Gov. Gavin Newsom responded to the “Recall Gavin 2020” campaign with a counter campaign, Monday.

Newsom had been asked multiple times about the recall campaign during his weekly COVID-19 updates, but would not directly respond, until now, where he tweeted a link to his campaign, saying:

“I won’t be distracted by this partisan, Republican recall — but I will fight it. There is too much at stake. Getting Californians vaccinated, our economy safely reopened, and our kids back in school are simply too important to risk.”

His campaign is titled “Stop the Republican Recall” and says the recall campaign against him was fueled by, “anti-vaxxers, Q-Anon conspiracy theorists and anti-immigrant Trump supporters.”

Among those backing Newsom in the campaign are senators Alex Padilla, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Corey Booker.

The “Recall Gavin 2020” campaign says it has gained more than 2 million signatures— needing 1.5 million verified signatures to move forward with a special recall election.

“To him there’s rules for everybody else and then there’s rules for him,” Randy Economy, the recall campaign’s senior advisor told L.A. Weekly in December. “It’s the arrogance of power and he doesn’t care for the average person in California. He cares about living in his own political bubble.”

If a recall election were to happen, California voters would be asked two questions, according to Ballotpedia. The first question would be if the voter believes Gov. Newsom should be recalled, and the second would ask for a successor.

If the first question receives a majority vote to recall Gov. Newsom, the candidate with the most votes in the second question would win the election.

On Feb. 2, a survey conducted by the University of California, Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies said that among the 10,000 registered voters who were polled, 48% approved of Gov. Newsom’s performance, while 46% disapproved.

About 69% of those polled were displeased with Newsom’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which was up from 51% in a September poll.

That same day, a countering poll was released by the Public Policy Institute of California, and the results were more favorable toward Newsom, showing that 54% of adult Californians were satisfied with satisfied with his performance as governor.

“A majority approve of the job that Gavin Newsom is doing as governor, while opinions about him remain deeply divided between Democratic and Republican voters,” Mark Baldassare, PPIC president and CEO said in a media release. “More than four in ten say that COVID is the most important issue for the governor and legislature in 2021, and a majority of Californians approve of the governor’s handling of COVID. About one in three give the state excellent or good grades for the vaccine distribution.”

The “Recall Gavin” campaign said that 1,871,573 signatures have been “pre-verified” internally through an outside third party vendor and 1,800,000 signatures have been turned into 58 different county registrar of voter offices.

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