California Recall Group Sends Message To Democrats And Assembly Speaker Rendon Over Healthcare

Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a Democrat representing Paramount, California, halted the measure that would have established single-payer healthcare in the State of California, prompting some of the bill’s supporters to immediately threaten recall action against Rendon. According to the Facebook page for the Recall Rendon efforts, the organizers of the recall have already received confirmation from the Secretary of State that the group’s Notice of Intent was reviewed for compliance with the California Elections Code and that the signatures on the Notice of Intent were verified by the County of Los Angeles.

The group announced that the petition drive begins this month. Recall Rendon organizers have planned weekly meetings every Tuesday in Assembly District 63, and its first major fundraiser is on August 18. It’s been just over a month since SB 562, the single-payer healthcare measure, flopped in California, and even though Rendon has been labelled a progressive by many pundits, many progressive voters in California say they are willing to make an example out of Rendon over the healthcare issue.

“If we recall the Assembly speaker, maybe someone else [will be] willing to push this bill, to get it out of the rules committee and send it to the Assembly to get a vote on it,”Jessica Covarrubias told Los Angeles Times. “Maybe that will help everyone get healthcare.”

The grassroots effort to recall Rendon includes a door-knocking drive. The notice was filed by an Irvine-based USC law professor who is also an attorney for the recall effort.

Reports out of California claim that it won’t be easy to recall the Assemble Speaker in California, because he has more than a million dollars in the bank and the support of the Democratic Party.

While the California Nurses Association sponsored the healthcare measure, they aren’t behind the recall efforts. They say that Rendon’s action against the measure protects politicians instead of people’s healthcare and that voters should call or visit Rendon to let him know that they are unhappy with his choice.

“The Rendon recall comes as the California Democratic Party contends with a protracted leadership battle that is as much about donors and messaging as it is about ideals,” a report about the Rendon recall efforts published in The Press Democrat pointed out.

Rendon claims he supports the concept of single-payer healthcare, but couldn’t get behind SB 562.

“We’re going to continue to hold him and all other politicians accountable for their actions,” Don Nielsen, the government relations director for the California Nurses Association, explained, according to The Sacramento Bee. “This is too important an issue.”

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Kevin Liao, Rendon’s spokesperson, pointed out that he supported an expansion of the Medi-Cal program to provide health insurance coverage for children in the country illegally as well as some other more progressive issues.

The Press Democrat asserted that the recall effort against Rendon “reflects a broader rift among California Democrats that escalated with last year’s primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders,” and the Recall Rendon Facebook page also shed a light on that rift.

“The Democratic Party is at a crossroads. In the bluest state in the nation, with supermajorities in the state legislature, will California lead the way? We can show the nation what it means to be a Democrat, and build a coalition capable of defeating the Trump administration and its allies,” The Recall Rendon Facebook page stated Saturday night. “The time for California Democrats to reinvigorate the Party as the standard-bearer for everyday people is today.”

This summer, Senator Bernie Sanders stated that Big Pharma is currently the second most powerful political force in the nation and suggested that the entire country needed to switch to a Medicare-for-All system. In California though, the topic has been a fiercely debated issue. At the U.S. Senator level, Nancy Pelosi’s rival for the 2018 election, Stephen Jaffe, picked up a whole round of new supporters, because of his unyielding support of a single-payer system after Pelosi fell short of vowing to work to replace Obamacare with a single-payer system.

The Inquisitr wants to know your thoughts. Leave a comment below. What do you think of the Recall Rendon effort?

https://www.facebook.com/RecallRendon/videos/157781601451548/

[Featured Image by Rich Pedroncelli/AP Images]