Anne Dunsmore, campaign director and lead fundraiser for Rescue California, announced on Monday the group’s second attempt to recall the Governor Gavin Newsom:
Gavin Newsom has abandoned the state to advance his presidential ambitions, leaving behind a $73 billion budget deficit and a public safety, immigration, and education crisis.
California needs a full-time governor who is fully focused on the serious problems the state and its citizens are facing.
This may be our last opportunity to rescue and restore our state, while we highlight for the rest of the country the destruction Newsom has left in his wake.
The last time Dunsmore and her group attempted to recall the governor, she was outspent by 10 to 1, resulting in the governor giving her effort a 60-40 thrashing. But this time may be different.
Since the summer of 2021, when the last recall effort failed, the Golden State has turned into lead instead: Crime is soaring, homelessness is out of control, as is the budget, with a deficit expected to approach $100 billion this year.
But one of the key points Dunsmore plans to make is the recent decision of the governor to give 700,000 in-state illegals full health-insurance coverage, courtesy of California’s already overburdened taxpayers. The move adds another $3 billion every year to the state’s deficit. Said Dunsmore, “[California has the] highest homeless rates, [the] highest taxes in the country — all of those things are there as reasons for the recall. Included in that are the safety and education issues. We are at the bottom of the list of best educated states in the country.”
Also working in the group’s favor is the growing disaffection among California’s overwhelmingly Democratic population. Last fall, when the governor began his de facto run for the presidency with fundraisers and other PR opportunities here and abroad taking him away from his office, his standing among the state’s voters hit an all-time low, according to a study published by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies. And his approval rating of 55 percent last February clocked in 11 points lower last month, at just 44 percent.
Dunsmore made the point to RealClear Politics:
He’s using California taxpayer money to fly around the country and the world to support a national political agenda for president when he’s not even qualified, at this point, to run the state of California, as the deficit numbers approach $100 billion.
She is a realist. Newsom used her group’s last attempt oust him from office as a fundraiser, adding nearly $100 million to his campaign coffers, more than enough to snuff out her attempt in 2021. But her goal is larger than running another recall. She wants to bring his dismal record as governor of California to the attention of the nation as the president election — and the increasing likelihood that Biden will be replaced with someone else — draws ever closer:
[California doesn’t] have the income base to fund his campaign for president. His political ambitions are going to be his undoing, and unfortunately, it’s already been the undoing of the greatest state in the nation.
Rescue California seeks to obtain 1.6 million signatures in the next 160 days in order to meet the required 1.38 million (12 percent of those voting in the last election) to pass muster by California’s secretary of state. Dunsmore has more than 400 volunteers already working to get them, along with the experience she gained from her last failed effort.
