Ballots going out for Sept. 14 recall election

An election to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom is underway.

As part of a Progressive-era reform package, California, in 1911, approved recalls. There have been at least 179 recall attempts against those who hold state offices, however, most have been unsuccessful.

Gov. Gavin Newsom is now facing a recall election, with ballots already reaching voters’ homes. The slate of candidates announcing their intention to run against the governor went from 80 to 46. The latter number actually completed the necessary paperwork to appear on the ballot before the July 16 deadline.

The leading Democratic challenger is Kevin Paffrath, a YouTube influencer and financial adviser.

Larry Elder, whose columns used to appear on Sunday in the Antelope Valley Press, seems to be the top candidate on the Republican side. He is on hiatus for now, until the election is over, as he is not writing new columns.

This isn’t the first time a recall on Newsom has been attempted.

“Three sets of critics tried five times to recall Mr. Newsom before the sixth recall petition caught on in 2020,” a New York Times report said. “The first two groups were led by unsuccessful Republican candidates for Congress in Southern California, and the first papers were filed three months after Mr. Newsom’s inauguration in 2019.”

All three groups were Trumpian conservatives who raised questions about Newsom’s liberal views on

issues such as taxes, the death penalty, gun control and immigration. Then COVID-19 gripped the state and even more politicians began to question the governor’s tactics in dealing with it. Many Californians were unhappy with the way he handled the situation in early 2020, when businesses were shut down and residents were ordered to quarantine.

In addition, many blame his handling of the situation for contributing — if not causing — the hardships faced by small businesses and others who lost wages because they were unable to work.

“Anger began building even as those tactics most likely saved thousands of people from Coronavirus infections and death early in the pandemic,” Political Columnist Thomas Elias said in a recent column. “Newsom paid absolutely no attention to the protests. It was a sound public health move to stick to his guns and other governors who followed his precedents never faced similar levels of anger.

“No one knows if Newsom could have defused some of the fury if he’d faced down the protesting crowds and dealt personally with their gripes. But his security team was said to have argued against that. So the anger festered, eventually morphing into recall petitions about to come to a head in the fast-approaching Sept. 14 special election.”

We are now faced with the decision of whether to keep Newsom in the governor’s seat or elect someone else who will serve for two years, before Newsom’s term expires in 2023.

California faces many issues and challenges, chief among them, is COVID-19 and the economic disaster that was left in the aftermath of mass closures.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown, regardless of how the election turns out.