Politicians at all levels dealing with recall movement from angry voters
After nearly 20 years on the Ventura County Board of Supervisors, Linda Parks thought her last political campaign was behind her. But Parks, a Republican-turned-independent who will be termed out of office at the end of next year, has again found herself suiting up for political battle.
In late February, opponents officially launched a campaign to recall the five-term supervisor from office amid a maelstrom of mudslinging.
Seething rage over coronavirus closures — and Ventura County’s decision to pursue litigation against a number of businesses that repeatedly violated closure orders — are driving the recall effort.
“I’ve never seen a worse time for being a local elected official,” Parks said, describing a level of vitriol unlike anything she has previously encountered. “I feel sorry for the school boards. I feel sorry for my fellow supervisors. I feel sorry for my city council members.”
For months, attention has focused on the high-profile campaign to remove Gov. Gavin Newsom from office. But he is far from the only California politician fending off a people’s revolt. Local recall attempts have flared across nearly every corner of the state in recent months, from rural Northern California to the southern border.
Consider the recall as a kind of direct-de
mocracy emergency exit button. For more than a century, every California voter has had the right to try and push it, but very few do. Even fewer do so successfully.
During the first five months of 2021, active recall efforts — those in which an official step has been taken — targeted at least 68 local officials in California, according to a Times analysis. The total has already surpassed the number of local recall attempts seen during four of the last five years in California, according to Ballotpedia, a nonpartisan website that tracks American politics and elections.
Santa Clara County typically deals with one or two recall attempts in a year. So far this year, eight local officials — all school board members — have been targeted.
Paperwork for five recall attempts has been filed this year in San Francisco — the same number filed there during the previous 15 years. The two dueling campaigns to recall District Attorney Chesa Boudin and campaigns to recall three members of the San Francisco school board have all drawn publicity.
In the tiny industrial city of Vernon, south of downtown Los Angeles, two City Council members were ousted earlier this month during the city’s first recall election in modern memory. Come September, Vernon’s 120 registered voters will decide the fate of two more council members in a second recall election on Sept. 14.
That very day, Sonoma County voters will decide whether to recall their district attorney.
Local election officials and experts have cited publicity around the Newsom recall, as well as pandemic fallout and an increasingly combative national political atmosphere, as likely factors driving this year’s frenzy of local recalls.
“This is another way for the public to say, ‘We’re watching you, and we’re going to hold you accountable,’” said Sacramento County elections chief Courtney Bailey-Kanelos.
Bailey-Kanelos’ office now fields roughly three times more recall inquiries than it has in the past.
The increase in recall attempts targeting local school board members has been “unprecedented,” said California School Boards Association spokesperson Troy Flint. School board members account for twothirds of the local officials targeted for recall this year, with many campaigns targeting multiple members of the same board.
It’s too soon to say whether the upswing in filed recall attempts will actually lead to more special elections later this year. More than a few of those 68 attempts have already fizzled. Several stalled out of the gate with filings that didn’t meet election code standards, while others failed to gather enough signatures during the requisite timeline.
Local recall proponents have 40 to 160 days to gather petition signatures, depending on the number of voters in a district. (Recall petitions must be signed in person.) That strict timeline is one of the biggest hurdles to successfully qualifying a recall attempt.
Recalls have been generally on the rise nationally since the 1980s, according to Joshua Spivak, a senior fellow at the Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform at Wagner College and one of the nation’s leading experts on recalls. Spivak said the 2003 recall of California Gov. Gray Davis helped solidify the recall’s place in the public consciousness.
“It’s permeated people’s minds that you could do this,” Spivak said. “So once you know you could do it, why not do it?”
The COVID-19 pandemic was listed as a factor in more than half of the recalls Ballotpedia tracked this year, the vast majority of which stemmed from anger over COVID-related closures or restrictions.
As recall attempts proliferate, several experts and election officials said they were concerned about the potential strain on already overworked, understaffed local election departments.
Sonoma County elections chief Deva Marie Proto said she worries about staff burnout and the toll on resources.
Along with a long-scheduled November district election, Sonoma County will be juggling the yet-tobe-scheduled Newsom recall and a Sept. 14 special election to recall Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch, an effort that qualified for the ballot in May.
That recall was bankrolled by a developer whose company was investigated by Ravitch and the state attorney general’s office for allegedly leaving elder care home residents with no means to evacuate during a 2017 wildfire, resulting in a $500,000 settlement and five-year injunction.
The special election, which will come less than a year before a regularly scheduled election that Ravitch does not plan to run in, will cost the county approximately $600,000 to $900,000.
All of this comes on the heels of 2020, which Proto described as “an absolutely extraordinary year” in terms of the extra work and stress placed on local election offices.
“And it’s not slowing down,” she said.