The 1983 San Francisco mayoral recall election was held on April 26, 1983, to determine whether mayor

Dianne Feinstein Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein ( ; born Dianne Emiel Goldman; June 22, 1933) is an American politician who serves as the senior United States senator from California, a seat she has held since 1992. A member of the Democratic Party, she was ...

should be removed from office. The recall measure was overwhelmingly defeated, and Feinstein remained in office.

Background

In 1983, Feinstein passed a handgun ban (later overturned by the state court of appeals). This angered the

White Panther Party The White Panthers were an anti-racist political collective founded in November 1968 by Pun Plamondon, Leni Sinclair, and John Sinclair. It was started in response to an interview where Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, wa ...

, who then organized a successful effort to force a recall election against Feinstein. The White Panther Party's efforts to collect signature were aided by recent anger (particularly in the city's

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...

community) over Feinstein's veto of legislation which would have extended city-employee benefits to

domestic partners A domestic partnership is a legal relationship, usually between couples, who live together and share a common domestic life, but are not married (to each other or to anyone else). People in domestic partnerships receive benefits that guarantee r ...

Campaign

Feinstein was considered to be a popular mayor. By the time of election day, Feinstein's victory was seen as a foregone conclusion. Feinstein's campaign had organized a very successful effort to encourage voters to use

absentee ballot An absentee ballot is a vote cast by someone who is unable or unwilling to attend the official polling station to which the voter is normally allocated. Methods include voting at a different location, postal voting, proxy voting and online votin ...

s, and distributed absentee ballots to voters ahead of the election. Despite some disapproval of Feinstein among the gay community, they did not heavily support recalling Feinstein.

Results

Feinstein only lost a single precinct out of the city's 710 voting precincts. The precinct she failed to win (which was the home district of the White Panther Party which had organized the effort to recall Feinstein) saw her lose by only a single vote.

References

San Francisco mayoral recall Mayoral elections in San Francisco

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

Recall Recall may refer to: * Recall (bugle call), a signal to stop * Recall (information retrieval), a statistical measure * ''ReCALL'' (journal), an academic journal about computer-assisted language learning * Recall (memory) * ''Recall'' (Overwatch ...

San Francisco 1983 {{California-election-stub