How to Send a Strong Message : Answering the absurdity of the Roberti recall April 12

Just eight weeks.

The shortness of that period offers the best representation of how silly, vindictive and wasteful the recall election against Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) is. Voters in the San Fernando Valley’s 20th Senate District already were scheduled to go to the polls on June 7 for a primary. That was the logical first step in selecting a successor for Roberti, who because of term limits is set to step down on Dec. 5 anyway.

Instead, financially strapped Los Angeles County will have to waste $800,000 to $1 million to conduct another election on April 12, the one in which Roberti either will be ousted from his seat or allowed to complete his few remaining months in office.

We have the gun lobby to thank for this stunt. It paid big bucks to gather signatures for the recall election and forced this mockery of the process on us because of Roberti’s eminently sensible support of tighter gun control laws.

The Constitutional Rights Federation, a San Fernando Valley gun owners group, spearheaded the signature-gathering. One of the five little-known challengers on the recall ballot is a gun store owner. Another is a Valley gun club official. A third was the victim of a house burglary recently in which the thief escaped with $12,500 in guns.

Roberti is leading 2 to 1 in the polls, and the recall backers have managed to raise just $164,000 since last July (one such fund-raising idea included, of course, a gun raffle). Still, the recall effort should not be ignored or taken lightly.

It should be used to send a message to any and all who would bastardize the recall process because they disagree with an elected official on a single issue. It should be used to demonstrate that such juvenile antics will not be tolerated by a sophisticated Los Angeles electorate. Defeat the recall on April 12. Keep Roberti in office until the end of his term, and send that message.