The campaign to recall San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin continued to gain steam on Monday with two former San Francisco prosecutors publicly joining the effort to vote their former boss out of office.

Prosecutors Brooke Jenkins and Don du Bain recently left their positions at the DA’s office, citing Boudin’s lack of commitment to prosecuting crimes as the reason for their departure.

Holding a virtual press conference on Monday, the two announced that they were joining the Boudin recall campaign as volunteers, saying they believed the district attorney was putting the public safety of San Francisco’s residents and visitors at risk.

They charged that his so-called “radical” approach to crime has resulted in releasing offenders without rehabilitation and placing them in a position to re-offend.

“He has proven that his policies and approach is anything but progressive,” Jenkins said, adding, “To the contrary, his approach has been extreme and radical, and as a result we have seen crime increase, justice wane, and lives be lost.”

Our state’s system of reservoirs and canals was at one time designed to provide a reliable water supply for California homes, businesses, and farms for three or more dry years. Just two years ago, following a slightly above average wet winter, that system was at full capacity. Now, almost every single reservoir is currently below 50% capacity*, with several in the 10%-26% percent level, and even the experts are alarmed.

The sad truth is that California has allowed trillions of gallons of precipitation to run into the Pacific Ocean during these last two years. Now, water districts and cities throughout our state are beginning to implement mandatory water rationing measures.

So what happened?

California has failed to adequately prepare and provide the state with a functioning water supply system that can grow with our population. If it were managed properly, California receives enough rain and snow to serve its 40 million residents and 4 million acres of farmland for several years. The problem is inadequate infrastructure and a regulatory system that requires a huge amount of water to run straight to the ocean, so we aren’t able to capture what we need to make it through the dry times.

California’s recall election is over. Californians chose the status quo.

That means the issues that propelled the recall, like crime, homelessness and loss of jobs likely will get worse.

If Republicans want to be relevant in California, they need to become the party of solutions for what troubles California.

The brilliant demographer, Joel Kotkin, has decried the hallowing out of the middle class in California. Kotkin has written that California has become the land of the wealthy, unions, and the less fortunate.

Part of that demographic change is the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Republicans who, over the last 25 years, have moved to states more friendly to their values like Texas, Florida, Nevada, Arizona and Tennessee.

For those who have remained and want change for the good, particularly Republican candidates and their party, it’s time to learn the simple lesson of the recall and the initiative process.

At the height of the recall fever, the campaign was about Gavin Newsom and his policy failures. California is worst in the nation in crime, poverty, homelessness, job exodus, wildfires and water mismanagement.

Those is favor of the recall, when it was ahead in the polls, including a poll 51% to 40%, were focused on those problems, policy choices and Newsom’s unlikability.

In the final month of the recall campaign, Newsom and his supporters spent nearly $100 million making the recall about anything but Newsom or his policies.

It was a successful strategy that defeated the recall but left California with all its problems still in place and likely to get worse.

Despite that loss, one truth remains, California voters are aware of the problems of their state and want solutions. So, what should California Republicans do in response?

Well, first, they should ignore calls for them to become more like Democrats or to adopt some mantra that will make them more liberal or moderate or even conservative.

Adopting labels does not attract votes.

Nor will offering the same policies as Democrats attract votes in a state with a 48% Democrat registration.

After all, Democrat voters already have their own candidates with those views.

Instead, Republicans should learn from their successes with statewide initiatives.

California is somewhat unique in that it has a thriving political process that allows its citizens to place initiatives on the ballot.

Those initiatives can become law and even amend the California Constitution.

Despite dwindling Republican voter registration, California voters have been partial to initiatives supported or opposed by Republicans for decades.

In November of 2020, California voters turned down a massive property tax increase, turned down a return to a racial quota system, voted against cashless bail, rejected expanded rent control and reversed a law pushed by Sacramento Democrats that sought to force Uber and Lyft to make all their drivers employees.

Long before that, the legendary Proposition 13 was passed by California voters, which capped out of control property tax increases – and voters have repeatedly rejected efforts targeting Prop 13. A three-strikes law was put in place that targeted repeat criminal felons and voters in 2016 rejected the repeal of the death penalty.

The Republican successes related to initiatives can be directly traced to the fact that initiatives are policy driven and specific responses to specific issues.

Often they are obvious solutions to obvious problems.

The lesson in that is Republicans in California have success when they propose specific solutions to prevalent problems and when their solutions are placed in the voters’ hands.

Republican candidates, on the other hand, for decades have failed to push initiatives or are only vague in their platforms. Their poor election record is the result.

Water could be their way back.

