Some of the first legislation State Sen. Josh Newman has authored since being elected back to the 29th District seat is about tightening the recall process, with twin bills that would remove financial incentives for paid signature gatherers and another to give recall targets a new way to fight back.
It’s not surprising. Newman, D-Fullerton, was recalled in 2018, the first State Senator in California to be pushed from office in that manner in more than a century.
“Most elected people don’t think much about the prospect of being recalled. Every time another one happens, there’s general agreement, ‘That’s not what people had in mind when they created this process.’ But once it’s over, we move on,” Newman said.
“I think it’s appropriate that we revisit these institutions and make sure they are still working the way they were originally intended,” he added.
Newman wants to make one thing clear: His legislation will have no impact on the effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom, since his bills wouldn’t take effect until the start of next year. But he believes some issues he viewed as problems during his recall are unfolding again in the push to unseat Newsom, and highlighting those issues will drive support for his legislation.
Newman first was elected in 2016 to represent SD-29, which includes portions of Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. Months after entering office, he was one of the 81 state legislators who voted to raise the gas tax to help pay for future transportation projects and road improvements. Republicans used that vote as a hook to launch a recall effort against him, in hopes of regaining the district and possibly breaking Democrats’ supermajority in the state Senate. During the 2018 primary, 58% of voters in SD-29 chose to recall Newman, and 33.8% voted for Ling Ling Chang to take his place.
In November of last year, Newman won the seat back, beating Chang by more than 10,000 votes.
One problem Newman identified during the 2017-18 effort to recall him was that he felt his opponents tricked people into signing the recall petition — a tactic that, if true, would be illegal under current law.
Newman said petition gatherers in his recall asked prospective signers, ”’Are you mad about this gas tax? Sign this petition.’ They didn’t tell them that the actual text of the petition was about recalling an elected state senator.”
Since recall petitions aren’t public records, Newman said his team had no way to try to track down voters who’d signed the petition to make sure make sure they understood what they were signing.
That’s why last month he introduced Senate Bill 663, which would give the target of a recall effort access to the names of everyone who signed petitions to boot them from office.
“From my view a recall is, in effect, trial by ballot. And you should be able to face your accusers.”
The bill includes privacy protections. Only the targeted official is given access to the petition, for example, and that copy must be destroyed within 15 days of the recall qualification date.
The bill doesn’t include any language aimed at ensuring officials targeted for recall wouldn’t use the list to in any way harass voters who’ve signed petitions against them.
That’s a key reason why State Sen. Pat Bates of Laguna Niguel, who is the only Republican senator left representing any portion of Orange County, said she has serious concerns about SB 663.
“The secret ballot is essential to democracy and it protects against voter intimidation,” Bates said.
Newman said he believes this would be a self-enforcing issue, since “browbeating” a voter isn’t likely to produce the results the official would want anyway. But he said he’s open to discussing amendments to SB 663 to include such safeguards.
Newman’s second related bill, Senate Bill 660, would make it illegal for anyone to get paid based on how many signatures they collect for recalls or ballot initiatives.
“You don’t want to create an incentive that destroys the integrity of the process,” Newman said. “If those signature gatherers are getting paid per signature, or per the number of signatures they gather per hour, they have a powerful motivation to find the best marketing tactic, whether it’s honest or not.”
Newman said such a system wasn’t envisioned when the recall and initiatives processes were created, decades before people could share petitions — along with possible misinformation — on social media.
He added that paying per signature, which is standard practice in California campaigns, has created a mini industry of signature gatherers who are driven by profits and not democracy.
Similar bans already exist for ballot collection in California. And seven states have blocked campaigns from paying per signature on state initiatives or referendums. But the idea has been shot down several times in California, most recently through a veto by Newsom in 2019.
Newsom, Bates and other opponents fear that a pay-per-signature ban would not get money out of politics and, in fact, would make it even more expensive for voter-driven efforts to make the ballot. That, in turn, would harm grassroots recall efforts.
“I am a strong supporter of California’s system of direct democracy and am reluctant to sign any bill that erects barriers to citizen participation in the electoral process,” Newsom said in his 2019 veto.
Newman insists he’s not trying to limit direct democracy but only hoping to add rational safeguards.
Even now, he acknowledged it’s far from “easy” to recall someone in California.
Since California voters approved the recall process in 1911, there have been 179 recall attempts. Only 10 got enough signatures to make the ballot, and just six succeeded.
But California is one of only 19 states that lets voters recall elected officials. And while half of those 19 states only allow recalls on specific grounds, such as conviction of a felony in Kansas or neglect of duty in Virginia, no specific reason is needed to recall someone in California. A group seeking to oust an official just needs to collect signatures from 12% of people who voted for the office in the last election.
Newman said there are ongoing discussions around the idea of requiring “malfeasance” or some other cause for California recalls, though he said such definitions would be tough to pin down.
As it stands, Newman said he believes Republicans in California are exploiting the recall process to get their candidates elected on terms that are more favorable to them than what they would face in a general election. Statewide, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two to one.
He hopes his twin bills might close some of the loopholes that are enabling what he sees as a one-sided effort to undermine election outcomes.
Both of Newman’s recall bills have been referred to the Elections and Constitutional Amendments committee, where they’ll face a vote before potentially make it to the Senate floor.
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