DIAMOND BAR : Harmony Recall Drive Fails as Petition Deadline Passes

A recall campaign against Diamond Bar Councilman Clair W. Harmony died when the drive’s organizers failed to submit any signatures for Harmony’s ouster on the day the petition was due.

The recall campaign began in December, when Harmony’s critics accused the first-term councilman of physical assaults that included body-slamming a councilwoman, picking fights with other council members and attacking a resident with a sledgehammer. Harmony denied the charges, saying he was the victim in those altercations and merely acted in self-defense.

Harmony said the recall drive against him was an attempt to conceal what he called financial abuses by other council members. He contended the drive organizers dropped their efforts after he rebutted their charges of assault and political misdeeds with accusations of his own.

“I won because I wrote down in my defense statement why they were doing it,” he said after the recall effort failed Friday. “They were covering up for extortion attempts against developers and covering up the financial situation” in Diamond Bar.

In his defense statement printed on the petition, Harmony claimed that other council members, including Gary Miller, Gary Werner and Phyllis Papen, participated in land grabs of Diamond Bar’s open space and contributed to what he called “an Orange County-style financial debacle” in City Hall.

But Werner said he and the other council members played no part in the recall effort against Harmony.

“I have no idea why (the campaign) was dropped,” Werner said. “I do know the statements he has made are totally untrue. It’s smoke and mirrors.”

Recall proponent John Forbing said the campaign members halted their efforts to oust Harmony as a gesture of peace in the contentious city of 55,000, which has seen three recall drives since it was founded five years ago. He said he did not know how many of the 6,000 needed signatures the drive had gathered. According to Forbing, the effort ended in February, although recall proponents never announced they were dropping the drive.

“The recall people decided that since Councilman Harmony was isolated on the council, it wasn’t worth the antagonism that a recall causes,” Forbing said.