- NEWS
- SPORTS
- BUSINESS
- ENTERTAINMENT
- LIFE
- TRAVEL
- OPINION
O.C.-based recall of assemblyman fails
November 20th, 2009, 2:35 pm · 35 Comments · posted by Martin Wisckol, Politics reporter
Updated Nov. 23 with comments from Mike Schroeder.
The effort of two Orange County GOP activists to recall Assemblyman Anthony Adams, R-Hesperia, was thrown out today by Secretary of State Debra Bowen after it was determined that insufficient signatures had been gathered to qualify the measure for the ballot. Recall proponents said they were stunned by the news, and that they had been certain far more signatures had been gathered than necessary.
Corona del Mar’s Mike Schroeder and Lee Lowrey were leading the charge to recall their fellow Republican because Adams was one of six state legislators who joined Democrats in approving a February budget update that included tax hikes. Recall advocates say Adams betrayed his signed pledge not to support more taxes.
To place the measure on the ballot, activists needed the valid signatures of 35,825 voters in the district, which consists of parts of Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. A total of 58,384 signatures were gathered but a random sampling of 1,839 signatures found that only 988 were valid. Bowen’s office projected that the total number of valid signatures would be 24,579, well short of the number needed.
State Elections Code says that if the projected number is less than 95 percent of the number needed, “the recall effort shall be deemed to have failed.”
The rule of thumb for professional signature gathers, such as Lee Petitions which did the recall gathering, is to collect 20 percent more signatures than are needed. Lee Petitions gathered 63 percent more.
“Either there was massive fraud by a signature gather or something went extraordinarily wrong at the registrar of voters’ office,” Schroeder said. “I’ve never seen anything like this in all my years in politics.”
While 66 percent of signatures gathered in the Los Angeles County portion of the district were valid (9,021 of 13,794), just 35 percent of those gathered in the San Bernardino County portion were verified (15,558 of 44,590).
Schroeder said recall advocates would be meeting with the San Bernardino County registrar of voters to review the sampled signatures.
“Then we’ll have a better ability to understand what happened and determine whether there’s further recourse,” he said.
At the outset of the recall effort, Adams said, “two very wealthy Orange County men who care less about our community and more about their own political ambitions. They want us to pay $900,000 in our hard earned tax dollars to pay for another election and their partisan political games.”
Adams will be up for reelection in June.
Click here to read the memo from Bowen’s office dismissing the recall effort.
Related stories:
Assemblyman blasts OC-based recall effort
O.C.-based effort to recall GOP assemblyman launched
Hitting the road for the Adams recall
Reader Comments
Comments are encouraged, but you must follow our User Agreement.- Keep it civil and stay on topic.
- No profanity, vulgarity, racial slurs or personal attacks.
- People who harass others or joke about tragedies will be blocked.
35 Comments
Leave a Reply
-
ADVERTISEMENT
-
DENA BUNIS, Washington bureau chief, 202-628-6381 or dbunis@ocregister.com
BRIAN JOSEPH, Sacramento correspondent, 916-449-6046 or bjoseph@ocregister.com
JENNIFER MUIR, County government reporter, 714-796-7813 or jmuir@ocregister.com
JOEL WALSH, Washington bureau intern, 202-628-6381 or jwalsh@ocregister.com
MARTIN WISCKOL, Politics reporter, 714-285-2867 or mwisckol@ocregister.com twitter.com/MartinWisckol
Click here for bloggers' biographies
-
-
-
-
-
ADVERTISEMENT
Serves “John and Ken” and the Orange County Pac who were behind this witch hunt right–I doubt that any of them are voters in the 59th Assembly District. Now, the true voters in that District can make their own decision whether or not they want to retain Adams when he comes up for re-election in June, 2010.
“Witch hunt”???????
Do you even know what you are talking about? The guy made a no tax pledge, then flat out did the opposite. HE’S A LIAR!!!!!!!! People don’t want to be represented by a liar. He voted to raise our taxes by $16 BILLION including the doubling of our car tax.
Suck on that SCHROEDER!
Next time keep your butt in Newport Beach.
I can guarantee you one thing…If Mike Schroeder…Scott Baugh…Dicky Ackerman or Dave Ellis are behind getting a candidate ELECTED…I WILL BE VOTING FOR THE OTHER GUY! Because I will NEVER trust ANYONE they use as a puppet for their money grubbing schemes.
