County voters reject Newsom

The effort to unseat Gov. Gavin Newsom was easily defeated last week. Statewide, California voters favored retaining the governor by a nearly 2-1 ratio, but as more votes were counted, Riverside County became the only southern county to support Newsom’s ouster.

As of Tuesday, morning, Sept. 21, a week after the election, Riverside County voters favored the “yes” to recall Newsom by a slight margin. The difference was only 476 votes out of more than 675,000 cast in the county.

Statewide, a week after the election, more than 60% of voters favored Newsom remaining governor. And, as ballots continued to be counted in Riverside County, the “no” votes increased until Monday they were the majority.

Riverside County’s turnout of 52% of registered voters was slightly more than the statewide turnout of 50%. As of Tuesday morning, Riverside County still had about 35,000 ballots to count, according to the Registrar of Voters Office.

For those voters who supported the recall, Larry Elder was the leading vote-getter to replace Newsom statewide and in Riverside County. Kevin Paffrath, a Democrat, was second in the state with 9.9% of the vote and former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer was third. However, he was the second choice in the county.

Jeff Hewitt, Riverside County 5th District supervisor running as a Libertarian candidate, was 12th in the county voting and further down the list statewide, receiving less than 1% of the total votes. In November 2019, Hewitt received nearly 55,000 edging out Russ Bogh for the supervisor’s seat. Last week, he garnered less than 4,650 countywide.