QAnon Believes California Recall Election Will Somehow See Trump Reinstated

QAnon followers have turned their attention to the effort to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom, baselessly claiming the Democrats have deployed a “bot army” to prevent Republicans from voting, and suggesting Newsom’s recall will somehow trigger Donald Trump’s return. 

QAnon as a movement is sustained by the constant promise that the “storm”—the moment QAnon followers believe former President Donald Trump will rise up and reveal the true horror of a Democrat-led child sex trafficking ring—is just around the corner. 

But because the “storm” is made up and never actually going to happen, QAnon influencers instead cling onto real world events to keep followers engaged.

For months now that focus has been on the Arizona audit, but with the Cyber Ninjas, the company running the recount, coming down with COVID-19 and the report being delayed once again, QAnon influencers are now directing their followers' attention to the upcoming recall election in California.

Over the weekend, Ron Watkins, who facilitated QAnon’s rise on his website 8kun, posted a series of messages about the California election to his Telegram channel, making baseless allegations that Newsom had deployed a “bot army” in order to “attack you and try to convince you to not go out and vote.”

In another message Watkins wrote: “They hired a bot army to convince you not to vote in the CA recall because they are panicking.”

Another major QAnon influencer, John Sabal, the organizer of the biggest QAnon conference and who is known online as QAnon John, boldly proclaimed that recalling Newsom will trigger the beginning of the “storm.

“DETHRONING Newsom is THE catalyst for the MAIN EVENT,” Sabal wrote on his Telegram channel over the weekend. 

It is unclear what bots Watkins is speaking about, but the most recent polling suggests that Republicans are far more likely to actually vote in the election than Democrats. The polls suggest it will be a tight race over whether or not Newsom is recalled, with “No” votes currently having a slender advantage.

Voting is already underway to decide if California voters want to replace Newson. The governor has faced several recall campaigns since being elected in 2018, but a campaign launched last year after Newsom initiated state-wide lockdowns to battle the pandemic succeeded in getting the 1.7 million signatures to trigger a vote. 

If a majority of voters do decide they want to replace the Democratic governor, then voters will have to pick between a massive list of 46 candidates.

If that happens, the front-runner at the moment is Larry Elder, a Black right-wing radio host who is an ardent Trump supporter and who says he will remove mask and vaccine mandates if he is voted in. He also recently argued that slave owners are owed reparations because their “property” was taken from them.

Watkins and his fellow QAnon influencers are supporting Elder’s campaign, which is unsurprusing given his pro-Trump stance and his flirtation with QAnon conspiracies in the past.

But this is not QAnon’s first interaction with the recall election. An investigation by the LA Times earlier this year found that QAnon followers, along with anti-vaccine activists and other extremists, were heavily involved in the grassroots campaign to collect the 1.7 million signatures needed to trigger the recall election.

As well as seeking to ensure that people vote to recall Newsom, QAnon followers are already spreading conspiracies about election fraud should the outcome of the vote not go their way.

“Newsom has it in the bag, no way he loses the recall,” one of Watkins’ followers wrote on Telegram. “More fraud on the way. Then he lays down the hammer. Lockdowns forever until everyone gets vaxxed.”

The Telegram channel of the 1st Amendment Praetorians, a QAnon militia group, shared baseless conspiracies about California residents being sent ballots with the wrong names on them. 

Some however have voiced concern that Elder hasn’t been speaking up about the conspiracy that the presidential election in 2020 was stolen, claiming that he should be more outspoken about what they see as a massive travesty of justice.

Others however claim that Elder is keeping quiet on this topic only until he becomes governor.

“Until the fraud of 2020 is proven Larry Elder can’t have much of an opinion on it when he is depending on THIS election to get Newsom out and him in,” one user in a large QAnon Telegram channel wrote on Sunday. “Use your logic not emotion.”