Gov. Gavin Newsom overcomes recall effort with 7,910,379 voting “No” to remove him. Relying on unions and community organizations to pull a massive voter turnout to win 62% of the vote.
“It’s not a persuasion campaign,” Newsom told reporters earlier in September. “I mean, you’ll still find people that may be on the fence, but it’s really about turnout. Labor knows how to turn out.”
The Governor acknowledged the support in the final days of the election, using the humbling moment as a warning sign and a jumping off point to prepare for his coming election in 2022.
“I am humbled and grateful to the millions and millions of Californians who exercised their fundamental right to vote, and expressed themselves so overwhelmingly by rejecting the division, cynicism, and negativity that’s defined our politics in this country over the course of so many years,”.
Newsom’s “Stop the Recall ” campaign scrambled early and ahead with a 10 week coordinated plan and a fund of over 71$ million. Tremendously outnumbering any of the GOP opponents raised funds. Still retaining 24$ million for his reelection campaign.
The Campaign was built from receiving more than 600,000 small dollar donations(any amount less than $100 dollars); 90% percent of which were from California.
Newsom partnered with over 90 community organizations. The head of Newsom’s ground game operation told CNN they have had “real conversations” with about 1.5 million voters over the course of about seven weeks – noting that’s “at a scale bigger than most of the presidential campaigns.”
In Los Angeles county alone, the entire affiliation of labor unions through the AFL-CIO called more than 1 million phone numbers and knocked on over 130,000 doors, according to the organization’s spokesperson Christian Castro. In total, the federation spent over $2.1 million on the recall effort and coordinated a total of 3,265 volunteer shifts.
They had walkers in 15 counties going door-to-door reminding folks to turn in their ballots. They’ve been averaging 600,000 attempts to reach voters each day via phone, messaging, and in person. Reaching out in 7 different languages: English, Spanish, Cantonese, Korean, Mandarin, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.
“The goal is to hit two million door knocks by the end of the day. We tried to create a surround sound,” the adviser said.
“A multi-layered approach that meets voters wherever they are. I want to focus on what we said yes to as a state,” Newsom said, “We said yes to science, to vaccines, to ending this pandemic, to people’s right to vote without fear of fake fraud or voter suppression, to women’s fundamental constitutional right to decide for herself what she does with her body and her fate and future, diversity, inclusion, pluralism, to all those things that we hold dear as Californians and I would argue as Americans. Economic justice, social justice, racial justice, environmental justice. Our values, where California’s made so much progress. All of those things were on the ballot this evening…Thank you all very much, and thank you to 40 million Americans, 40 million Californians, and thank you for rejecting this recall,”.