Voters' ability to recall an elected official in California is the result of Progressive Era democratic reforms intended to reduce corruption, enacted alongside the introduction of the ballot initiative and women's suffrage in 1911.

Due to the wide margin of the results, most major news outlets projected the race for Newsom within an hour of polls closing; later that night, Larry Elder, the frontrunner replacement candidate, conceded defeat.

[6][7] Prior to this election, the only other gubernatorial recall attempt in California to qualify for the ballot happened in 2003, which resulted in Gray Davis being replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

[19] The recall campaign hired a political consulting firm in late June 2020, and the initial plan was to pay circulators to collect signatures.

[20][21] Given the difficulties in obtaining signatures during the pandemic, however, the per-signature cost rose dramatically, and petitioners opted to proceed with a team of approximately 5,000 volunteer circulators instead.

[18] The first proponent of the recall, Orrin Heatlie, played a grassroots role in the previous attempt led by aspiring Tea Party politician Erin Cruz.

[22][23] The petition was initially given a signature deadline of November 17, 2020, but was extended to March 17, 2021, by Sacramento County Superior Court Judge James P. Arguelles due to the pandemic.

[29][30] The day after Newsom claimed the party had been held outdoors, photographs showing an enclosed and maskless gathering were published and widely shared.

[31] This incident[35] and voter anger over lockdowns, job losses, and school and business closures[36] were widely credited for the recall petition's surge in support.

[42][43] The comparison drew bipartisan criticism, with Newsom's former deputy chief of staff, Yashar Ali, saying it was "absolutely insane to frame a recall where the voters go to the polls a coup".

[53][54][55] The COVID-19 pandemic in California led to widespread school closures, the emergence of distance learning, and student mental health and academic challenges, and by the summer of 2021, education became a prominent issue in the recall campaign.

[77] In June 2021, The Sacramento Bee reported that the non-profit organization founded by Newsom's wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, had received over $800,000 in donations from companies that lobbied or did business with California state government, and paid her over $2.3 million since 2011 for leading the organization and producing documentary films through her production company, Girl's Club Entertainment.

[79] In response to the report, several recall challengers called for a ban on donations to non-profit organizations of elected officials' family members from companies engaged in business with the state.

[89] The delayed implementation was criticized by UCSF scientist and COVID-19 expert Dr. Monica Gandhi who said it had no scientific rationale, while potentially causing harm by suggesting there is "still a danger when there isn't one".

[94] On August 5, 2021, Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Laurie M. Earl ruled against the suit and allowed inclusion of the disputed language, saying, "There is nothing false or misleading about describing the recall effort's leaders as Trump supporters.

[99] With political allies having successfully dissuaded prospective high-level Democrats from joining the race, Newsom's campaign urged supporters to skip the second question on the recall ballot.

Newsom was unable to take advantage of the new law after his campaign missed a February 2020 deadline (when the recall petition was filed) to state his party preference.

In June and July 2021, Newsom's campaign sued Secretary of State Shirley Weber (whom he appointed earlier in 2021) over the issue, but lost the case.

[135][136] A new requirement for gubernatorial candidates to disclose their most recent tax returns was passed into law in 2019, when Governor Newsom signed Senate Bill 27.

Newsom's campaign nonetheless submitted his tax documents to Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who refused to publish them on the grounds that the governor was not required to disclose them.

[140] On July 21, 2021, Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Laurie Earl invalidated all tax return disclosure requirements for the 2021 recall election.

[144] In August 2021, an essay by UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and UC Berkeley Professor of Law and Economics Aaron Edlin appeared in The New York Times claiming California's recall process violates the Constitution of the United States, since more people could vote to retain Newsom than for any particular candidate while still ousting him, thus potentially violating "one person, one vote" legal precedent (conversely, if a majority of voters favored retaining Newsom, but an even greater number of voters favored a particular replacement candidate, Newsom would nonetheless prevail).

[145][146] Charles C. W. Cooke, writing in The National Review in the same month, criticized the rationale and timing of the essay's publication and said Chemerinsky had selectively taken issue with California's recall, in which a Democrat was targeted, by not bringing up the pivotal 2020–21 United States Senate election in Georgia, which would also be invalid by his logic.

[165] Prominent donors against the recall also included Steven Spielberg, George Soros, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Peter Chernin, J.J. Abrams and Katie McGrath, Laurene Powell Jobs, and Marissa Mayer.

[168] While organizers of the recall campaign said the effort was driven by grassroots supporters angry over pandemic restrictions and Newsom's attendance at the French Laundry dinner that defied his own guidelines, over half of the $4 million raised by recall proponents by March 2021 originated from two dozen Republican groups, along with wealthy companies and individuals, including Douglas Leone, David O. Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya.

[171] After surviving the recall election, Newsom would decide the fate of numerous bills passed in the legislature and determine policy that could affect donors to his anti-recall campaign, which included the film and tech industries, real estate and labor union interests, and Native American tribes, who had collectively donated tens of millions of dollars to fight the recall (being unencumbered by donation limits), in what was described as a unique opportunity to attempt to buy influence in California's government.

Forty-six candidates qualified to appear on the recall ballot, consisting of 24 Republicans, nine Democrats, two Greens, one Libertarian, and ten no party preference.

[192] During the August 25 debate in Sacramento, Kevin Paffrath called on the other three candidates onstage (Faulconer, Cox, and Kiley) to drop out of the race and endorse him, stating he feared a lame-duck governor would get nothing done.

[345][346] Newsom ultimately defeated the recall with a margin of roughly 24 percent after mobilizing Democrats to vote with a message that framed the race as a referendum on him versus Elder and their pandemic policy proposals.

[347] Newsom's campaigning had also invoked Elder's connections to the inner circle of former president Donald Trump,[345][346] as well as his history of provocative right-wing rhetoric as a radio talk show host.