Mission Viejo Co. Is Accused by Official Targeted for Recall

Mission Viejo City Councilman Robert A. Curtis, the target of a recall attempt, produced documentation Thursday showing that the Mission Viejo Co. hired a well-known political consultant to help influence residents on a controversial cityhood matter.

The developer hired Los Angeles political consultant Lynn Wessell to pay petition gatherers to obtain the necessary signatures to try to stop a proposal for the city of Mission Viejo to annex nearby Aegean Hills, according to the documents.

Wessell, who was retained by Orange County builders to mastermind the campaign that defeated last year’s slow-growth initiative, acknowledged Thursday that he has been working for the Mission Viejo Co. for 2 years, and said paid petition gatherers were used in his anti-annexation campaign.

But Wessell said he saw nothing wrong with using paid petition gatherers, adding that they are legal and commonly used in political campaigns to “push a petition over the top.”

“In politics today, everybody pays for signatures. . . . It’s no big intrigue,” Wessell said. “It’s simply a local community effort to get signatures in.”

Wessell’s anti-annexation drive ended March 1 when the county Local Agency Formation Commission refused to approve the proposal.

Curtis charged Thursday that the paid petition gathering deceived the public because the signatures were collected in the name of citizen groups.

Curtis said his documentation proves that the Mission Viejo Co.--designer of the master-planned community--engaged in political subterfuge, as he alleged it has done in attempting to influence political decisions in other Orange County communities.

“This is the modus operandi of the Mission Viejo Co.--to secretly fund surrogate citizen committees to undermine public officials,” Curtis said in a press conference he called on a sidewalk in front of the developer’s Mission Viejo headquarters.

Curtis, 32, said he was concerned that the Mission Viejo Co., which has opposed him on such issues as annexation, growth and development, will redeploy the paid petition gatherers to force his recall election.

Recall papers were served on the first-term councilman at an April 10 council meeting. Helen Monroe, leader of the recall effort, was also a leader in the Citizens’ Action Committee of Mission Viejo, for which Wessell helped collect signatures. The Mission Viejo Co. has donated about $3,000 to that committee, company officials said Thursday.

Curtis predicted that, with the Mission Viejo Co.’s backing, the group should have little trouble collecting the necessary signatures from at least 20% of the local electorate, or 8,000 people.

“My only hope in staying in office is that the voters realize who these people (behind the recall effort) are,” Curtis said. “The people should know that paid petition peddlers are out on the street.”

Wessell said the Mission Viejo Co. “is looking at what kind of role they want to make” in the Curtis recall. He said no decision has been made on whether the company will help collect signatures.

Monroe expressed surprise Thursday at hearing of paid petitions.

“I’m not aware. I just know nothing about this,” Monroe said. “To the best of my knowledge, (the petition gathering) was a citizen effort.”

Representatives of the Mission Viejo Co. also disavowed any knowledge of paid petition gatherers.

Mission Viejo Co. spokeswoman Wendy Wetzel said Curtis is attempting to avoid the issues that launched the recall process in the first place: allegations that he has misused his office in order to promote annexation of Aegean Hills, where he lived until Mission Viejo voted to incorporate in November, 1987.

“We think Curtis is grandstanding and trying to take attention away from those issues,” Wetzel said.