California Democrats are moving to mandating that residents are only allowed 50 gallons a day of water. While they may work for some in city apartments, it will be very unpopular statewide.

Republicans should propose a comprehensive water supply program, inclusive of conservation, water catchment (saving water that falls on certain roads and buildings, i.e. like Singapore), reservoirs, and desalination. Solutions over rationing.

So, as Republicans do soul searching over the recall loss, they should look on the bright side. Voters are engaged. Thousands of activists became involved.

Millions are concerned about the problems of California and they want solutions.

The Republican Party must be that problem-solver for a state thirsty for solutions.

Tom Del Beccaro is an acclaimed author, speaker and national columnist. As a radio and television commentator. Tom is the Chairman of RescueCalifornia.org, which is raising funds and gathering signatures for the recall of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Read Tom Del Beccaro’s Reports — More Here.

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin is facing a recall campaign amid a crime spike in the liberal city.

Richie Greenberg – a former mayoral candidate for the Golden Gate city – launched the petition to recall the city’s far-left district attorney, citing unsafe streets and Boudin’s soft-on-crime policies.

The Committee Supporting the Recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin announced Tuesday that they had been authorized by the Department of Elections to start gathering signatures on the petition.

“Law-abiding, fed-up citizens are pushing back against activist district attorneys who’ve gone too far and are destroying our cities,” Greenberg said in a release.

“People are dying, our streets are dangerous, our homes are targets, business owners close shop and flee due to an unworkable environment. San Francisco is united in its desire to move on from the failure of Mr. Boudin’s experiment,” he added.

UCLA professor Lee Ohanian argued on “Mornings with Maria” on Monday that California’s mass exodus is “really just a matter of simple economics.”

“California’s becoming too expensive and too inefficient compared to alternatives,” the economics professor said.

He added that “the root cause” of the exodus out of the state is because of “a failure of governance by state policy makers that’s created the 48th worst tax climate in the country and the 48th worst regulatory burden.”

“Those regulatory burdens include regulations that make it extremely difficult and extremely expensive to build housing,” Ohanian, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, noted.

The Hoover Institution is “a public policy think tank promoting the principles of individual, economic, and political freedom,” according to its website.

Several large firms, including Oracle, Tesla and Hewlett Packard Enterprise have recently announced their plans to leave the Golden State.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing in December that the San Jose, California-based tech company is moving its headquarters to Houston, Texas.

Less than two weeks later, Oracle announced it is joining Tesla and Hewlett Packard Enterprise in moving some operations to Texas, detailing the move in a filing with the SEC.

Victims rights advocates joined with the support of Sheriff Alex Villanueva to launch a recall campaign against newly-elected Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón.

Gascón campaigned on a reform agenda when he successfully unseated incumbent DA Jackie Lacey last year. But after he took office and began detailing how many of those reforms would take shape, victims advocates and others in law enforcement and even from within Gascón’s own office have begun to protest.

Over the weekend, victims advocates officially kicked off their recall efforts after gathering the minimum of 20 signatures needed to formally begin the process. The group has 160 days to gather 580,000 signatures of registered voters to place the measure on the ballot.

Villanueva appeared at the rally, announcing his support for the recall.

“When we say it’s OK to not only join a criminal street gang, but engage in crime in furtherance of that criminal enterparies, and they face no consequence, we have a problem,” Villanueva said. “His name is George Gascón.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s job approval rating among California voters has plummeted, driven largely by dissatisfaction over the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and adding fuel to a Republican-led recall campaign, according to a new poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies.

More than a third of the state’s registered voters said they would vote to oust Newsom from office if the recall qualifies for the ballot, though 45% said they would oppose such a move, the survey found.

The decline in Newsom’s standing could endanger his policy agenda as he guides the state through the pandemic and as even his political allies begin to question the actions he has taken. It also provides a sobering sign for the 53-year-old Democrat that his once bright political future, for years the subject of whispers about a potential White House run, has lost some of its shine.

California voters were almost evenly split when asked whether Newsom has done a good or bad job as governor, a precipitous drop from September when two-thirds of those polled gave him high marks.

The poll, released Tuesday morning, also found that just 31% of those surveyed thought that Newsom and other state government leaders had done an excellent or good job handling the pandemic, while 23% said they had done a fair job, and 43% called it a poor job.

An effort is underway in California to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Those seeking to recall Newsom still have a ways to go. They have to collect signatures from 12% of the California population — or 1,495,709 people — by March 17, and then those signatures have to be validated. If they succeed, an election would be held later this year.

But before we get ahead of ourselves — why do some people want to recall Gavin Newsom?

