PAPER FAIL

Newsom Won’t Be Listed as Dem on Recall Ballot After Filing Screw-Up

A judge said he missed a firm deadline to list his party affiliation.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom can’t be listed as a Democrat on his recall ballot, a judge said Monday. Newsom sued his secretary of state last month to get his party affiliation on the ballot, saying his election lawyer made a good-faith mistake and failed to mark it on forms last year. But a California judge said he missed the deadline to add it, and the circumstances don’t justify the late addition. “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,” Judge James Arguelles wrote in his ruling Monday. SB 151, signed into law by Newsom in 2019, allows officials subject to a recall election to have their party affiliation listed so long as they file the paperwork by the required deadline. Newsom previously told CNN that the recall election, scheduled for Sept. 14, is “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.” The recall ballot faces two questions: whether voters want to recall Newsom, and who should replace him. The law prevents Newsom from including his name on the second list.