Sen. Justine Wadsack, R-Tucson. Photo by Gage Skidmore (modified) || Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
JEROD MACDONALD-EVOY
Arizona Mirror
A controversial freshman Republican state senator won’t face a recall election, as an effort to force Justine Wadsack to stand for another election before her term ends in 2024 failed to gather enough signatures, backers said Tuesday.
“I applaud every one of our volunteers for the extraordinary work done during the hottest summer on record,” Rolande Baker and the Sack Wadsack Team said in a statement to the Arizona Mirror about the recall campaign.
The campaign needed to gather 30,981 signatures by Sept. 5 to trigger the recall. The campaign said it fell short of that mark, but did not share how many signatures it did gather, saying the number was “irrelevant” because the campaign did not hit the required figure.
“We made the decision early on not to speak of the number unless we did make the mark,” the campaign said to the Mirror. Organizers blamed a lack of time to gather signatures as part of the reason for the failure as well as many of the people who sought out the campaign not living within the Senators district. State law gives recall efforts 120 days to gather signatures to force an election.
