'There’s not a conspiracy theory they don’t love.'
Hall and Bullock both said that, even if organizers somehow gather enough signatures to force recall elections in their districts, they feel good about their chances. Bullock said he’s received a huge outpouring of support from voters in response to news reports that the county had to assign supervisors additional security and install security cameras at the homes of county health officials in response to death threats.
“Recalls very frequently boomerang on people when they don’t work,” he explained. “[Former state Sen.] Jeff Denham faced a recall in 2008 but easily survived and was soon after elected to Congress. I think we’ll see in 2022 in California that even if there’s a serious effort to run a Republican against Gavin Newsom, it may have been sabotaged by the recall. The failed recall gave Newsom a very good weapon to beat Republicans with where he can say, ‘Hey they wasted all this money on the recall.
“COVID was one of the biggest, if not the biggest policy change in people’s lives,” he said. “Lockdowns, business interruptions, mask and vaccine mandates and school shutdowns are all things you would think people would want a say in. COVID really got people active and agitated.”