Oceanside Votes Today on Recall of Bishop

Oceanside voters decide today whether to remove City Councilwoman Melba Bishop from office, in the culmination of a campaign that has pitted council members against each other, police officers against firefighters and merchants against mobile home park residents.

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and votes will be counted tonight at City Hall.

Already ready to be counted are more than 7,000 absentee ballots, most of which are assumed to have been returned to the city clerk’s office by supporters of the 49-year-old Bishop, who is in the third year of her second term in office.

City Hall received requests for 9,995 absentee ballots, reflecting a campaign strategy by Bishop backers to put ballots in the hands of identified supporters in advance of Election Day.

Before Monday, 6,600 of those ballots already had been returned to City Hall, and Becky Sheets, the assistant city clerk, estimated that 700 or so more came in with Monday’s mail. More absentee ballots may come in today’s mail, and voters are allowed to drop them off at polling places as well.

Sheets said the majority of the absentee ballots that were returned in the early stages of the campaign had been distributed by the Bishop campaign. But more voters requested absentee ballots individually after sample ballots were distributed.

City Clerk Barbara Bishop-Smith estimates that 40% of the city’s 58,000 voters will cast ballots in the single-issue special election, which asks simply, “Shall Melba Bishop be recalled from the office of member of the City Council?” It also asks voters whether her replacement should be chosen by council appointment or by a special election.

The last time Oceanside voters went to the polls for a single-issue special election was in 1987, when they voted on Proposition A, a slow-growth measure. In that election, about 4,000 voters used absentee ballots and the overall turnout was 37%.

In typical general elections, about two-thirds of Oceanside voters vote, the city clerk’s office said.

The recall movement was sparked after two Bishop allies--Nancy York and Don Rodee--were elected last year, establishing the city’s first slow-growth majority on the council.

In the wake of their election and newfound power, the Bishop troika turned City Hall politics on its head, firing half the city’s appointed Planning Commission, stripping Mayor Larry Bagley of some of his powers and slashing Police and Fire department budgets to ease the city’s fiscal crisis.

Among those seeking Bishop’s recall are Bagley, the Oceanside Merchants Assn. and the Oceanside Firefighters Assn., which was angered by Bishop’s plans to reorganize its paramedic program.

Bishop counts as among her supporters the residents of mobile home parks, who favor her rent-control philosophy, slow-growth advocates and the Oceanside Police Officers Assn., which won her support for pay raises.

Each side in the recall campaign has raised about $40,000, and some of that has gone toward professional political consultants.