Gale Force Winds Fuel Recall

S Steward
3 min readAug 19, 2021

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The recall comes at a difficult time. It’s hard to imagine how a worse time would emerge. The pro Recall support consists of a lot of people with a lot of painful experiences. People from all walks want to express their pain. Gavin Newsom is not a symbol of someone who has experienced a lot of pain, so tossing him out of office seems only fair.

It’s scary how much sense that seems to make, except recalling Gavin Newsom would only make things worse. This will be a close election and Californians are going to need to keep their cool and not destroy a basically good governmental agenda in anger.

Officials are coming out of the woodwork to leverage favors from the Governor. Law enforcement like, LA Sheriff Alex Villanueva, are looking at the recall to get their way when it comes to dealing with petty crime, violent crime and the deepening homelessness crisis — their way — with force and incarceration. Law wants more law.

Construction wants more construction, developers want more development, Property owners want more control. Each union and special interest is in this recall for something. Newsome is providing some of those groups with state dollars.

What is principle and what is political payola? We are not as sure because of the recall. What we are sure of is that the people who brought us this recall headache have jeopardized California’s public safety, social justice and climate action leadership.

What Gavin Newsom needs are lots of endorsements from working people, local leaders, business leaders and union organizers that have benefited from the many good policies that are California’s big advantage.

It’s not a secret. California likes to have a safety net and improve the lives of all its citizens. The country is in a world of hurt and California is seeing a big share of climate/economy refugees — on our streets and in our neighborhoods.

This is no time to put pain upon pain as it could be worse. California is influencing national policy by demonstrating how to take care of each and help our law enforcement deal humanly with the homeless for the long haul.

We got in this mess because of sweep-it-under-the-rug policies. These are the put-people-last policies of most of the candidates that want to replace Gavin Newsom.

The anti-California crowd could not make their arguments stand up in the regular election. Now these national bad-actors have seen an opportunity to upset the California apple cart.

We who want California to be successful, do not have the wind at our back in this recall election. If this recall is successful, if too few voters turn out because they just want to not care about something (and I can relate), we are all going to suffer.

We are better than that. Let’s get through this, vote and vote “NO” on the 1st question on the ballot “should Gavin Newsom be recalled.” The second question, who to vote for, is not as important so long as you vote and vote no on the first question.

The 2nd question. There was agreement from a broad spectrum of pro-democracy candidates no to legitimize the recall by running. No serious-minded Democrat, Independent or otherwise is running.

Your ballot counts if you only answer question 1. You cannot write in Gavin Newsom for the second question. There are plenty of people voting NO on the first question and picking a “just in case” candidate for the second question. A lot of those who are picking a just-in-case candidate are picking Kevin Paffrath.

I’m not keen on voting for any of the candidates. Paffrath, who is better than most of the 46 bad choices, is very sure he can correct all that ails in 1 year. Better listen to his YouTube to get an idea. It’s novice gross exaggeration, but at least he is not going to burn down the capital building.

Better to vote and vote “No” on question 1 and be done with it. We might need a better governor, but we don’t need a worse one.

Join dedicatd organizers who have put their shoulder into the Stop the Recall effort. They have created opportunities for volunteers to phone bank, friend bank, text, distribute yard signs, canvas and join the banner brigade to Stop the Recall. Please join them.

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S Steward

Using what we have, recognizing where we are and expecting things to be better — because we can. Bringing science, art and culture building to his writing.