Bid to Recall Bernhardt Is Shaping Up : Politics: Residents upset over her action on redistricting, which would have scuttled their neighborhoods, are pushing for a recall vote.

Angered over San Diego City Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt’s performance--in particular, her support for a controversial redistricting plan that would remove several key neighborhoods from her district--a group of community activists plans to launch a recall campaign against Bernhardt today.

In what city election officials believe would be the first council recall effort here in at least a half century, about a dozen neighborhood leaders from Bernhardt’s 5th District have scheduled a news conference outside City Hall today to announce their plans to oust the eight-month incumbent in a special election early next year.

Political consultant Jack Orr said Wednesday that the recall effort stems from growing “dissatisfaction over a lot of little things and some big ones”--with the biggest arguably being Bernhardt’s backing for a redistricting plan tentatively approved by the council last month that would eliminate Scripps Ranch and Mira Mesa from her district.

“For a lot of folks, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Orr, whose Mira Mesa firm will help manage the anti-Bernhardt campaign. “That turned the dissatisfaction that was already there into outrage.”

If Bernhardt’s opponents succeed in qualifying the recall question for the ballot, the election to determine whether the former council aide serves out the remainder of her four-year term or is replaced likely would be held next February, city officials said.

Calling the recall effort “politics at its very worst,” Bernhardt characterized the drive as a “strong-arm tactic” designed to persuade her to change her vote when the council takes final action on redistricting, probably later this month.

“In a way, this is almost blackmail being used to try to get me to change my mind,” Bernhardt said. “It’s kind of funny that they’re doing this now in the middle of the (redistricting) process rather than waiting until there’s a final map.”

In the event she faces a recall election, Bernhardt said, her central message will be: “I’ve done my job and kept my campaign promises to manage growth, protect the environment and respond to neighborhoods.”

Furthermore, in regard to the redistricting controversy, Bernhardt said she would remind voters that the options in reconfiguring her district were largely guided by the need to reduce its population to conform to the citywide average.

“A lot of people have the impression that this is some evil thing Linda Bernhardt did to get rid of some neighborhoods,” Bernhardt said. “What they don’t understand is that I would have been very happy to keep the district the way it is now. But that simply isn’t possible under the law.”

Other factors, however, also contribute to the planned recall effort. Serra Mesa activist Kathy Gaustad, for example, attributed some of the displeasure over Bernhardt’s performance during her short tenure at City Hall to a “general feeling that she doesn’t understand the community and its needs--and doesn’t wish to.”

Several community leaders also pointed to the contradiction between Bernhardt’s harsh criticism of her 1989 opponent, then-Councilman Ed Struiksma, over his receipt of sizable contributions from developers during last year’s race, and her subsequent acceptance of donations from the same source to help retire her campaign debt.

But it was Bernhardt’s support for a redistricting plan offered by Councilman John Hartley that was approved in concept by a 5-4 council vote on July 9 that galvanized her opponents.

Though most of the criticism of that plan has focused on its dilution of minority population in a proposed Latino-majority 8th District, residents of Scripps Ranch and Mira Mesa are furious over Bernhardt’s apparent willingness to shift those neighborhoods from her district to Bruce Henderson’s 6th District.

“After all the work we did to get her elected, we’re being shucked aside like a stepchild,” said Robert Fleming of Mira Mesa, a volunteer in Bernhardt’s 1989 race. “It’s just not right, and this is the best way to let her know it.”

Under the procedures governing recalls, the Recall Bernhardt Committee first must publish its intention in a newspaper--a step the group’s leaders plan to take Friday, according to Orr. After Bernhardt is served notice of the plan, she has nine days in which to respond with a 300-word statement defending herself.

Both the group’s and Bernhardt’s statements will appear on the petitions circulated by the opponents over a 39-day period in their effort to obtain the signatures of 11,240 registered voters in the 5th District--15% of the total--needed to qualify the measure for the ballot.

If the city clerk’s office determines that the group has gathered the required number of signatures, the City Council must schedule a recall election--and a tandem race to determine Bernhardt’s possible successor--within 60 to 90 days.

A simple majority vote would determine Bernhardt’s political fate. If she receives more than 50% of the vote, Bernhardt would retain her post, rendering the outcome of the companion election on possible successors moot. However, if Bernhardt is ousted, the candidate who draws the most votes in the other race would serve the remainder of her term.

The rarity of recall campaigns, combined with this one’s convergence with the city’s redistricting effort, poses some thorny legal questions San Diego election officials have asked city attorneys to research.

One key question is whether the council’s current or new political boundaries will determine who can sign the recall petitions, vote in the election and run to succeed Bernhardt. With the council facing an Oct. 1 deadline for having a new redistricting plan in place, the 5th District’s boundaries will change midstream in the recall effort.

Ironically, if the proposed new boundaries were used to determine eligibility, residents of the communities most upset with Bernhardt would be unable to vote in the election, while those who live in areas not now represented by her would cast ballots.

Much of the criticism of Bernhardt’s role in the city’s redistricting morass has stemmed from the widely held perception that, in supporting the plan to remove Scripps Ranch from her district, she is trying to jettison a politically troublesome area.

In particular, the Miramar Ranch North project, a controversial plan to build more than 3,000 homes north of Miramar Lake, has sharply divided the community--creating an issue that Bernhardt effectively capitalized on in defeating Struiksma.

During the campaign, Bernhardt pledged to Scripps Ranch residents that she would prevent houses from being built on the slopes overlooking the reservoir, while still obtaining the millions of dollars in badly needed roads, schools and parks offered by the developers. Since taking office, such a compromise has eluded her, though she did unveil a proposed agreement this week--one that the council balked at accepting, pending further study.

From the perspective of many Scripps Ranch residents, the redrawing of district lines appears to reflect Bernhardt’s desire to rid herself of a particularly troublesome political issue.

“I think it’s very fair to say she’s running away from a problem,” said Karen McElliott, chair of the Miramar Ranch North Planning Committee. “For her to have said, ‘I’m going to solve all your problems’ was ludicrous in the first place. But to try to walk away . . . when the issue isn’t solved is even worse.” (McElliott is not involved in the recall effort, though she said she “understands the reasons behind it.”)

Confident that her proposed Miramar Lake compromise will prevail, Bernhardt argued that the recall drive illustrates “how some people inside and outside City Hall feel threatened by me, and would like to get rid of me early in my career.”

She has heard “talk everywhere I turn,” Bernhardt said, that Mayor Maureen O’Connor and Henderson--who have clashed with her on myriad issues beyond redistricting--are orchestrating the recall effort behind the scenes.

“I find it disgusting that some of my colleagues would resort to blackmail and use community people as a front,” Bernhardt said. “I don’t care for this kind of intimidation politics.”

Both O’Connor’s spokesman and Henderson, however, denied that accusation.

“The first any of us even heard about this was this afternoon,” said O’Connor spokesman Paul Downey.

Henderson added: “This is not my movement. For her to point her finger at the mayor and me is ridiculous. She’s made her own bed on this one. As with a lot of things in this job, you find out who’s responsible for these problems by looking in the mirror in the morning.”