by John Myers

Sacramento Bureau Chief

SACRAMENTO – There is very little set in stone for a recall election in which voters could remove Gov. Gavin Newsom from office beyond the ballot’s basic question of whether the governor should keep his job.

Recall elections have been the electoral equivalent of a comet making its way through the solar system. Of the 55 attempts in California history to qualify a gubernatorial recall, only one, the dismissal of then-Gov. Gray Davis in 2003, has made it to the ballot. That is likely to change by year’s end, as backers of the effort to oust Newsom are on the verge of triggering a special statewide election this fall.

Though the tally of signatures on recall petitions won’t be complete until next month, there are significant issues to be sorted out. With flexible timelines and unusual rules, the coming months could be some of the most raucous political times in recent memory.

Voters can strike their names from recall petitions

The rules governing a recall election offer an unusual escape clause for voters who signed the petition that was circulated by Newsom’s critics: They can change their minds.

State election law provides 30 business days — beginning when, as expected, Secretary of State Shirley Weber announces enough signatures have been collected on the recall petition — for voters to remove their names from the list. A voter choosing to do so would have to file a request, in writing, with the elections office in his county of residence.

Could enough voters remove their names to block the election? Probably not. Recall supporters have gathered more than 2 million signatures, with so many of them being deemed valid in the early review by elections officials that nothing short of a major, well-orchestrated campaign could muster enough defections to change the course of the campaign.

Even if the governor’s allies wanted to mount such an effort, they would probably have to convince a large number of Republican voters, who make up the strong majority of signatories, according to recall backers. But some level of Democratic effort could attract attention and fuel partisan bickering once Weber announces the preliminary tally of signatures no later than April 29.

Recall candidates could have 24 hours to join the race

One of the most intriguing possibilities is that candidates vying to replace Newsom could have as little as 24 hours to file their paperwork for a spot on the ballot.

Recall ballots include a two-part question. Voters would be asked whether they want to remove Newsom from office and, in the event a majority chooses to do so, which candidate they would then want to take his place as governor. In the 2003 recall of Davis, won by Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, the ballot featured an only-in-California list of 135 hopefuls including pop culture celebrities, ordinary citizens, politicians and pundits.

By law, Newsom could not run as a candidate on the replacement portion of the ballot.

In a gubernatorial recall, replacement candidates would have to file their paperwork — along with a fee of almost $4,200 or, in lieu of a fee, submit at least 7,000 voter signatures — no later than 59 days before election day. But here’s where things get interesting: The election could be held as soon as 60 days after the recall measure has been certified by the secretary of state.

That would give hopefuls just 24 hours to decide.

In 2003, then-Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante set the marker at 76 days after certification, giving replacement candidates 17 days to join the contest. Bustamante, much to the dismay of some fellow Democrats, announced his own candidacy two days before the deadline.

Should the Newsom recall qualify for the ballot, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis must schedule the election within 60 to 80 days. And if she decides on a short filing season, it could scramble the field of viable replacement candidates, perhaps boosting Newsom’s chances of political survival.

An all-mail recall election

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a historic change in California’s November election, leading state officials to order that every registered voter receive a ballot in the mail — more than 22 million ballots mailed statewide. Some voters chose to cast ballots in person, with local officials using strict COVID-19 safety rules to reconfigure traditional polling places.

If a special recall election is held this fall, the all-mail ballot rules will be used again under legislation Newsom signed in February. Easy access to voting could boost voter turnout, something that could prove to be an advantage to the Democratic governor in a state where his party accounts for 46% of the registered electorate.

Proposals on tobacco, gambling could make the recall ballot

For a handful of politically powerful interest groups, the biggest question at this point is whether the recall ballot would include a handful of high-profile ballot measures whose backers have expected their issues to be decided by voters in November 2022.

Four ballot measures are either in place, or could soon be, for the regular statewide election next fall.

Tobacco companies have qualified a referendum asking voters to overturn a law Newsom signed last year to ban the sale of flavored tobacco products. Meanwhile, a long-running battle over efforts to lift California’s existing cap on medical negligence payments qualified last summer for the November 2022 ballot. Two additional ballot measures — an effort to legalize sports betting in tribal casinos and a proposed statewide ban on single-use plastic packaging — are both waiting for elections officials to review and validate voter signatures.

Two ballot measures were considered and ultimately rejected by voters in the 2003 gubernatorial recall: a legislative proposal to earmark tax dollars for infrastructure and an initiative to strengthen California’s ban on affirmative action policies.

Election laws have been changed in the intervening years, making the issue of what will appear on the ballot murky. By having already been placed on the 2022 ballot, the flavored tobacco referendum seems most likely to be moved to the recall election. But it’s less clear what happens to the initiative measures, which are subject to a 2011 law that specifies their appearance on “general election” ballots.

A spokesman for the sports wagering initiative said Wednesday that its backers are sorting through the legal issues involved.

A ballot measure battle taking place alongside an election to remove the governor could be expensive. And depending on which voters cast ballots — with some Californians motivated more or less than by a regular election — a gubernatorial recall could produce a different result than expected by interest groups that spent years preparing their campaigns. (Shared from LA Times).

Forecasts for this year range from 3.9 percent to an optimistic 5.5 percent

by Peter Davies

It’s official – Mexico recorded its worst economic contraction since the Great Depression in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic and associated restrictions ravaged the economy.

