In OC Republican circles, the group consensus seems to be that the success of the Fullerton recall is a foregone conclusion. But is it?
Tony Bushala, the Fullerton developer and owner of the Friends for Fullerton’s Future blog, has spent at least $173,000 ($20K of it from his brother George) to qualify the recall against Fullerton councilmembers Don Bankhead, Dick Jones and Pat McKinley. Due to the timing of when Bushala turned in the signatures, the recall and replacement special elections will be consolidated with the June 5 primary.
Bushala has formed a new committee, Fullerton Residents for Reform, which will be the funding vehicle through which he pays for mail supporting his chosen candidates.
It’s easy to understand why people think the recall is a foregone conclusion: Bushala is a multi-millionaire who is completely focused on the recall, is willing to spend huge sums on it, and the recall targets are old and tired. Plus, there seems to be grass roots support for the recall.
On the other hand, there may be some wishful thinking by recall supporters. Generally speaking, it’s unlikely voters will recall local elected officials like councilmembers, especially ones they’ve been returning to office for years, unless they a) believe there is something seriously wrong with their city and b) voting for a recall will solve the problem(s).
Fullerton is a great and desirable place to live, and I’d be surprised is a majority of voters there think the city is in bad shape, let alone the train wreck recall supporters make it out to be. Plus, leading indicators of a genuine grass-roots campaign are missing. Many of those who show up for recall events or to harangue the council are from outside Fullerton, and outside Orange County. Grass roots would show up in the form of Fullerton residents making donations, small or large, to the recall campaign, yet a review of the campaign finance disclosures show only two Fullerton donors whose last name isn’t Bushala.
Look at it another way. Their genuine outrage at the tragic and senseless killing of Kelly Thomas aside, Bushala and his group took advantage of that situation to basically get a do-over of the 2010 council elections. The primary issues cited by recall supporters are the Kelly Thomas killing and a decades-old 10% water surcharge that turns out to be illegal.
The District Attorney is prosecuting two Fullerton policemen for murdering Thomas and the city’s movement to end the 10% water surcharge let a lot of the air out of those issues. As far as most voters who pay attention to city government see it, those issues are more or less being resolved, weakening the case that the solution is recalling Bankhead, McKinley and Jones.
Recalls are hard to win. In 2001, three Orange Unified School District trustees (one of whom was under house arrest) were recalled, but only after years of controversy and district actions generated wide-spread parent dissatisfaction. Parents organized and teamed with the teachers union to qualify a recall. Even so, the three trustees were recalled by very narrow margins, even though they didn’t work very hard to save their seats.
There are some similarities between the Fullerton recall and the 2010 recall of Mission Viejo Councilman Lance MacLean. In Mission Viejo in 2009, a vocal group of council critics initiated a recall against MacLean in 2009, in hopes of replacing him with one of themselves. Their signature gathering met with slow going and ultimately one of the recall leaders spent thousands of dollars to hire professional circulators to get it on the ballot. The recall election was held in February 2010. MacLean, who only campaigned actively to against his recall in the last few weeks, was recalled by a paper-thin margin of 19 votes out of 14,721 cast. And even that was rendered moot when recall leader Dale Tyler was defeated in the replacement election by Dave Leckness.
The Fullerton recall campaign leaders may have made a major strategic error by submitting their signatures almost a month before the February 16 deadline. If they had waited until that date, the recall/replacement elections would have been a stand-alone special election, probably in July, in which the low-turnout would tilt the odds in favor of the recall. Instead, the recall has been consolidated with the June primary, in which voter turn-out is expected to be in the mid-40 percent. Turn-out in a stand-alone special election would be half that.
The OUSD and Mission Viejo recalls were stand-alone special elections, in which voter turn-out was 21% and 23.9%, respectively. In both cases, the recalls only narrowly succeeded against politically inept incumbents who only sluggishly contested their recalls.
Which is another similarity with the Fullerton recall, one that argues in favor of its success. Dick Jones, Don Bankhead or Pat McKinley don’t appear to be working very hard to save their seats. Jones’ council term ends this December, so he may not care one way or another. Fullerton voters recalled Bankhead in October 1994, and then voted him back on the council a few weeks later, so he’s probably adopting a que sera, sera attitude toward the whole business.
Even if all three councilmembers are recalled, there’s no guarantee they will be replaced by recall supporters. Their best shot is in the Dick Jones seat, where Friends for Fullerton Future blogger and close Bushala ally Travis Kiger is running. Kiger has some big advantages: he can use his planning commissioner title, and he is the only replacement candidate in that seat who paid for a candidate statement in the sample ballot. If Jones is recalled, Kiger is almost certain to replace him.
A number of candidates who ran and lost for Fullerton Council in 2010 are running in the other two replacement elections. Running in the Bankhead seat is Greg Sebourn, a Bushala ally who finished a fairly distant fourth in the 2010 council election. Also running is a Rick Alvarez, who is more or less the establishment candidate. We’ll see if Alvarez can run a strong campaign, and whether Sebourn will run a better campaign than in 2010.
In the McKinley seat, the replacement candidates include Doug Chaffee, Barry Levinson and Matthew Rowe. Chaffee is a Democrat and establishment-type who fell only 90 votes short of being elected to the council in 2010. Levinson is more of Tea Party-type who finished 5th in 2010 with 10.6% of the vote. Rowe is a young-ish, conservative Iraq War veteran.
Even if voters support all three recalls, recall supporters may win only one of the seats. With the exception of Chaffee and Levinson, none of the replacement candidates have shown much ability to raise or loan themselves meaningful campaign warchests. At the end of the day, the election prospects of Kiger, Sebourn and either Levinson or Rowe will largely depend on how money Tony Bushala spends on their behalf through his Fullerton Residents for Reform independent expenditure committee.
All in all, it’s premature to conclude the recalls of Bankhead, Jones and McKinley are sure things. Odds of a successful recall are probably, at this moment, about 50-50.
OC Political 