The 2021 California gubernatorial recall election was a special recall election that started in August 2021 and ended on September 14, 2021, when the majority of California voters chose not to recall incumbent Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, elected for the term January 2019 to January 2023.
Had the recall been successful, the replacement candidate with the most votes on the second part of the ballot would have assumed the office. The election followed the same format used in the November 2020 general election: in August, county election offices sent an official ballot to the mailing address of every registered voter, giving them the option to vote by mail on or before election day, or, when polling places opened statewide, to vote in-person. The recall petition was filed in February 2020 and signatures were collected from June 2020 to March 2021, with the signature drive gaining critical momentum in late 2020 regarding Newsom's personal behavior and leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Voters' ability to recall an elected official in California is the result of Progressive Era democratic reforms intended to reduce corruption, enacted alongside the introduction of the ballot initiative and women's suffrage in 1911. Following a petition drive collecting signatures amounting to at least 12 percent of voters in the previous election for the political office in question, a special election is held. The election was the fourth gubernatorial recall election in American history and the second in state history after the 2003 recall election, which resulted in the successful recall of Governor Gray Davis, who was replaced with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The ballot asked voters two separate questions: whether to recall Newsom as governor, and which candidate should replace Newsom as governor if he were recalled. All voters could answer the second question regardless of their vote (if any) on the first. Allies of Newsom were successful in dissuading any high-profile Democrats from entering the field of candidates seeking to replace Newsom if he was recalled. His campaign encouraged voters to vote "no" on the first question (whether to recall Newsom) while abstaining from voting on the second question (who should replace Newsom if he were recalled). Largely as consequence of this, while 12,838,565 voters answered the first question, only 7,361,568 voters answered the second.
Due to the wide margin of the results, most major news outlets projected the race for Newsom within an hour of polls closing; later that night, Larry Elder, the frontrunner replacement candidate, conceded defeat. Official certification of the results occurred on October 22, 2021.
Background
Following their ascension into power in 1911, California's progressive Republican reformers introduced direct democracy with the recall (Proposition 8) and the initiative and referendum (Proposition 7) processes, alongside other sweeping democratic reforms like women's suffrage (Proposition 4), to weaken the corrupting power of private interests over the state's government (especially that of the enormously influential Southern Pacific Railroad), and restore, according to newly elected governor Hiram Johnson, "the people's rule".
Prior to this election, the only other gubernatorial recall attempt in California to qualify for the ballot happened in 2003, which resulted in Gray Davis being replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger. This election was the result of one of 179 attempts to recall a state-level elected official in California since voters gained the right to recall in 1911, one of 55 attempts to recall a governor, and one of six such efforts to remove Newsom. Every California governor since 1960 has experienced some form of a recall attempt. Of the ten prior recall attempts on state-level elected officials in California which led to special recall elections, six ultimately resulted in their removal from office by voters. The recall election was the fourth gubernatorial recall election ever held in the United States; the other three were in North Dakota in 1921, California in 2003, and Wisconsin in 2012.
Newsom recall petition (June 2020–March 2021)
During Newsom's tenure as governor, a total of seven recall petitions have been launched against him. On February 20, 2020, the petition which led to the 2021 recall election was served against Newsom. It stated, "People in this state suffer the highest taxes in the nation, the highest homelessness rates, and the lowest quality of life as a result." The timing of the recall attempt coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The basis for previous recall attempts included the state's "Universal Healthcare and laws regarding illegal aliens" and "homelessness".
On June 10, 2020, then-Secretary of State Alex Padilla approved petitioners' petitions for circulation. The recall petition focused on a variety of grievances, on issues such as sanctuary policies, homelessness, high taxes, and water rationing. Newsom's official response to the petition touted his support for funding education, health care, and infrastructure, noted the State's fiscal health, and warned that the recall campaign was a partisan attack that would result in a costly election.
The recall campaign hired a political consulting firm in late June 2020, and the initial plan was to pay circulators to collect signatures. To ensure a successful validation, the recall campaign sought to gather 2 million signatures. Given the difficulties in obtaining signatures during the pandemic, however, the per-signature cost rose dramatically, and petitioners opted to proceed with a team of approximately 5,000 volunteer circulators instead. The first proponent of the recall, Orrin Heatlie, played a grassroots role in the previous attempt led by aspiring Tea Party politician Erin Cruz. Heatlie, a former county sheriff's sergeant, was motivated by his disapproval of a video in which Newsom advised immigrants of their right not to be subject to warrantless searches.
The petition was initially given a signature deadline of November 17, 2020, but was extended to March 17, 2021, by Sacramento County Superior Court Judge James P. Arguelles due to the pandemic. Arguelles ruled that recall proponents could have a longer time window to collect signatures than they normally would have under non-pandemic circumstances.
Party at The French Laundry
Newsom was widely criticized in November 2020 for his attendance at a birthday party with more than three households at The French Laundry restaurant in Yountville in the Napa Valley, despite guidelines issued by his administration ahead of an expected holiday COVID-19 surge, which limited private gatherings to at most three households. Also in attendance were multiple lobbyists, including both the head lobbyist and the CEO of the California Medical Association. Newsom and his office initially defended the outing while saying it was the first time he and his wife dined with others in public since the COVID-19 pandemic began, that public dining recommendations were separate from state guidelines for private gatherings, and that the party was held outdoors.
