President Joe Biden issued a strongly worded tweet on Thursday evening urging California voters not to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who has been slipping in opinion polls leading up to the start of mail-in voting in the Sep. 14 election.
In the tweet, Biden said: “Gov. @GavinNewsom is leading California through unprecedented crises—he’s a key partner in fighting the pandemic and helping build our economy back better. To keep him on the job, registered voters should vote no on the recall election by 9/14 and keep California moving forward.”
As Breitbart News reported at the time, Biden had already stated in February — through White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki — that he opposed efforts to recall Newsom, which were then only in the signature-gathering stage.
“In addition to sharing a commitment to a range of issues with @GavinNewsom from addressing the climate crisis to getting the pandemic under control, @POTUS clearly opposes any effort to recall @GavinNewsom,” she tweeted.
Ultimately, more than 2 million signatures were gathered, far more than the roughly 1.5 million needed to qualify the recall for the ballot.
The likeliest replacement for Biden at the moment would be conservative talk radio host Larry Elder, who has led many recent polls among contenders. Elder would also be the state’s first black governor.
According to Politico, the White House may deploy Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in Newsom’s defense in the coming weeks.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new e-book, We Told You So!: The First 100 Days of Joe Biden’s Radical Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.