June will be here soon enough and without the $900,000 price tag.
I don’t trust Schroeder any farther than I can throw him. Something really stinks here. How could only 30% of the petitions in San Bernadino be valid when the ones in L.A. were over 60%??? And the signatures were supposedly cross-checked with the voter registration rolls before they were submitted to the secretary of the state.
There is some underhanded stuff going on here. I hope John & Ken get to the bottom of it. I don’t trust any of the players involved here. Not one.
Anthony Adams LIED to his constituents. He signed a form PROMISING not to vote for taxes during his campaign to get votes and money. And after the voters gave him what he wanted he screwed them! He LIED to them and BETRAYED them. He doesn’t deserve to be in office!!! HE’S A LIAR!!!!
What’s $900,000 when he increased the taxes by Billions!
There’s a bigger story here.
There has NEVER been a 60% failure rate in ANY legitimate signature gathering initiative.
The company that was hired to do the gathering has a GUARANTEED 70% validity rate and is obligated to give the money back if they don’t achieve this.
The company (in business for 20 years) was live checking the credentials for all the people who signed the petitions.
So the signature gatherers claim to achieve a 70% validity rate and the secretary of state claims the exact opposite?
Something stinks worse than Adams. I think that the corrupt legislature (both Dem and Repub) were so scared by the momentum that this recall effort gained and recognized the threat to their way of doing business that they shadily put the brakes on this effort to ensure the voters of the state don’t try to question them again.
This needs to be investigated further.
I’m with you. Something is really off here. And your last paragraph is probably pretty close to the real story. I’m not a backer of the recall, but I surely back those who petition legitimately. These stats are not sound.
I tend to agree with you. That said, if the company that was hired doesn’t start and push for a full investigaton, they should never be hired again by anyone- regardless of the fact they may have to return their fee..
Agreed. Something is definitely stinks and it’s coming from San Bernardino ROV.
I don’t know the issues behind the recall that much other than what is reported here, but it seems kind of strange that they can just sample the signatures. How do they know if the sample they look at is representative?
I’m guessing that some petition gatherers are more careful than others. Not sure if this was grassroots petition gatherers or paid ones or a combo.
Seems like a small sample on which to decide whether it qualified or not. We really don’t know as they are projecting something that may or may not be a representative sampling.
I’m writing this without regard to the merits of the recall, but just on general principles.
Your comments are fair. They do sampling to save money - a good thing. Unfortunately, when those in the position of counting the votes are generally government employees who are also union members - whose very livelihood depends on tax monies - one must indeed wonder about the veracity of the count. This needs to be investigated. Call me cynical,but I understand human nature.
Hey Schroeder, stop dancing around in the high desert and wasting precious GOP monies and take note of what is happening here in your own backyard, or should I say your playground.
In case you missed the news the OC Fair Grounds Board of Directors is being investigated for all kinds of alleged shenanigans which include:
A Fair Board meeting that took place PRIVATELY without notifying the public.
Negotiating a contract with Dickie Ackerman to lobby on the Fair’s behalf in Sacramento to have the Fair grounds put up for sale.
And my personal favorite, the use of PUBLIC FUNDS to hire the Nossaman Firm LLP, a Law firm, WHERE DICKIE IS A PARTNER, (imagine that) to help lobby for the sale of the fairgrounds and come up with a proposal that would “best suit the anticipated Foundation bid.”
I know your wife is giving this very careful consideration being as she works for the DA”s office and these are your buddies. I know you must not have known anything about these goings on while you were out playing attack the fellow republican in the sand, right Mikey?
You know the 6 Fair Board of Directors forming a non profit OC Fairgrounds Foundation to raise money for the BUYING OF THE OC FAIRGROUNDS USING PUBLIC FUNDS!
Can’t wait to see how this will spin…………………
Why is it that this story was BURIED??? you have kept other stories on the front page for at least a DAY…I had to hunt for this for 5 minutes.
Did the OCR Editor get a phone call from SCHROEDER…telling you to get rid of THEIR mistake???
I couldn’t even find this when I put SCHROEDER’S name in the search engine…this is Ridiculous!
I guess KFI’s John and Ken aren’t so powerful after all!
How can John and Ken compete against corruption???
When they stack the deck it’s impossible to win.
