timschochet said:
I have no problem with recalling governors. But you’d better convince me that deliberate malfeasance was committed, and I don’t see any evidence of that here. Nor do I see incompetence.
From what I can see, Gavin Newsom was given a series of tough choices where he had to decide between the advice of medical experts and the concerns of business. He chose the advice of medical experts. That’s a reasonable choice; if you disagree with it, vote him out the next time he is up for re-election. That’s not a cause for recall.
I don’t even like the guy. He’s sleazy IMO. He appears to be a personal hypocrite (given his visit to the French Laundry at the height of the shutdown.) But that doesn’t justify removing him. If you disagree, please offer me a compelling argument because I’m not seeing it.
i know i've used these before, but here's my list for compelling arguments for a recall effort:
- Newsom was not transparent with regard to how long the fist lockdown would take place. we were told "two weeks" and then it just kept getting pushed out further and further under the guise of "following the science". the residents of CA were not going to happily be locked down until after Memorial Day 2020 and i believe the Governor and his administration knew it well in advance: they just couldn't say the words out loud without facing flat-out defiance.
- "following the science" was Newsom's mantra from the start. however, when the second lockdown began in December he shut down the entire hospitality and personal care industries in a sweeping order. there was not, and is not, any scientific data showing that eating outdoors, tasting at a winery, brewery, or distillery, or staying in a Hotel/Resort/AirB&B/VRBO, getting your hair cut, or getting a mani/peci exacerbated the spread of C-19. this blatant disregard for "the science" is incompetence of the highest order and has had devastating consequences on the industries (businesses closed permanently, jobs lost, detriments to mental health, etc.).
- The French Laundry incident; the pinnacle of hypocrisy. in the grand scheme of things, it's minor. from an optics standpoint, it's objectively bad. worse, is that SF Mayor London Breed did the same thing literally the next day, and San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo spent Thanksgiving with a group of people from more than three households (in violation of the Governor's directive). As Gov in CA, it's incumbent upon Newsom to publicly call out his contemporaries out and he did not. that's poor leadership.
- refusal to publicly call out sectors of the population, i.e. the 18-24 year old demographic who were not adhering to the stay-at-home orders and lockdown directives and contributing directly to the spread of C-19. his inability to acknowledge this publicly is irresponsible.
- using ICU Bed % Capacity to determine Tier status: not only a poor metric to use in determining what Tier regions would be in, there was no transparency in how the percentages were derived and the reason given was it was too complicated for the public to understand. it was weeks before Newsom address the difference between actual beds in the hospital and "surge capacity". the lack of transparency is shameful.
- assigning regions for the Color-Coded tiers was haphazard, e.g. SLO Co in "Southern California" and Monterey Co. in "Bay Area"
- refusal to hold local County governments accountable by withholding funding for those who defied public health orders.
while one of these points by itself may not warrant a recall, the body of work may do so.