The day after Newsom claimed the party had been held outdoors, photographs showing an enclosed and maskless gathering were published and widely shared. Neighboring diners said Newsom's party was so loud, restaurant staff closed off their garage-like dining space with sliding glass doors, essentially making an indoor dining space. Napa County was in the "orange tier" of pandemic severity at the time, which permitted some indoor dining. Newsom later apologized for attending the celebration. The incident severely damaged Newsom's image and credibility amid the public health crisis.
This incident and voter anger over lockdowns, job losses, and school and business closures were widely credited for the recall petition's surge in support. Other reasons included a $31 billion fraud scandal at the state unemployment agency and pre-pandemic grievances over homelessness and high taxes. By August 2020, the petitioners had submitted 55,000 valid signatures, and from August 2020 through October 2020, a total of 890 new valid signatures were submitted. Coincidentally, both the French Laundry party and the extension of the signature collection deadline happened on November 6, 2020 and between November 5, 2020, and December 7, 2020, over 442,000 new signatures were submitted and verified; 1,664,010 valid signatures, representing roughly 111 percent of the 1,495,709 minimum required signatures and 98 percent of the 1,719,900 final certified signature count, would be submitted from November 2020 to the March 2021 deadline.
Reactions
Though the state's Republican Party establishment was not involved with the launch of the recall petition, the growing recall effort eventually received the attention and support of statewide and nationwide Republicans, with the Republican Governors Association commissioning a poll involving prospective candidates in February 2021. In January 2021, Newsom refused to acknowledge the developing recall movement when questioned by reporters. In January 2021, Rusty Hicks, the chairman of the California Democratic Party, likened it to the storming of the U.S. Capitol, calling it the "California coup". The comparison drew bipartisan criticism, with Newsom's former deputy chief of staff, Yashar Ali, saying it was "absolutely insane to frame a recall where the voters go to the polls a coup".
Certification
The recall campaign submitted 2,117,730 signatures by the March 2021 deadline. On April 26, 2021, the office of Secretary of State Shirley Weber announced that the recall effort had gained enough signatures to pass the 1,495,709 threshold and qualify for the ballot, pending official certification after a period of 30 days where voters could retract their signatures and where state officials tallied the costs to conduct the election (up to 60 days). The count yielded 1,719,943 valid signatures, which was roughly 13.8 percent of votes cast in 2018, exceeding the 12 percent threshold required to trigger the recall election. On June 23, 2021, the secretary of state announced that only 43 recall signatories withdrew their signatures statewide prior to the withdrawal deadline, resulting in a final count of 1,719,900 signatures (224,191 more than the required total), and all but ensuring a special election to recall Newsom from the governor's office.
After official certification, Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis was legally required to call the election within 60 to 80 days (per recent changes in recall election procedures signed by Governor Newsom, which eliminated the election cost review requirements if sufficient funding had been appropriated for the election). The signature drive was officially certified on July 1, 2021 and on the same day, Kounalakis called the election for September 14, 2021 (76 days later and the last Tuesday within the 60 to 80 day time period available to Kounalakis).
Recall campaigning (March 2021–September 2021)
Newsom's opponents said he was being dishonest when in a March 16, 2021, interview with Jake Tapper of CNN, he said, "I've been living through Zoom school and all of the challenge related to it," since his children had been receiving in-person instruction at their private school since October 2020, unlike schoolchildren in many densely-populated and urban public school districts in California. Newsom made the comments while conducting a public outreach effort to address the all-but-certain recall. The COVID-19 pandemic in California led to widespread school closures, the emergence of distance learning, and student mental health and academic challenges, and by the summer of 2021, education became a prominent issue in the recall campaign. Republican candidates said the public K-12 school system failed to adequately serve students after teachers unions' demands led to extended shutdowns, and proposed a statewide voucher system, whereby parents could use their share of per-pupil state funding on the public, charter, or private school of their choice.
Ahead of the September recall election, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned for Newsom. At a rally in Long Beach on the eve of the election, Biden said, "Folks, send a message to the nation: courage matters, leadership matters, science matters. Vote to keep Gavin Newsom." Both Biden and Newsom likened the frontrunner candidate Larry Elder to Trump, with Newsom warning, "We may have defeated Donald Trump, but we have not defeated Trumpism. Trumpism is still on the ballot in California."
Newsom's campaign ran television ads in September 2021 that called his Republican opponents' positions "anti-vax" and called the outcome of the recall vote "a matter of life and death." All four major Republican candidates (Elder, Faulconer, Kiley, and Cox) opposed vaccine mandates, although none contended that the vaccines were dangerous and all said that they had been vaccinated against the virus. Among the Republican candidates, Faulconer was the strongest advocate of COVID-19 vaccination; Cox had an "evolving position" but eventually recommended that everyone get vaccinated against COVID-19, and Elder and Kiley said that individuals should make up their own minds. Elder pledged, if elected, to repeal all face-covering and COVID-19 testing requirements for state workers.
Newsom under recall
Although the recall petition was introduced in February 2020, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Newsom's response faced scrutiny by recall supporters and the news media. Many in favor of recalling Newsom cited issues unrelated to the pandemic as reasons for their support.