The Bitter Aftermath of a Recall : Ousted by 9 Votes, Blaszcak Wants a Recount, and Both Sides Are Still Fighting

The votes have been counted, but neither the bruising recall campaign against Vice Mayor Frank Blaszcak nor its accompanying atmosphere of recrimination is over.

Blaszcak, who lost his City Council seat by nine votes out of almost 3,800 cast in last week’s election, announced Thursday that he will formally request a recount.

And as the rancorous political fight wound down, there were these other developments:

Each side charged the other with campaign violations.

Blaszcak supporters said there may have been irregularities in the vote-counting process, which was conducted by city officials.

Members of the divided City Council talked wistfully about finding a new unity and getting back to work.

Of the four remaining council members, two worked for the recall, one worked against it and one remained neutral.

“We’ve lost almost a whole year on this,” said Councilman James Castaneda, a former Blaszcak ally who has since distanced himself from the vice mayor but took a neutral position in the recall fight. “A lot of time, energy and money has been wasted on this.”

Barred From Running

With the continuing controversies, no one was speculating last week about possible candidates for Blaszcak’s seat, which will be filled in a special election in September. Blaszcak is barred by law from running.

Blaszcak supporters said reports of voting irregularities are being gathered.

“We have a witness who’s willing to testify that there was electioneering going on at one of the polling places,” Blaszcak said Thursday, one day after the last ballots were counted. “In another instance, two people came in and misspelled their own names.”

He said he and his supporters were also concerned about the “chain of control” over ballots on Election Day, suggesting that votes could have been tampered with. “There were times when the ballots could have been changed,” Blaszcak said.

“It’s hard for them to accept this,” said Deputy City Clerk Cindy Bookter, inviting a challenge to the tally. Bookter, who insisted that the count was conducted with strict attention to state law, led the team that recorded the 3,797 votes cast last Tuesday.

The final count was 1,903 for recall and 1,894 against. The voters opted, by a ratio of almost 3 to 1, for a special election to fill Blaszcak’s seat rather than allow the council to appoint a successor.

‘Out of Envelopes’

According to witnesses, Blaszcak said, some ballots had been opened before they arrived at the City Council chambers, where the tally was being conducted. “We suspect that some ballots were sent from the precincts in envelopes, but they resurfaced in the council chambers out of their envelopes,” he said.

Bookter said a recount could be conducted within a few days of the election’s certification, scheduled for Tuesday’s City Council meeting. Blaszcak must pay the recount costs of about $1,000, she said.

Recall proponents aired some allegations of their own last week, charging that there had been at least one instance of a Blaszcak supporter trying to intimidate a voter. They presented Police Chief Don Tutich with an affidavit from Alfredo Fernandez, who claimed that a Blaszcak supporter had shown him a badge and ordered him to remove a pro-recall lawn sign from his property.

Fernandez said in an interview that he took the sign down and did not vote in the election. Tutich said an inquiry is being made.

Looking for Explanations

Meanwhile, leaders of both factions were sifting through the remains of the campaign, seeking explanations for the results.

Mayor John Tapp and City Councilman Sabino Cici, both leaders in the recall effort, contended that the deciding factor had been hard work by pro-recall volunteers. “People just got in and gave it all they had,” said Cici.

“We had a little bit more desire maybe than they did,” said Tapp.

Both acknowledged that a strategy of encouraging many voters to apply for absentee ballots had provided the deciding votes. Although Blaszcak ran slightly ahead at the polls, he lost the absentee balloting by a margin of more than 150 votes.

“We encouraged people that it was easy to vote that way,” said Cici, who added that the recall committee had printed and circulated 3,000 applications for absentee ballots to known recall supporters. He said the absentee strategy emulated other successful campaigns, such as a winning slow-growth initiative campaign waged last March by PRIDE (Pasadena Residents In Defense Of their Environment).

One recall leader, who asked not to be named, said a list of voters who had signed recall petitions was used so that get-out-the-vote efforts could be focused on residents opposed to Blaszcak.

The issue of Blaszcak’s character also played well with the voters, Cici and Tapp said. Blaszcak’s critics alleged that, 10 years ago, he had offered to procure $60 worth of cocaine for a Santa Ana police officer. Despite police allegations, Blaszcak was never charged by the Orange County district attorney, because of insufficient evidence.

Blaszcak vehemently denied that he had ever offered to procure cocaine.

“People didn’t vote yes or no based on that,” contended Tapp, “but they used it as background information.”

Overconfidence Acknowledged

Members of Citizens for Responsible Development (CFRD), the slow-growth group that provided most of Blaszcak’s volunteers, acknowledged that they had been overconfident.

“I can’t believe we were that out of touch with the way people were voting,” said Gary Meredith, one member of the group. “We thought we were going to win this one.”

The discrepancy between the expectation and the outcome has prompted concerns about the legitimacy of results, said Meredith.

In a pattern that one Blaszcak supporter described as “like the Civil War--North versus South,” the vice mayor carried most of the southern precincts while losing most of those in the more affluent areas, north of the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks that bisect the city.

But Blaszcak also lost narrowly and unexpectedly in two southern precincts, including one that voted strongly for him in last year’s City Council election.

That area, the so-called San Gabriel Village, a neighborhood of meandering streets and single-family cottages, has been “a CFRD stronghold,” said Meredith. But in the precinct that includes San Gabriel Village, recall won, 114 to 109.

“We’re going to challenge that in every way possible” because CFRD leaders believe that Blaszcak should have easily carried that precinct, Meredith said.

Blaszcak had portrayed himself in earlier statements as an underdog from the southern part of the city facing “the old guard oligarchy” from the north.

“The north is the stronghold of the oligarchy that has always controlled the city,” he said. “I think that’s a very telling thing.”

Cici dismissed such a view as another example of Blaszcak’s divisiveness. “Frank has never had anything good to say about this city,” Cici said.

HOW THE VOTE WENT

16 of 16 precincts. 27.9% turnout

Shall Frank Blaszcak be recalled from the City Council?

Vote % Yes 1,903 50.1 No 1,894 49.9

If the recall prevails, shall the City Council fill the vacancy by appointment or call a special election for that purpose?

Vote % Election 2,402 73.8 Appointment 851 26.2