President Biden intends to visit California next week to campaign for embattled Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is facing a recall election.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that “he will be” traveling to California to stump for the governor.
“I expect we’ll have more to report to all of you or announce — on a trip he’ll take early next week — later today,” Psaki said.
Newsom is likely to beat the recall attempt, according to polls, but his fate is tied to whether enough Democrats show up to support him next Tuesday.
The recall was fueled by anger over Newsom’s apparently hypocritical support for strict COVID-19 restrictions. He infamously was photographed dining at a ritzy restaurant without wearing a mask while enforcing a strict mask mandate statewide.
Vice President Kamala Harris, a former California senator and state attorney general, will campaign for Newsom on Wednesday.
If more than half of voters support Newsom’s recall, he will be removed from office and replaced by the top-polling candidate of potential replacements.
Conservative radio host Larry Elder, a prominent TV ad spokesman for a fish oil supplement called Relief Factor, is leading in polls of possible replacements, followed by Democrat Kevin Paffrath, a YouTube personality.
Reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner, an Olympic gold medalist formerly known as Bruce, is running as a Republican and would be the country’s first transgender governor. Jenner lags far behind in polling.