Bernhardt Foes Submit Petitions for Recall Election : Politics: Signatures must still be validated, but opponents have submitted twice the number needed to force the city’s first vote on a recall.

Moving San Diego closer to its first City Council recall election, a group seeking to oust Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt turned in more than 6,200 signatures on recall petitions Friday--more than twice as many needed to qualify the issue for the ballot.

Coupled with the 8,265 valid signatures turned in last month, Friday’s petitions probably will enable the Recall Bernhardt Committee to surpass the 11,240 signatures needed to force a recall election early next year.

Noting that the 2,975 additional names necessary could be achieved with a validity rate considerably less than last month’s 70% figure, the anti-Bernhardt group predicted that verification of Friday’s signatures will force the 5th District councilwoman into the first recall campaign since the City Charter was approved early this century.

“We’re excited, but we’re also sad that it’s come to this,” said Kathy Gaustad, the recall committee’s chairman. “Hopefully, this will send a message to all elected officials that you cannot promise anything to get elected . . . and not live up to the promise.”

Bernhardt, who previously has threatened a court challenge to try to block the recall campaign, could not be reached for comment Friday.

The signatures submitted Friday were collected by the anti-Bernhardt group after their first batch of petitions, turned in Oct. 9, left them nearly 3,000 names short of the required 11,240-name figure, which represents 15% of the registered voters in Bernhardt’s district.

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

The quirk in local law that permits that so-called “supplemental” period is one point that Bernhardt has suggested might be challenged in court. The question of whether the recall election would be held in Bernhardt’s current district or the new one created under a redistricting plan approved by a federal judge this month also could face a legal challenge, as could any foot-dragging by the council in scheduling the recall.

Assuming that sufficient signatures are verified, city laws specify that the City Council must schedule a recall election within 60 to 90 days after the issue is presented to the council for action, city election officials said.

The most likely timetable would produce a recall election between early next March and April, according to Assistant City Clerk Jack Fishkin.

City officials doubt that the San Diego County registrar of voters’ office will have time to verify the signatures by next Wednesday--the deadline for placing items on the regular docket for the council’s Dec. 11 meeting, its final session this year.

Failure to reside in the proper district or ineligibility to vote often results in many signatures on such petitions being declared invalid. In addition, Bernhardt supporters collected about 800 names on “rescission” forms--which also must be verified--in which individuals ask that their names be removed from the pro-recall petitions. The recall leaders, however, estimate that the validity rate will surpass 60% on Friday’s signatures, most of which were collected by paid workers who received $1.25 per name.

If the council does not act next month, its next opportunity to deal with the issue would come at its Jan. 7 meeting, where the members’ only discretion would be over the timing of the election itself.

Some recall leaders, however, have expressed concern that the council’s so-called “Gang of Five”--the majority, which includes Bernhardt, that dominates the body on most major policy issues--might seek to delay action or otherwise resist scheduling the election.

But city lawyers and election officials view the potential for any such council recalcitrance to be, at best, a remote possibility.

“That’s about the worst worst-case scenario I can think of,” said Assistant City Atty. Curtis Fitzpatrick. “When you start imagining things like that, it gets a little bit too Machiavellian. I’d expect that, if the petition qualifies, the council will do what the law requires it to do.”

Moreover, City Election Officer Mike Haas emphasized that, under city law, the council “doesn’t appear to have the discretion not to call a recall” in cases where sufficient signatures are collected. At the same time, the council also must schedule a tandem race to determine Bernhardt’s possible successor, which would appear on the same ballot as the recall.

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 were ousted, the candidate drawing the most votes in the other race--in which Bernhardt cannot compete--would serve the rest of the four-year term to which she was elected last November.

The potential candidates mentioned to date include two former councilmen: Ed Struiksma, the two-term incumbent whom Bernhardt upset last November, and lawyer Floyd Morrow, who previously held the same seat. Other possible contenders include lawyer Mike Eckmann, who lost in last year’s 5th District primary; lawyer Tom Behr; Mira Mesa activist Lucy Gonzalez and employment agency owner Mel Katz.

Recall leaders have cited a number of factors as the impetus behind their effort. Prominent among those 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 they fault her for hiring her roommate as her City Hall chief of staff.

Calling the recall effort “politics at its very worst,” Bernhardt has argued throughout the petition-gathering period that the effort is being largely orchestrated by individuals who opposed her during last year’s election.

“They didn’t want me last November so it’s no surprise they don’t want me now,” Bernhardt said recently. “They can try to distort my record, but the fact is that . . . I’ve done what I said I was going to do--manage growth, protect the environment and respond to neighborhoods.”

The estimated $120,000 cost for a special election also might generate a backlash favoring her in an election, Bernhardt said.

Though recall leaders dispute that theory, they acknowledged Friday that, although they had once felt that their major hurdle would be simply qualifying the issue for the ballot, they now recognize that the election itself could be even more challenging.

However, as they prepare for the next phase of their battle, they also are emboldened by their belief that voters in low-turnout elections--as the recall likely would be, given that it would be the only race on the ballot--tend to be motivated more by anger than satisfaction with the status quo.

“This is going to be a very tough fight--we can’t let our guard down now,” Gaustad said. “Linda Bernhardt is fighting for her political career. I don’t underestimate what she might do.”