with the rise in COVID-19 cases and distribute vaccines.
The recall petition campaign called RecallGavin2020, which California Secretary of State Alex Padilla approved in June, reached more than 1 million signatures. At least 1.5 million signatures verified by March 10 are needed for the state to hold a special election that could remove the Democratic governor.
“It is absolutely gaining momentum. We are receiving petitions not only from Republicans, but also from Democrats and independents,” Newsom’s Republican candidate in 2018, John Cox, who recently launched an exploratory committee to challenge the governor in 2022, told Fox News. ” It just went on for a long time – the bad management that accompanied this pandemic ”.
California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks to reporters at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, California Governor (Renée C. Byer / The Sacramento Bee via AP, Pool, File)
Newsom’s office did not immediately respond to a Fox News inquiry.
California, the country’s most populous state, on Monday became the first state to exceed three million known cases of COVID-19 and 33,600 deaths.
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As of Sunday, the state had administered about 1.4 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine and distributed about 3.2 million, including the first and second doses, to local health facilities, according to the Department of Public Health. from California.
Californians are also disappointed with the unemployment fraud that hit about $ 9 billion between March and September and the backlogs that the state has been reducing since August, when it faced about 1 million unprocessed claims.
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The California Department of Employment Development (EDD) has processed more than 19 million unemployment claims and has paid nearly $ 113 billion in total benefits since March.
Photo provided by the Los Angeles County Coroner Coroner Department. (Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Department via AP, Archives)
“Small businesses are closed, schools are not yet open, although they are all over the country,” said Cox. “Democratic and Republican governors across the country are doing a much better job of dealing with this crisis than Newsom, and this is really weighing on people. “
Florida and California saw approximately the same number of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people, but Florida’s economy is open and growing, while California’s economy remains largely closed.
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Disney World in Orlando, Florida, opened in July, while Disneyland in Anaheim, California, remains closed. Cox noted that these attractions employ hotel and restaurant service employees, taxi drivers, bus drivers and more; these people have jobs in Florida, but lost them in California, he said.
“This is not fair,” said Cox. “Florida’s experience is not great with coronavirus – nobody is – but its mortality rates and cases are not higher than ours, and we are suffering economically.”
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Democrats called the recall efforts against Newsom “the California coup”, despite the fact that the recall effort is constitutional, according to the Los Angeles Times.
RecallGavin2020 issued a letter to California Democratic Party President Rusty Hicks on Monday demanding that the party cease and give up what it called a “slander and defamation campaign” against the effort.
CDP did not immediately respond to a query from Fox News.