Group Seeking the Ouster of Bernhardt Needs 3,000 More Signatures : Politics: It has a month to get the names to put the measure on the ballot; Bernhardt remains confident.

Edging San Diego closer to its first City Council recall election, the city clerk’s office announced Thursday that a group seeking to oust Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt needs to collect about 3,000 more signatures on recall petitions over the next month to qualify the issue for the ballot.

Verification of the 11,823 signatures turned in by the Recall Bernhardt Committee on Oct. 9 showed that 8,265 were valid, leaving the group 2,975 names short of the 11,240 signatures needed to force a recall election early next year, according to City Clerk Charles Abdelnour.

With nearly 4,000 new signatures collected over the past two weeks already in hand, the recall leaders confidently predicted Thursday that they will easily surpass the 11,240-name target by the Nov. 23 deadline.

“This thing is a done deal--there will be a recall election next year,” political consultant Jack Orr said. “And, once it’s on the ballot, Linda Bernhardt is done.”

Bernhardt, however, said she believes that there still is an “outside chance” that the recall effort will fail to qualify for the ballot. Even if her opponents collect enough signatures, Bernhardt added, the quirk in local law giving the recall forces the additional month to circulate their petitions could be challenged in court.

“I don’t concede the election as being inevitable,” Bernhardt said. “If they thought I was aggressive in fighting this before, they’ll find me being even tougher this time around.”

Anticipating that the signature verification, which generally results in 25% or more of the names being declared invalid, would leave them short of their goal, the anti-Bernhardt group began circulating so-called “supplemental petitions” after turning in the first batch 2 1/2 weeks ago.

Under procedures governing recall elections, groups also receive an additional 30 days to gather names after the city clerk declares that not enough signatures have been collected.

Kathy Gaustad, chairman of the anti-Bernhardt group, said the additional 6 1/2 weeks will permit the recall committee to be more meticulous in its signature gathering than it was during the initial 39-day circulation period. The group has begun conducting its own name-by-name verification check, and also plans to collect signatures outside the polls on Election Day next month to guarantee that only registered voters sign.

Even if only the 70% validity rate found in the first 11,823 signatures holds for the supplemental petitions, the additional 4,000 names already gathered would put the group near the 11,240-name goal, which represents 15% of the registered voters in Bernhardt’s district.

“I have no doubt at all we’ll make it,” Gaustad said. “We’ll leave ourselves a big cushion just to be safe.”

Saying that many people “sign these things without thinking,” even Bernhardt expressed doubt about her ability to prevent her opponents from collecting an adequate number of signatures. Even so, Orr conceded that Bernhardt’s mobilization of her supporters has made the signature gathering more challenging than he first envisioned.

“I’ve contended all along you could get people to sign petitions saying they’d shoot themselves in the left foot,” Orr said. “But, I’ll give them credit--they’ve done a pretty good job of freezing the deck and questioning the whole process.”

Of the 11,823 signatures checked in Thursday’s tabulation, 3,558 were declared invalid by the county registrar of voters, most because they came from people who do not live in Bernhardt’s 5th District or are not registered to vote. Bernhardt’s supporters also collected 747 signatures on “rescission” forms, in which individuals asked that their names be removed from the pro-recall petitions, but only 55 of those names proved to be valid.

Should Gaustad’s committee eventually collect enough 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 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 successors moot. However, if Bernhardt were ousted, the candidate drawing the most votes in the other race would serve the rest of the four-year term to which she was elected last November in a district stretching from Mira Mesa to Mission Valley.

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.

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.

Calling the recall effort “politics at its very worst,” Bernhardt professes optimism that she could defend the seat that she won by upsetting two-term Councilman Ed Struiksma last fall.

“I’m exactly what I said I was 10 months ago, and once that message gets out, I’ll win this thing,” Bernhardt said. “I’ve done what I said I was going to do--manage growth, protect the environment and respond to neighborhoods. The bottom line is the people running this (recall) are the same ones who backed my opponent last year. Voters will see through that.”

The estimated $120,000 cost for a special election also might give some voters pause about signing the recall petitions, or generate a backlash favoring her in an election, Bernhardt said.

Disputing that theory, recall supporters argue that their major hurdle is simply qualifying the issue for the ballot. Believing that voters in low turnout elections--as the recall could be, given that it would be the only race on the ballot--tend to be motivated more by anger than by satisfaction with the status quo, Bernhardt’s opponents contend that this is one campaign that literally could be over before it begins.

“Our major battle is getting this on the ballot,” said Perry Beaird, one of the recall effort’s leaders. “If we do that, I think we’ll win. We’re probably going to end up with more signatures than the votes she got last year. That says a lot.”