Santa Ana City Council members Monday deadlocked on what to do with the recall election of Mayor Pro Tem Jessie Lopez in light of the Orange County Registrar of Voters declaring not enough valid signatures were submitted to put it on the ballot.
With Lopez recusing herself from voting on the issue, the council deadlocked 3-3 on competing motions to take no action or to dump the recall.
Lopez told City News Service before the council’s meeting, “We’re going to explore all of our options.”
Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page sent a letter dated Thursday to Santa Ana City Clerk Jennifer Hall raising the issue of which ward map was used when petitioners were collecting signatures from voters. Lopez was elected in 2020, so Page said it appears that the petition drive should have used the map of voters who elected her, not the ones she is representing now since redistricting last year.
“The current post-redistricting Ward 3 boundaries includes 362 active voters who did not reside in the old Ward 3 boundaries and excludes 1,186 voters who reside within the old Ward 3 boundaries,” Page said in the letter.
Page said that as a result, the recall petition falls short by 230 signatures. Page asked for the city to provide direction on how to proceed given the dispute.
However, the council is split on the issue.
Council members Johnathan Ryan Hernandez, Thai Viet Phan and Benjamin Vazquez favor dumping the recall election now that its validity has been called into question. Mayor Valerie Amezcua joined Councilmen Phil Bacerra and David Penaloza in voting to take no action.
Penaloza seemed to welcome a lawsuit on the issue.
“I feel it is the best course of action to take no action and at this point let a judge decide the merits of this argument,” Penaloza said.
Hernandez said a vote to keep going with the disputed election now was a “vote in favor of corruption.”
Hernandez said the police union, which has been the driving force behind the recall, has pushed for Lopez’s ouster “as a bargaining chip to coerce council members to vote in favor of their interests.”
Hernandez added that he believed the landlords behind the recall are doing so because of Lopez’s support for rent control in the city.
Phan said, “You don’t clean up spilled milk by spilling more. You don’t pile on mistakes by creating more mistakes. You can only fix it by rescinding the resolution to call this election.”
Phan said the backers of the recall are welcome to try again, “But they do not have the right to an election that didn’t have enough signatures.”
Amezcua recently came out in favor of the recall.
Lopez said before the meeting that she wanted her fellow council members to “consider all of the facts” in the dispute.
The petitioners “fell short and this question should not be before the voters,” she said.
There have been estimates of nearly $600,000 having been spent on the recall.
Lopez said she was not elected with any backing from the police union so “there’s no strings attached for us with the (police union).”
Lopez said she has only taken issue with the police union asking for a “massive budget request” at a time when every other department is being asked to cut back.
Orange County Supervisor Vince Sarmiento, Santa Ana’s mayor from 2020-22 and a councilman from 2007-2020, said he opposes the recall election, but it especially should be shut down now that it has been shown to be “fatally flawed.”
County officials say the Registrar of Voters acts as a contractor that conducts elections for the city, which includes collecting ballots and counting votes as well as monitoring voting centers. But it was up to the city to do what was necessary to prepare the ballot.
Page said a letter from a county registrar elsewhere in the state asking for advice about a recall there prompted him to go over the materials sent to his office in the Santa Ana recall election.
Ada Briceno, the chairwoman of the Orange County Democratic Party, said the recall election ought to be canceled.
“The party has been against the recall from the beginning,” Briceno said. “But it would be very difficult to hold an election when the correct voters were not apprised or received ballots. I don’t know how we have a democracy if some got ballots and some didn’t. I don’t think the election should proceed.”
Messages left with the police union have been returned.
Voter centers in the election were scheduled to be open Nov. 4 for early voting, and election day is Nov. 14. The election was expected to be certified by Dec. 8.