California governor mounts aggressive effort to combat recall campaign

Newsom acknowledged in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on "The Lead" Tuesday that he is worried about the recall and expects it to qualify.

"All you need is about a quarter of the people that voted for Donald Trump to get this recall petition to the voters this November, so I'm anticipating it goes on (the ballot). We're taking it very seriously," Newsom told Tapper.

He characterized some of the recall proponents as members of right-wing militia groups, conspiracy theorists and White supremacist groups. When pressed by Tapper about the broad base of support that the recall has won among Republicans and independents, Newsom acknowledged that "it's been a difficult year, and in hindsight, we're all experts."

Newsom spoke to Tapper a day before the deadline for recall proponents to submit nearly 1.5 million signatures to the state's county registrars for verification. Organizers said last week that they had already collected nearly 2 million, a goal they set to account for duplicates or invalid entries. (The threshold set by the state of 1,495,709 signatures for the recall to qualify is equivalent to 12% of the vote in the last gubernatorial election.)

Now that it appears likely that the recall will qualify for the ballot, Newsom has abruptly changed course -- shifting from brushing off questions about it to calling it a serious threat to Californians that will jeopardize the progressive goals he has championed. In the last two days, the governor has engaged in an unusual media blitz as his team has launched his new counter-effort, Stop the Republican Recall, to raise money and fire up Democratic support by casting recall proponents as extremists, anti-vaxxers and the kinds of violent insurrectionists who stormed the US Capitol on January 6 in support of Trump.

The recall effort was launched last year by Retired Yolo County Sheriff's Office Sgt. Orrin Heatlie and 124 other people who filed a petition to recall Newsom based on what they view as his role in the state's high taxes, widespread homelessness, lack of affordable housing, out of control wildfires and rolling blackouts. But over the course of the year, the effort broadened to include Californians who were angered by Newsom's management of the coronavirus pandemic -- particularly the restrictive lockdowns last spring and then over the winter holidays that the governor believed would help control the spread of the virus as cases soared and intensive care units hit capacity in the Golden State.

The groups gathering the signatures have submitted them to county registrars across the state on a rolling basis, and county officials are verifying each submission to determine its validity, a process that could extend well into the end of April. After that process is complete, there are an additional series of procedural steps required by state law, so it is unclear exactly when a recall of Newsom -- if it qualifies -- would land on the ballot.

If the measure does qualify, voters would be asked in a first question whether they want to recall Newsom and then a second question asking who he should be replaced with, which is likely to be a long list of names as it was when former Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, was recalled in 2003. Through that same process, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger -- a Republican -- was elected as Davis' successor.