once this year<\/u><\/a> mentioned Newsom in a tweet: a thread tied to the governor\u2019s State of the State address. <\/p>\nA Steyer spokesperson told a POLITICO reporter seeking to speak with him last week that they should check back in \u201clate April.\u201d The Secretary of State\u2019s office says the deadline for registrars to validate signatures for the recall is April 29.<\/p>\n
Steyer declined to comment. But a source close to him said late Tuesday that he would be \u201cvery, very surprised if he is looking at the recall ballot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, Steyer\u2019s decision to poll himself as a possible replacement does suggest he\u2019s entertained the possibility. At a minimum, it is one of the few concrete examples of a Democrat weighing the opportunities and landscape of a post-Newsom California. Antonio Villaraigosa, Newsom\u2019s primary opponent in 2018, sidestepped questions about the recall, and has taken no formal steps to test his viability.<\/p>\n
The feeling among political strategists and officials across the state is that many Democrats are waiting to see what Newsom\u2019s political pulse will be by late summer, when they will have to decide whether to enter the race.<\/p>\n
There is already speculation that there could be hundreds of candidates in the race because the steps to qualify are so low \u2014 only $4,000 or 7,000 signatures in a state with 39 million people. That\u2019s the same threshold as 2003, when then-Gov. Gray Davis was recalled, and Arnold Schwarzenegger emerged from a field that included a child actor and adult film star. <\/p>\n
Newsom\u2019s team is warning Democrats not to break ranks with the governor, arguing that having even one serious contender from his party engaged in the election would offer a clear alternative to Newsom and give voters the incentive to vote for the recall.<\/p>\n
Sean Clegg, a leading strategist for Newsom, issued a public rebuke of Villaraigosa recently, contending that the former mayor, who was his one-time boss, would \u201cembarrass himself and forever poison his legacy if he runs.\u201d And Clegg had another jab for Democrats taking aim at the governor in public. \u201cNo free shots on Gavin Newsom,\u201d Clegg wrote on Twitter. <\/p>\n
But that aggressive posture is worrying some Democrats. <\/p>\n
Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, Newsom\u2019s political mentor, said Democrats must \u201cdo everything they can to keep a recall from happening.\u2019\u2019 But if they fail, Brown added, the party must \u201cabsolutely\u201d offer voters an alternative to Republicans who will stock the recall ballot. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t take the risk of Democrats losing the governorship,\u2019\u2019 Brown said in a recent interview with POLITICO. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to literally protect it \u2026 and it may be that the Democrats you put in can announce they are totally opposed to the recall.\u2019\u2019 <\/p>\n
Steyer has been a prominent presence in top Democratic circles for years now, as he took the fortune he made as a hedge-fund manager and began applying it to progressive causes, chief among them environmental advocacy. He\u2019s spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help elect Democrats, and at one point was hailed as a liberal counterweight to the industrialist Koch brothers. In California, he sunk millions more into successful ballot initiatives.<\/p>\n
Steyer and Newsom, while both hailing from San Francisco, are not especially close. But as governor, Newsom appointed Steyer to co-chair on a blue-ribbon business and economic council \u2014 a star-studded panel that included business luminaries like Disney\u2019s Bob Iger and Apple CEO Tim Cook. <\/p>\n
For Newsom, the move was seen by some as a savvy attempt to keep Steyer and his political ambitions in check. The panel was disbanded and later criticized by business leaders as a toothless effort that produced few, if any, serious policy changes.<\/p>\n
This wouldn\u2019t be the first time Steyer has considered offering himself as an alternative to a better-known Democrat in the state. In 2015, a week after now-Vice President Kamala Harris launched her U.S. Senate campaign, Steyer quietly told potential supporters he was considering jumping into the race on an unorthodox pledge to serve only one term if he couldn\u2019t reach unspecified goals dealing with the environment, economy and education within six years.<\/p>\n
Two years later, Steyer told close allies he was seriously looking at a campaign against Sen. Dianne Feinstein. At the time, he said he didn\u2019t think Democrats were confronting Donald Trump aggressively enough. \u201cHave they forgotten their moral duty not to allow America to behave in such a way as to imperil every soul on this planet?\u201d he wrote in an email to a friend.<\/p>\n
Instead, early in Trump\u2019s presidency, Steyer became one of the most outspoken advocates for impeachment (well before it actually happened). His investments in that campaign helped him build a massive email list of Democratic voters. And though he told a crowd in Des Moines he wouldn\u2019t run, he ended up doing just that. Despite the millions of email addresses and huge amounts of personal wealth to spend, his candidacy didn\u2019t stick. He turned his attention squarely to South Carolina, in hopes that the state\u2019s primary electorate would turn to him as an alternative to Sen. Bernie Sanders. They went with Joe Biden instead.<\/p>\n
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Source: Politics Tom Steyer is polling the California recall. And the billionaire environmental activist and erstwhile presidential hopeful has included his own name among the list of possible contenders to… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4189"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}