It’s getting worse than the old soviet union!!!
This country is no better than any banana republic when it comes to elections.
Why do Republicans continue to associate with Schroeder? His time is OVER. And what is up with John and Ken? Do they ever actually think for themselves or doe they answer to Schroeder and all his corrupt cronies…scratch that. The answer is obvious.
Time for new leadership in the Republican Party. Someone who is ethical would be nice for a change.
This is a fine example at politics at its worst. I listened to John and Ken for months on this; their very sarcastic, cynical, smarmy “heads on a stick” campaign to recall Adams. The entire effort was just a big waste of money, as would have been the recall. Nearly 1 million dollars to unseat one politician when voter could do this on their own come election day. This was a great ratings ploy for John and Ken, a great promo for Schroeder, and don’t get me started on Baugh; how many times has that guy been involved in muddy water and he’s STILL around. What did it cost us to recall Gov. Davis, and look where that got us. Recalls are an opportunity for some people to further their careers by wrapping themselves around “truth and justice.” Baloney! If you don’t like Adams, vote him out, at the next election. I hope this is the beginning of the end for John and Ken, they’re such a load of hot air and ego during very valuable time. The next heads on a stick should be John and Ken for stirring up this embarrassing, costly mess. Oh, and just for the record, I think what Adams and his cohorts did was despicable; please vote them out if you’re in their district.
Frank: I agree. Something here really stinks. This kind of failure rate have never occurred. Ever. This is very strange. I think there are going to be a few very embarrassed faces when the dust settles. But somehow, with such blind loyalty in politics, both from the left and the right, many will just point the finger at “the other party.” People! We must start from the very local to the very top - we must STOP being so blindly loyal to this two party system. It stinks, and this is just one example. Both parties blame each other for “lock step” mentality, when it’s so obvious, they’re both just as useless. Look at the mess this state and country is in. You must see that both parties got us into this mess. But we still vote for either Twiddly-Dee or Twiddly-Dum.
If Adams and the other Repubs had not crossed over to get the budget passed, some vendors would still be receiving IOU’s and other taxpayers would still be waiting for their refunds. No candidate should ever sign a pledge not to raise taxes, when they don’t know whether or not circumstances will change–as happened in this economic crash. I do not vote in Adams’s District, but I would not have found fault with him for that vote. His voters can do whatever they want with him in 2010.
Sounds like Adams’ operatives are busy at work filling these posts with their garbage. Anthony Adams is a liar and will not get re-elected. This small sampling smells bad and I would’nt put it past the corrupt elected officials to be meddling here. Anthony Adams was one of several crooks and liars to once again screw over the California taxpayer. Fat crook.
It’s not just Adams. It’s the whole damn legislature!!! Look how they covered up the Duvall investigation. They just wanted it to go away. None of they are trustworthy. You are being led by low life snake in the grass crooks!!!
I do not know Adams or any of his operatives. I am not even in his political party. I am just commenting as an observor.
Well I’m not an “Adams Operative” …What I AM is a person sick and tired of the likes of SCHROEDER and the “Real Thugs of Orange County” running around using G.O.P. donations to pit Republican against Republican all for their own vainglorious ego’s!
These Thugs are not who I want picking our next SHERIFF or are next DOG CATCHER.
Next time someone is up for election…check to see if MIKE SCHROEDER, DICKY ACKERMAN, DAVE ELLIS, OR SCOTT BAUGH, is backing them up…and then Vote for THE OTHER CANDIDATE!
To late Lori as for our next Sheriff, Schroeder has found a protege in the unknown Sheriff candidate from Anaheim, Craig Hunter. Hang on to your hats. Schroeder and the die hard Carona people will not be denied their spoils.
Adams PROMISED not to raise taxes. He caved in to the Democrats demands and there are people on this blog who do not see that as any big deal … AMAZING! Even worse … they attack the people who finally are taking a stand against turn-coat politicians.
The recall effort was meant to “send a message” to ALL politicians in Sacramento that “we the people” are paying attention and we are disgusted with the lies and deceptions, as well as the irresponsible spending and lack of courage to say NO to Unions, etc. that bleed us dry.
Socialism is around the corner … wake up Californians!