GDP plunged 8.5 percent last year, according to final, revised data published Thursday by the national statistics agency Inegi.

The figure, which represents the worst economic result since GDP slumped more than 14 percent in 1932, is the same as the one published by Inegi in January based on preliminary data.

Mexico’s economy has now contracted during two consecutive years after GDP declined 0.1 percent in 2019.

It is the second time this century that Mexico has suffered back-to-back annual contractions as the economy also shrank in 2001 and 2002. Before that the most recent consecutive contractions were in 1982 and 1983 when Mexico was mired in a debt crisis.

President López Obrador took office in late 2018 promising average annual growth of 4 percent during his six-year term. That outcome now looks almost impossible to achieve, although GDP is forecast to bounce back strongly in 2021 – at least compared to the economic nightmare of 2020.

The president himself is predicting a 5 percent rebound this year, a forecast more optimistic than most but not beyond the realms of possibility.

The newspaper El Financiero reported that López Obrador’s prediction appears based on optimistic forecasts from institutions such as the rating agency Moody’s, which is forecasting 5.5 percent growth this year.

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are both more pessimistic, forecasting GDP expansion of 4.3 percent and 3.7 percent, respectively, while Citibanamex’s latest survey found a consensus for 3.9 percent growth.

All of those forecasts are more optimistic than the organizations’ previous predictions, indicating that there is growing confidence in the Mexican economy’s capacity to recover in 2021.

The strength of the recovery, however, will depend to a large extent on Mexico’s ability to inoculate the population against Covid-19, which remains a significant threat despite the pandemic waning considerably this month compared to January.

The government has agreements to secure more than 234 million vaccine doses – enough to inoculate the entire population – but has so far only received about 2.5 million doses and administered 1.9 million.

Another factor that could weigh on growth is the government’s plan to overhaul the electricity market to favor the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission. Several analysts have said that the proposed reform to the Electricity Industry Law will scare off foreign and domestic investment.

The bill is the 15th government initiative that undermines investor confidence, according to CEESP, a private sector think tank.

“All the changes being made in the sector are a very bad sign for future investment in the energy sector and especially in renewable energy,” said Ariane Ortiz-Bollin, assistant vice president-analyst at Moody’s.

“This will affect the supply of energy … in Mexico and will also affect economic growth in the medium term.”

Mexico News Daily

General calls them ‘ungoverned areas’ and one element behind migrant flows

by Mexico News Daily

President López Obrador has rejected a United States government claim that criminal organizations control “ungoverned areas” that account for about onethird of Mexico’s territory.

The commander of the United States Northern Command made the claim Tuesday at a U.S. Department of Defense press conference in response to a question about the situation on the Mexico-U.S. border. “I would say that [the  recent influx of migrants to the border] is a symptom of a broader problem that … manifested itself over the last year or so. …Two major hurricanes, Covid, instability created by transnational criminal organizations, all of these are indicators and reasons why people want to leave Central America, South America and Mexico to come to our nation,” General Glen D.

VanHerck said. “… Counternarcotics, migration, human trafficking, they’re all symptoms of transnational criminal organizations who are opeTodas las entradasrating oftentimes in ungoverned areas – 30% to 35% of Mexico – that is creating some of the things we’re dealing with at the border,” he said.

“And so, we need to take a whole-of-government look at that problem. I think it’s a national security imperative that we must look at.” At his regular news conference on Thursday, López Obrador dismissed the general’s territorial control claim as untrue. “But we respect the opinion of everyone,” he added. “We’re going to continue having good relations with the United States government, we’re not going to argue with the United States government. [President Joe Biden] is very respectful with us.”

According to the news magazine Proceso, it was the first time since the 2006-2012 presidency of Felipe Calderón that a high-ranking United States military leader publicly enunciated the scale of the Mexico’s drug trafficking and territorial control problem. However, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has acknowledged the sway cartels hold in Mexico, and the U.S. drug market.

“Mexican TCOs [transnational criminal organizations] are the greatest drug trafficking threat to the United States; they control most of the U.S. drug market and have established varied transportation routes, have advanced communications capabilities, and hold strong affiliations with criminal groups and gangs in the United States,” the DEA said in its 2020 National Drug Threat Assessment report.

It said that Mexican cartels continue to control lucrative smuggling corridors, primarily across the United States’ southwestern border. “The two largest organizations, the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), show signs of expansion in Mexico, demonstrating their continued influence even compared to other Mexican TCOs,” the DEA said.

“These TCOs expand their criminal influence by engaging in business alliances with other organizations, including independent DTOs [drug trafficking organizations], and working in conjunction with transnational gangs, U.S.based street gangs, prison gangs, and Asian money laundering organizations.”

In addition to the Sinaloa Cartel and the CJNG, the DEA identified seven other Mexican criminal groups that have a significant drug trafficking impact on the United States. They are the Beltrán Leyva Organization, the Northeast Cartel/Los Zetas, the Guerreros Unidos, the Gulf Cartel, the Juárez Cartel/La Línea, the Familia Michoacana, and Los Rojos.

Mexico has long been considered to have a territorial control problem, especially in rural areas where there is evidence that cartels control large swathes of land in several states. Source: Reforma (sp), El Financiero (sp), Infobae (sp)