Fact check: Did Gavin Newsom cast doubt on the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine?

Claim: During Wednesday evening’s televised California recall candidate debate, Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin, claimed that Gov. Gavin Newsom cast doubt on the COVID-19 vaccine.

Kiley was responding to a question from the moderator about what his position is on vaccine mandates in both the private and public sector.

“Last year in October, when Newsom thought it was good politics, he cast doubt on the vaccine. He said that we couldn’t take the FDA’s word for whether it was safe. The chair of the United States Senate Health Committee had to write him a letter telling him to cut it out,” Kiley said.

Ruling: Mostly false.

Details: The implication that Newsom was seeking to undermine confidence in vaccines is incorrect. In October of 2020, before a COVID-19 vaccine had been approved by the U.S Food and Drug Administration, Newsom said that the state of California would conduct its own review of any vaccine before approving it for distribution in the state.

“The question I often get is, are you going to take someone’s word for it as it relates to vaccines. Of course we won’t take anyone’s word for it. We will do our own independently reviewed process with our world-class experts that just happen to live in the state of California,” Newsom said at the time.

Newsom’s remarks came in the context of his laying out how the state would begin to distribute vaccines to Californians, once such a vaccine became available.

It is true, however, that Newsom’s remarks prompted Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander, then the chair of the U.S. Senate Health Committee, to issue a statement, which called on Newsom, as well as then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, to stop second-guessing the FDA on vaccines.

“Every day Americans take the word of these scientists’ approval of safety and efficacy when we purchase 3.8 billion prescriptions each year,” Alexander said in a statement. “...The governors of New York and California should show the same respect to the FDA career scientists that the White House did. Undermining the FDA’s gold standard of safety and efficacy by setting up state vaccine review panels could delay approval, discourage Americans from taking the vaccine, and cost lives.”

This story was originally published August 25, 2021 at 8:31 PM with the headline "Fact check: Did Gavin Newsom cast doubt on the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine?."