Bernhardt Foes Gain Time With Recall Petitions : City Council: More than 11,800 signatures are turned in, but councilwoman’s camp expresses confidence that up to half will be invalidated.

Moving a step closer to San Diego’s first City Council recall election, a group seeking to oust Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt turned in more than 11,800 signatures on recall petitions Tuesday--a number sufficient to at least give Bernhardt’s opponents more time to qualify the issue for the ballot.

Leaders of the Recall Bernhardt Committee concede that they will probably be short of the 11,240 valid signatures needed after local election officials verify the 11,832 names on their petitions--a process that typically results in 25% or more of the signatures being ruled invalid for a variety of reasons.

However, a quirk in local law--one that could be challenged in court by Bernhardt’s backers--will give the recall committee about six more weeks to reach the number of signatures required to force an election early next year, city administrators said Tuesday.

“This recall will be on the ballot,” Kathy Gaustad, chairman of the anti-Bernhardt group, said after the group turned in the petitions to the city clerk’s office. “With the extra time, there’s no doubt.”

But Bernhardt defender Jean Andrews predicted that the recall effort ultimately will fail to qualify for the ballot, saying she believes that the signature verification process will show that as many as 50% of the names turned in Tuesday are invalid. With Tuesday’s deadline approaching, Andrews charged, Gaustad’s group knowingly began collecting invalid signatures from voters outside Bernhardt’s 5th District simply to “buy more time” by surpassing the 11,240-name figure.

“They’ve been losing momentum for a couple of weeks,” said Andrews, manager of a group calling itself Together for Linda Bernhardt. “I don’t think they’re going to make it.”

Under the procedures governing recall elections, the 11,832 signatures that were gathered over the past 39 days will be reviewed by the San Diego County registrar of voters to determine their validity. That checking process is expected to be completed in about two weeks, according to city elections officer Mike Haas.

Failure to reside in the proper district or ineligibility to vote often result in many signatures on such petitions being declared invalid. In addition, Bernhardt’s supporters collected 747 signatures on “rescission” forms--which also must be verified--in which individuals ask that their names be removed from the pro-recall petitions.

If the number of verified signatures is less than the required 11,240--which equals 15% of the registered voters in Bernhardt’s district--the councilwoman’s opponents will have an additional 30 days to file so-called “supplemental” petitions in an effort to reach that target.

While awaiting the verification of the signatures turned in Tuesday, Gaustad’s committee plans to immediately begin circulating the supplemental petitions--meaning the group will have roughly six additional weeks to collect more signatures.

Should the group eventually collect sufficient valid signatures, the City Council must schedule a recall election--and a tandem race to determine Bernhardt’s possible successor--within 60 to 90 days. That timetable probably would produce an election between next February and April.

A simple majority vote would determine Bernhardt’s political fate. If she received 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 the four-year term to which she was elected last November in a district stretching from Mira Mesa to Mission Valley.

The acrimonious charges and countercharges that have dominated the signature-collection campaign could prove to be a harbinger of what by its very nature almost certainly would be a bitter recall election.

Both sides have accused the other of using strong-arm, illegal tactics to either deceive people into signing the recall petitions or to discourage them from doing so. Last weekend, an altercation between the two sides resulted in police being summoned to a Mira Mesa supermarket, and the anti-Bernhardt forces have filed several police reports alleging that they were physically assaulted by Bernhardt workers.

Jane Kingsley, who directed the nearly two dozen paid signature collectors who supplemented the pro-recall campaign’s volunteers, also charged Tuesday that petitions with perhaps as many as 4,000 signatures on them “mysteriously disappeared.”

Though she admitted there is “no way (of being) absolutely sure what happened,” Kingsley claimed that some of her workers said a competing signature-collection group working on Bernhardt’s behalf offered them more money to “switch sides” and to turn over the petitions already circulated.

Denying that charge, Andrews said her workers actually rebuffed some pro-recall signature gatherers’ offers to turn over their petitions.

Tuesday’s news conference at the city clerk’s office, meanwhile, included several unintentionally humorous moments. At one point, a pro-recall worker attempted to turn in his petitions to a Bernhardt aide standing behind the office’s counter to observe the proceedings--leading to jokes about how those signatures might be tabulated.

Later, the same Bernhardt staffer passed out a press release headlined “Bernhardt Announces Recall Failure”--an analysis that, at best, is premature.

“It’s apparent that the recall committee failed,” Bernhardt said in the statement. “I am confident that they did not and cannot collect enough valid signatures. . . . The time has come for the divisiveness in this community to stop.”

Recall leaders have cited a number of factors as the impetus behind what would be the first recall election since the city charter was approved early this century. Prominent among the reasons is their dissatisfaction with Bernhardt’s approval of a controversial redistricting plan that would shift several high-growth neighborhoods from her district into another council district--an issue that political consultant Jack Orr terms “the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Her opponents also have complained that, since her election, Bernhardt has accepted campaign contributions from developers after pledging not to do so in last year’s campaign, and also fault her for hiring her roommate as her City Hall chief of staff.

“We like to refer to Linda as the ‘Stealth Bulldozer,’ ” said recall volunteer Ken Moser, using a variation of the “Bulldozer Ed” label that Bernhardt hung on then-Councilman Ed Struiksma in last fall’s council race.

Calling the recall effort “politics at its very worst,” Bernhardt defended herself at the outset of the petition-circulation period by saying, “I’ve done my job and kept my campaign promises to manage growth, protect the environment and respond to neighborhoods.”

Even if the number of signatures collected by Gaustad’s group ultimately is deemed sufficient to mandate a recall election, several thorny legal questions could result in a court challenge--an option that “we’re keeping open,” Andrews emphasized Tuesday.

Bernhardt’s supporters have questioned the legality of the “supplemental” petition period, as well as accused Gaustad’s group of exceeding a 300-word limit on the pro-recall statement that accompanied their petitions.

“Before this is over, we’ll probably be sued by both sides,” Assistant City Clerk Jack Fishkin said.