A bill to expose the name and address of everyone who signs a Recall petition has just passed the Senate Elections Committee. SB 663 would let the target of a Recall get their hands on the full list of signatories.
The bill is authored by a Senator who was once recalled himself. At the same time, the Senate’s past president has started an anti-Recall PAC to help Newsom called “Stop the Steal.” He’s demanding the list of petition signers and threatening a lawsuit if he doesn’t get it. You can’t make this stuff up.
The goal is obvious: to bully people into withdrawing their signature and to use state power as retaliation for signing in the first place. Even the Democrat-controlled Elections Committee staff concluded SB 663 would make voters feel “intimidated or harassed” and that “government employees, particularly, may also fear professional retaliation.”
To make matters worse, public comment on the bill was cut off before dozens of people got a chance to participate. At least this was better than last week’s education hearing, where the Chair shut down public comment after 10 minutes. When I objected, he tried to mute my microphone (see the video here).
Gavin Newsom and his allies can sense the jig is up. That’s why they’re denying citizens access to our government like never before. In fact, the Capitol itself has been closed to the taxpaying public for a year even as plans for an obscene $1 billion “renovation” of the building proceed.
If our Founding Fathers were to visit modern day California, they’d conclude the experiment of self-government had failed. A glimpse inside our State Capitol and then beneath any major freeway overpass would produce an inescapable conclusion: corruption breeding decay.
That had been the norm for much of history, until the Enlightenment exalted reason and truth over raw power. Those ideals found their finest form in American civic institutions. The question we now face is whether those institutions are strong enough to withstand the counter-Enlightenment California’s politicians have unleashed.
I believe the answer is yes. That’s what the Recall is all about, and it’s why Newsom is panicking. By restoring our founding principles, the people of California can deliver a decisive blow to our corrupt political class.