California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) says he is taking an effort to recall him seriously, and will “fight this thing.”
While a recent Emerson poll found that just 38% of California voters said they support recalling Newsom, the governor says he is not dismissing the effort.
During an appearance on ABC’s “The View” on Tuesday, Newsom noted that voters in California successfully recalled the then-governor in 2003.
“Am I worried about it? Of course, I’m worried about it,” Newsom said. “The nature of these things, the up or down question, the zero-sum nature of the question is challenging, it’s vexing.”
He continued, “We’re taking it seriously. I have to do my job every single day. But I’m going to fight this thing because I’m going to fight for California values and the things I hold dear, and I think the vast majority of Californians, regardless of their political stripes, hold dear.”
Newsom noted that the recall effort before the COVID-19 outbreak and claimed it “goes to our values.”
“It’s less about me and more about California and our values… Democratic Party values,” Newsom said as he claimed the proponents of the recall effort oppose many of the policies advanced by the Democratic Party.
Watch the video below:
California Gov. @GavinNewsom tells @TheView he’s taking the recall effort against him “seriously” and “going to fight this thing”: “It’s less about me, it’s more about… Democratic party values.”
— The View (@TheView) March 16, 2021
“Of course, I’m worried about it,” he adds. https://t.co/Bwzha2Hy3f pic.twitter.com/R5OJouVicl
The governor launched a new website on Monday designed to combat the recall effort and ask for donations.
He claims that the push is being driven by “anti-vaxxers, QAnon conspiracy theorists, anti-immigrant activists, and Trump supporters.”
The recall effort is facing a deadline to submit 1.5 million signatures to initiate the recall election. As of Wednesday, the RecallGavin2020 Committee revealed it had received over 2 million signatures.
Additionally, it said that “1,871,573 signatures have been pre-verified internally through an outside third party vendor.”
As NPR reports, “If the signatures are validated, Californians will likely be asked to vote on keeping or removing Newsom late this year, with a simple majority needed for the recall.”
