San Diego ties to Newsom recall effort may grow
San Diego might not be the epicenter of the movement to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom, but it could become one for the campaign to replace him.
Former Mayor Kevin Faulconer at the moment appears to have pole position in the replacement race, should a recall election qualify and voters oust the Democratic incumbent. John Cox, the wealthy Rancho Santa Fe businessman, has contributed $2 million to his campaign for California chief executive.
Now there’s the prospect they will be joined by a former Trump administration official: Richard “Ric” Grenell, who President Donald Trump appointed ambassador to Germany and then acting director of national intelligence, a Cabinet-level position.
Grenell has such extensive political and diplomatic history — he was director of communications under four U.S. ambassadors to the United Nations — that his Wikipedia page doesn’t even mention he was an aide to San Diego Mayor Susan Golding in the late 1990s through 2000.
He has a long history of involvement in San Diego, having also served as spokesman for Titan Corp. and as a consultant on radio talk-show host and former City Council member Carl DeMaio’s 2014 congressional campaign against Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego.
Grenell has been an outspoken critic of Newsom. He has not said whether he will run, but left the door open. Asked about entering the recall race, Grenell told former Trump press secretary Sean Spencer on Newsmax, “I’m going to focus on the recall signatures at this point, Sean. That’s as far as I’m going to go.”
He has discussed the possibility with political consultants and is being encouraged by major Trump donors, according to Politico.
The recall dynamics have been fluid and a Grenell candidacy would stir them up even more.
The recall campaign has submitted more than 1.1 million signatures as of early this month. Nearly 1.5 million verified signatures
are needed to qualify the recall and advocates are looking to collect a total of about 2 million to provide an adequate cushion.
The recall campaign said it has collected a total of more than 1.7 million signatures and the Los Angeles Times reports that the signatures so far have had a high rate of verification by the state. March 17 is the deadline for submitting petitions to election officials. If it qualifies, a recall election would be held in the latter half of this year.
A recall measure would pose two questions. One asks voters if they want to remove Newsom from office, which requires a majority vote. The other asks who should replace him.
Unlike regular elections, the replacement election does not have a primary and a runoff. A candidate can win with a plurality of votes, which could be relatively small, depending on how many people run, how well-known they are and how strong a campaign they wage.
This is why Republicans think they have a shot at winning the governor’s office in heavily Democratic California. Grenell, Cox and
Faulconer all to varying degrees have ties to Trump, which in a typical California election would seem a liability for a candidate.
Trump lost to Biden in a landslide in California last year, but he did receive more than 6 million votes. While voters overall are strongly opposed to Trump, Republicans back him heavily. Nearly threequarters of California Republicans had a favorable opinion of Trump in a late January poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies.
Winning those Trump voters will be important for Republican replacement candidates. Grenell would seem to be well positioned to do that, given his posts in the previous administration and his continued loyalty to the former president. Cox was endorsed by Trump in the 2018 gubernatorial campaign when he lost to Newsom by nearly 30 points.
Faulconer said he could never vote for Trump in 2016, but then said he did so last year as he was gearing up to run for governor.
As speculation over a possible Grenell candidacy grew, the Faulconer campaign released an internal poll, first reported by Politico. To no surprise, the survey showed Newsom in trouble, with nearly a majority of voters supporting a
recall of the governor.
The poll showed Faulconer slightly leading in a head-to-head matchup with former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat. Villaraigosa’s inclusion was somewhat surprising because he hasn’t appeared to be making moves to run, though his name was raised briefly in at least one speculative story.
When Cox and Grenell are added to the mix, the survey shows Villaraigosa wins. The poll also suggests Newsom faces a better
chance at defeating the recall if he makes the election about Trump.
The message of the survey, and the point of its release, was clear, yet whether that affects decisions by Grenell, Cox or anybody else may never be known.
Regardless, the antirecall forces already had begun making the campaign about Trump, and would no doubt paint Faulconer as an ally of the former president, along with others.
What the replacement
field will look like is anybody’s guess if the recall qualifies. When Gov. Gray Davis was recalled in 2003 and replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger, more than 100 candidates were on the ballot. There’s no reason to expect any fewer this time around and other prominent figures may join in, possibly even some Democrats.
Many Californians and businesses are angered with Newsom’s stay-athome orders and the slow distribution of COVID-19 vaccinations. Adding to the governor’s problems are billions of dollars in fraudulent unemployment payments and lengthy delays for those benefits faced by jobless people entitled to them.
It’s unclear how much of that may subside if the current positive pandemic trends continue and more restrictions are lifted.
Right now, many parents are frustrated as well. Newsom currently is at odds with teachers unions and Democratic legislators — normally his allies — over reopening schools.
When in-person instruction resumes — and not who the replacement candidates are — may be the key to whether Newsom survives a recall.