AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez
This announcement by the newly-elected California Service Employee International Union president has raised some eyebrows:
The new president-elect of California’s largest state employee union said Tuesday that the influential organization won’t back Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s effort to fend off a likely recall election this fall.
Richard Louis Brown said anger over union contract concessions last year during what proved to be an illusionary $54 billion state budget deficit helped fuel his victory over longtime Service Employees International Union Local 1000 President Yvonne Walker.
Brown said that anger extends to Newsom.
“He is going to need support from public sector unions to help him fight his recall,” Brown said in an interview with The Associated Press. “When I become president of Local 1000, he can look for somebody else to support him. He will not get any help from us. He’s on his own.”
The big money for both sides in the California recall election is coming from the same wealthy enclaves, and not so much from out of state. Story from @CalMatters.
Sign up for the Morning Brief, delivered weekdays. Subscribe
The well-heeled megadonors spending the most to defend Gov. Gavin Newsom in a near-certain
California recall election hail from monied coastal enclaves, mansion-studded Silicon Valley and the toniest and most solidly Democratic parts of Los Angeles.
As for those big donors spending the most to
boost the recall and kick Newsom out of the governor’s office actually, that’s pretty much where they live, too.
A newly-launched
CalMatters live tracker of the $15.3 million and counting that has poured into either side of the recall shows that, while California s voters may be divided by geography and class, its major political donors are not.
Only 40% of Californians say they’d vote to oust embattled Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in this autumn’s all-but-certain recall election, according to a new poll. But count the incoming head of one the Golden State’s largest and most influential unions as part of that 40%.