‘Lost in the shuffle.’ Did Democrats miss a chance to block a Newsom recall election?

The effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom has less than one week left to turn in enough signatures to trigger a election.

Organizers say they have 2 million signatures, just enough to be sure they reach the threshold of 1.5 million valid ones. But had it not been granted a deadline extension last fall, it never would have gotten this far.

“This thing would never qualify if they had been forced to adhere to the 160-day timelines for getting signatures,” said Garry South, a Democratic political consultant who worked under Gov. Gray Davis, the only California governor ever recalled. “Without the 120 day (extension), they wouldn’t have ever made it.”

In California, the Secretary of State must certify recall efforts before supporters can circulate a petition. The Newsom recall, led by former Yolo County law enforcement officer Orinn Heatlie, got the all-clear to begin collecting signatures on June 10. In line with state laws, they had 160 days, or until Nov. 17, to gather 1.5 million signatures.

But by October, the recall campaign was seeking an extension, arguing that the pandemic had made it too difficult to collect signatures. Normally, petitions are circulated and signed at large events, rallies and gatherings, they said — all things that virtually disappeared over the summer due to COVID-19 restrictions.

The recall filed a request with Sacramento Superior Court, naming Secretary of State Alex Padilla, California’s top elections official, as a respondent.

At that point, petitioners told the court they had collected 675,000 signatures. Consultants argued that number was only 25% of what would be expected in a “normal election cycle.” Had the pandemic not hampered efforts, the number would have been far greater, the recall argued.

Padilla, represented by an attorney in the court documents, argued against the extension, saying the pandemic wasn’t a good enough reason to extend the deadline. The lack of signatures, Padilla argued, was due to the recall petitioners’ own failed efforts.

Judge James R. Arguelles, however, took the recall’s side.

“It is virtually, if not actually impossible for petitioners to gather enough signatures under current conditions,” Arguelles wrote in his Nov. 16 ruling. “An order providing Petitioners with a signature-gathering period in which their efforts will approximate unrestricted diligent efforts will preserve the state interests...it will not be easier for Petitioners to recall the Governor than it would be under normal circumstances, nor will it sanction a recall election without a showing of the necessary popular support.”

“Rather, the extended period for signature gathering will account for disabilities that ballot-access restrictions have yielded,” he added.

Recall organizers still defend the decision today, and said they deserved the extension because of Newsom’s restrictions on gathering, which he implemented to stop the spread of COVID-19. Many experts credit Newsom’s spring stay-at-home order with saving California from an early and deadly wave of the pandemic.

“We have the ability under the legal system to seek outside assistance from the judicial branch, and a judge allowed the extension to take place and we’re very grateful for that,” recall spokesman Randy Economy said. “(Newsom) closed down the fifth-largest economy, put everybody under house arrest and basically said, ‘if you go outside of your house, you will be cited and arrested.”

“He’s the one who did it,” he said.

Initiatives got extensions

Part of the reason Arguelles extended the recall’s deadline stemmed from the fact that he had already granted a signature collection extension for two initiatives backed by Democrats earlier that year.

In 2020, California Democratic Party-aligned law firm Olson Remcho represented two groups trying to place initiatives on the 2022 ballot: Indian tribes seeking to expand gambling on tribal lands and environmental groups seeking to increase plastic recycling.

Both groups petitioned in Sacramento Superior Court for more time to gather signatures because of the pandemic. Padilla was the respondent in both cases, but unlike the recall request, filed no opposition to the tribes or environmental groups’ requests.

Arguelles, who President Donald Trump nominated to a seat on the U.S. District Court in June, took these cases into account when he considered the recall’s request later that year.

“Even after signature gathering was designated an essential activity exempt from the stay-at-home order, (Padilla) represented to this court that the state’s COVID-19 restrictions made it ‘extremely difficult’ for the (gambling) petitioners to collect enough signatures to place their initiative on the ballot,” Arguelles wrote in his recall decision. “The same difficulties have been at work during the 160-day period facing Petitioners in the instant action.”

The result was a 120-day extension, pushing the recall’s signature collection deadline to March 17, 2021.

The Secretary of State’s office could have appealed the decision to a higher court, but it never did.

“I just think it got lost in the shuffle,” South said. “And it sets a horrible, horrible precedent, particularly on the recall front.”

Did someone drop the ball?

It’s unclear why Padilla’s office never appealed the extension. Neither the current Secretary of State’s office, nor the newly-minted California senator, nor the California Democratic Party, responded to requests for comment on the case.

2020 was a momentous year for elections. With the White House on the line and a pandemic bearing down on the voting system, California’s top Democrats devoted much of their energy to adjusting election procedures and shooting down misinformation about vote-by-mail ballots.

The hearing over the recall extension happened just three days after the presidential election. By the time Arguelles issued his decision on Nov. 17, it was already determined that Joe Biden and California’s own Kamala Harris would be heading to the White House. In anticipation of her departure, California politicos were already jockeying for Harris’ Senate seat.

South argues that someone in the Democratic Party should have pushed the issue.

“There’s a reason why the rules are what the rules are,” South said. “You don’t get an unlimited amount of time to collect signatures ....”

Dan Newman, a political adviser to the governor, had worked on the earlier ballot initiatives that received extensions. It was those extensions, recall organizers argued, that justified their own.

Newman told The Bee that the added time almost certainly got the recall to this point..

“The formula for qualifying something is pretty simple, and the only factors are time and money, and this nearly doubled the amount of time allowed, and then they got an influx of national Republican money in the final stage of this, so that’s why they are as close as they are,” he said.

Recall attempts in California

Only 20 states in America have a process for recalling a governor, but the standards are different in each jurisdiction. California’s law stipulates that a recall petitioner needs to collect signatures equal to 12% of the total number of votes cast in the gubernatorial election, and they have 160 days to do it.

That’s an easier bar to clear than other states. In Kansas, for example, the governor can only be recalled in the instance of a felony, misconduct in office, incompetence, or failure to perform duties as prescribed by law. Even in that case, recall petitioners must collect signatures equal to 40% of the votes cast in the gubernatorial election within 90 days — a much higher threshold with a tighter timeline than California’s.

With the extension granted by Arguelles in the fall, the Newsom recall was given a total of 280 days to collect signatures.

Since 1913, there have been 55 attempts to recall a California governor. The only one that has ever successfully ousted a governor, or qualified for the ballot, was the recall of Gov. Gray Davis in 2003. His successor, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, faced seven failed recall attempts during his time in office. Gov. Jerry Brown faced five. Newsom faced three attempts in 2019 and two more in 2020.

In more than 100 years of trying to recall California governors, the latest measure by Heatlie is only the second attempt to ever gain real traction.