Newsom had sued his own secretary of state last month to be listed as a Democrat on the ballot following what he called a filing “mistake” by his election attorney last year. The California Democrat was supposed to mark his party affiliation in February 2020 pursuant to the state’s recall election law, but “due to an inadvertent but good faith mistake on the part of his election attorney, Newsom timely filed his answer but did not include his party-preference election,” the lawsuit said.
Sacramento Superior Court Judge James Arguelles wrote in his ruling Monday that the “circumstances do not justify excuse from the deadline.”
It is clear, he wrote, “from both the text and the legislative history that SB 151 does not consider information about an elected officer’s party affiliation so vital to voters that it must be included on the ballot.”
“It is what it is. This is a Republican recall,” Newsom said in an exclusive interview with CNN earlier this year. “An RNC-backed Republican recall of White supremacists, anti-Semites and people who are opposed to immigration and immigrants is an accurate assessment of who’s behind this recall.”
Elected officials subject to recall elections in California historically had not been authorized to include their political party preferences until Newsom signed a law in 2019 that enabled them to do so.
In September, the state’s voters will be asked two questions on the recall ballot. First, do they want to vote “yes” or “no” on recalling Newsom, who was elected in 2018 with nearly 62% of the vote.
The second question is which candidate they would like to replace Newsom. Voters will choose from what is likely to be a very long list of names. By law, Newsom is not permitted to add his name to the ballot as an option.
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