The effort to recall Democratic Gov. Kate Brown died on Monday after the deadline passed and two rival campaigns each failed to turn in enough signatures to move the process forward.
Organizers needed to turn in a total of 280,050 valid signatures to get a recall question on the ballot, which is an expensive and time consuming task. Just before the Monday deadline, Oregon Republican Party chair Bill Currier told a conservative radio host that the party-run campaign had fallen about 10% short of collecting the minimum number of signatures necessary, though he pledged to try again in the coming months.
At the same time that the state GOP was trying to recall Brown, a separate effort led by conservative activist Michael Cross was collecting petitions for its own recall campaign. Cross did turn in signatures on Monday, but state election officials quickly said that he didn’t have enough petitions to require verification. It’s not clear how many signatures, valid or otherwise, Cross turned in, and he even admitted just before the deadline that he didn’t know.
Cross’ recall effort barely raised any money, but Currier argued Monday that it had cost the state GOP their chance to recall Brown. Currier insisted that the party had identified “about 100,000” people who had signed one petition but not the other or had made a paperwork error that could have been corrected.
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