LaRouche Follower Loses Bid to Void Recount

An attempt by a follower of political extremist Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. to overturn an election recount was thrown out of court in Santa Ana on Wednesday, temporarily ending his bid to replace Bruce W. Sumner as the Democratic nominee in southern Orange County’s 40th Congressional District.

“We’ll probably appeal,” Art Hoffmann said after Superior Court Judge John C. Woolley ruled that he lacks the authority either to order a new election or review the results of the 16-day recount that resulted in Sumner’s victory.

“I don’t expect them to drop it,” Sumner said. “It’s their nature. They’ll appeal, and they’ll get the same results they got here.”

It was the second setback of the day for LaRouche followers. In New York, the state’s highest court refused to review lower court rulings that kept three LaRouche candidates off the Sept. 9 primary ballot.

Those courts had barred the LaRouche candidates Webster Tarpley, running for U.S. Senate; Judah Philip Rubinstein, running for governor, and Fernando Oliver, running for lieutenant governor, from the ballot because some of their nominating petitions failed to list on their cover sheets the number of signatures collected for each candidate.

The ruling in Santa Ana, however, was on constitutional grounds.

Woolley ruled that under the U.S. Constitution, only the House of Representatives can judge the qualifications of its members. That exclusive authority also applies to disputes among primary election candidates, at least once the process of a recount has concluded, as in the Hoffmann-Sumner contest, Woolley ruled.

Sumner petitioned for a recount of the June 3 election, claiming that there had been irregularities in the vote tabulation. The issue was complicated by Sumner’s running as a write-in candidate.

After 16 days, during which each of about 30,000 ballots was scrutinized, Hoffmann’s 267-vote winning margin turned into a 1,228-vote victory for Sumner. The recount put Sumner, chairman of the Orange County Democratic Party, against incumbent Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach), who is seeking his fifth term in a strongly Republican district.