Listen, if we cannot believe the politicians when they run for office we no longer have a real democratic republic. We give them our votes based on what they tell us. If they sign a pledge not to increase taxes we take them for their word and give them our votes. That is the way democracy works. But if they LIE to us it destroys the entire concept of what democracy is all about. It really should be considered worse than perjury in a court of law because it destroys the very foundation upon which our country was founded. If we can no longer trust them we are really in no better position that the soviet citizens were in 1970. Don’t you folks see that?? Don’t you see how serious a situation this is?? You should be livid at Anthony Adams and anybody else who follows his example!!! You are taking this MUCH too lightly!
Schroeder LOST!!!! Hooray!!!!
To MVAgusta:
I’m not an “Adams Operative” …What I AM is a person sick and tired of the likes of SCHROEDER and the “Real Thugs of Orange County” running around using G.O.P. donations to pit Republican against Republican all for their own vainglorious ego’s!
These Thugs are not who I want picking our next SHERIFF or are next DOG CATCHER.
Next time someone is up for election…check to see if MIKE SCHROEDER, DICKY ACKERMAN, DAVE ELLIS, OR SCOTT BAUGH, is backing them up…and then Vote for THE OTHER CANDIDATE!
to BJO: people are sick of the pot calling the kettle black. If you are going to go after the bad guys, you should not be a bad guy as well. We all want some integrity, honesty and a move to cut government. We all have to stand up and fight this type of hypocrisy and corruption so the politicians wake up. Vote out all encumbents.
On Friday November 20, CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen declared that the recall of Assemblyman Anthony Adams had failed to collect enough valid signatures to call a special election. The campaign needed to gather 35,825 signatures from registered voters in the 59th District. In the end, 58,384 signatures were collected and turned in. Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters reported in a 65 percent validity rate from a random sample of 500 signatures while San Bernardino County reported a substantially lower validity rate from a random sample of 1,339 signatures. The conventional wisdom is that the results from both counties are not adequate to call a special election.
The big question now is how could this have happen? A cushion of over 20,000 signatures was collected over the required amount. Although speculative, there are several scenarios.
1. The San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters pulled a random sample containing more invalid signatures than valid ones. Although not entirely impossible, it would definitely be considered a statistical anomaly for this to happen.
2. The paid signature gathering operation turned in an overwhelming number of invalid signatures. This is highly unlikely given that the signature gathering operation was contractually obligated to meet a 70 percent validity rate. In addition, verification of signatures collected was performed independently of the signature gathering operation.
3. Irregularities were perpetrated by one or both of the Registrar of Voters. The huge difference in validity rates between Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties is highly inconceivable when the same signature gathering operation was used in both counties. These results suggest that two very different standards were employed by each ROV. This scenario warrants further investigation.
In addition, there are other questions to be answered. For instance, in an article from the Hesperia Star, Adams was quoted from an interview that was conducted at a Veterans Day event. For one, Adams said of the Committee to Recall Adams petition drive, “There are lots of bad signatures.” How could Adams possibly know this when the results were not public back on November 11?
At this point, one thing is for certain, - this is NOT over and Committee to Recall Adams intends to pursue a thorough investigation of how there could be a significant discrepancy in validity rates between the two counties.
Our Committee has invested a significant amount of time and effort to conduct due diligence every step of the way to avoid the typical pitfalls that can derail a campaign. First and foremost, the hired campaign manager and the paid signature gathering company were seasoned professionals that had run successful recall campaigns before. Second, our committee consists of longtime political activists from various professional backgrounds including legal, finance, marketing, sales, high tech, and communications, as well as government. This is to ensure that every aspect of the campaign can be managed with expertise from across different fields. On top of all else, many of us have worked on numerous successful campaigns including other recall elections.
Since February, our Committee has raised over $162,000, collected nearly 60,000 signatures and worked too hard to give up now. We owe it to all the campaign volunteers, donors, as well as KFI’s John & Ken Show and its listeners to make sure we’re afforded due process. This current development is a temporary setback. We are immediately filing an appeal to the denial and will pursue every avenue available to us to see that this Recall goes forward. At this time, we ask all of our supporters to maintain confidence that we’re on the right track and are doing everything in our power to guarantee that we’re given a fair shot. We will keep all of our supporters updated on a timely basis as we move forward with this process.
as somebody already said, if they want to get this thing back on track, they need to hire greer, he seems to be able to win these things
One thing is for sure; The people of this district would be idiots to re-elect this liar.