The recall petition was introduced in February 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic took over life in California. So the reasons stated on the petition don’t actually have anything to do with Newsom’s handling of coronavirus.

Gavin Newsom’s is a failed governorship.

Not everyone is cut out to be a leader and between Newsom’s arrogance and incompetence, Californians by the millions are being hurt. That is why well over 1.2 million people so far have signed a petition to have him recalled.

Here are the top reasons he should be recalled and what should be the final straw.

8. The Self-Imposed Energy Crisis

California, of course, has abundant energy. Yet, California cannot reliably provide energy to the tens of millions of Californians and their businesses. Power shutdowns are a regular part of life and its biggest energy provider, PG&E, has warned shutdowns will be a fact of life for a decade. It is so bad that, in 2019, the tech industry sent a warning to Newsom that they will join the many other businesses leaving the state.

Newsom is nowhere to be found on spearheading an effort to have industry leaders from around the country get together to solve this problem that has costs so many jobs. Instead, in his tiresome fashion, Newsom blames others.

7. Wildfire Danger and Destruction

Part of the reason for power shutdowns is the wildfire danger caused by decades of a lack of forest management and the bowing to environmentalists by Newsom and others. Finally, after deaths and mass destruction, California is putting serious money toward clearing brush. A serious governor would have acted before the tragedies.

6. Water

It is the staff of life – just not for California citizens. Californians and businesses are perennially plagued with water shortages caused by man, not the weather. California is experiencing one of its wettest centuries in 7,000 years (so says a UC Davis study), yet it refuses to build water storage to solve its self-imposed water crisis. Instead, trillions of gallons of water each year are directed toward the ocean to satisfy environmentalists.

Newsom is nowhere to be found on this issue either and so Californians – especially farmers –and their livelihoods suffer.

5. The Unemployment Fraud Scandal

Is it $31 billion? Over $50 billion? The largest fraud scandal in the history of any state is exploding in California. Apparently, controls were so lax that COVID-related benefits (over $100 billion in total) were paid to prisoners, people out of state and fraudsters.

Nothing says job losses like the thousands of businesses and individuals that have relocated out of California.

4. Fiscal Danger

California leads all states in debt and infrastructure problems. Years ago, I warned that California was unsustainable because of its pension and other public debt. Newsom has done nothing to stave off the impending fiscal nightmare other than making it worse through higher spending.

3. Job Losses

Nothing says job losses like the thousands of businesses and individuals that have relocated out of California. It has become legion and fosters headlines like this: California had the biggest net loss of U-Haul trucks of any state in 2020. Businesses and individuals alike know that California Democrats, led by Gavin Newsom, won’t be changing their ways without a recall and, instead, will seek to increase taxes and regulations even more. That’s why so many are leaving the state. They don’t want to pay the tab.

2. California’s COVID Response

It has been a disaster. Despite Newsom’s recent, largely unexplained reopening, California leads the nation in shutdown policies and COVID cases. Meanwhile, the vaccine rollout has been just as bad, with California last in the nation in vaccine administration. Of course, that means unnecessary illnesses and deaths. Add to that Newsom’s expensive, secret mask deal to buy masks from a well-connected Chinese electric car manufacturer.

1. The Sheer Arrogance of His Rule

The world now knows that Gavin Newsom imposed rules against restaurant dining and school shutdowns while his children attended private school and he dined at the most exclusive restaurant in California, The French Laundry, with health care lobbyists. Newsom then proceeded to lie about whether he was following social protocol while there.

As arrogant as that is, his one-man-one-rule style proves his unworthiness. As I wrote last November, “California needs a leader who collaborates with residents instead of dictating to them as he flouts his own COVID-19 rules.”

Newsom continues to impose illogical shutdown rules from his perch instead of working with localities. How else do you explain having rural counties under the same rules as Los Angeles?

The Final Straw

Then, California was entreated to this final straw: “California ignores public records request, keeps coronavirus data hidden – State health officials have said releasing the data would confuse the public.”

The geniuses, including Newsom, presiding over the worst COVID record of any state have decided that the citizens of the state that leads the world in tech innovation are just too dumb to be told the truth. Think about that.

In 2003, California recalled Gray Davis, in significant part, for hiding the terrible energy contracts he signed amid a self-imposed energy crisis. In 2021, Gavin Newsom is not smart enough, and is so incredibly arrogant enough, not to avoid doing the same thing Davis did.

Well, for many, enough is enough. Californians deserve better. Newsom must be recalled and a new governor elected before any more Californians lose their jobs if not their lives.