Candidacy for Lancaster Seat Becomes a Geography Lesson

A Los Angeles County fire captain may be unable to get on the ballot for the Lancaster City Council because his home at the time he filed for candidacy was too far from his mailbox--outside the city.

The would-be candidate, Michael Singer, presented a Superior Court commissioner with a novel legal question Monday:

Was he a Lancaster resident because his mailbox lay within the city, even though his mobile home, situated a half-mile away, was outside the city limits?

Commissioner Victor Reichman ruled against the fire captain’s request to be place on the ballot.

Singer said he will appeal. And the city has agreed to delay printing sample ballots until Monday. Fifteen candidates--excluding Singer--are up for three council seats.

If he loses the appeal, Singer said he will run as a write-in candidate.

“There’s no precedent to say no. And there’s a lot of precedent to say let the voters decide,” Singer said after the nearly hourlong hearing in Lancaster.

The 36-year-old firefighter said his candidacy is the victim of both a bureaucratic foul-up and political maneuvering.

Singer said he originally did not know, when he moved into the mobile home in July, 1988, that it was actually outside the city limit in the unincorporated Del Sur area.

He had discovered the glitch by the time he filed his election papers, Singer said. But before that, he had been allowed to register as a Lancaster resident and had voted in several city elections.

The county registrar’s office originally listed him as a Lancaster resident because his street address, where his mailbox is located, is within the city.

But the city refused to place him on the April 10 ballot after discovering that his actual residence was over the line.

“Your honor, Mr. Singer doesn’t live in his mailbox. And that’s the only thing he has in the city limit,” David Mann, the attorney for the city, told Reichman.

The city claims it is bound by state laws requiring a candidate to live within the jurisdiction where he seeks office.

But Singer’s attorney, Richard Singer (no relation), cited several prior court rulings that took a broader view of legal residence.

A California appeals court in 1981 accepted a post office box as a candidate’s legal residence, he pointed out.

The attorney urged a similar view of Singer’s mailbox, arguing that “we’re not speaking solely of someplace you have to sleep in every moment of the day.”

Reichman disagreed, saying he believes Singer must live in the city to be a candidate for office there.

The commissioner appeared sympathetic, however, to Singer’s argument that he filed for office and did not move into the city based on repeated advice from county officials that he was legally registered as a city resident.

Just last week, Singer the lawyer won another court case in San Fernando, keeping Mayor Daniel Acuna on the ballot in that city after county officials challenged his right to run, saying he had waited too long to re-register after moving.

Candidate Singer--who has since re-registered, moved into Lancaster proper and is buying a house in the city--claims political foes raised the residency question after the filing deadline to scuttle his candidacy. He is running on a slow-growth platform in a generally pro-growth city.