Landslide win: Gavin Newsom defeats recall attempt

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom won the fight against his recall in a victory Tuesday night, with a projected 63% of voters choosing not to remove him from office. Around 75% of the expected votes cast have been counted as of Wednesday night according to the New York Times.

“‘No’ is not the only thing that was expressed tonight,” Newsom said Tuesday evening while thanking supporters. “We said yes to science. We said yes to vaccines. We said yes to ending this pandemic. We said yes to people’s right to vote without fear of fake fraud or voter suppression. We said yes to women’s fundamental, constitutional right to decide for herself what she does with her body and her fate and future,” Newsom said.

Newsom’s biggest competitor, Conservative radio host Larry Elder, received the majority of votes of any recall candidate, with The New York Times reporting his total as being 47% of all recall candidate votes. Following Elder, Democrat and YouTube star Kevin Paffrath received around 10% of the recall candidate votes.

Elder conceded the race Tuesday night, but not without alluding to running for the 2022 election, “We may have lost the battle, but we are going to win the war.”