Allen Recall Effort Won’t Hit Target of Nov. 7 Ballot : Politics: Still gathering signatures, organizers of campaign to oust the Assembly Speaker vow enough will be validated in time for an election later in the month.

The recall campaign against Assembly Speaker Doris Allen will miss its original goal of putting the issue on the Nov. 7 ballot, the date of the next regularly scheduled election, officials conceded Friday.

Leaders of the effort to oust the Cypress Republican said their self-imposed Labor Day deadline to collect enough valid signatures to force an election will pass with them thousands of names short.

But they said that is of little consequence, because they are certain to have the 25,606 required signatures validated by the registrar of voters in time for Gov. Pete Wilson to set an election for either Nov. 21 or Nov. 28.

Recall campaign co-chair Jim Righeimer said the delay would only postpone the inevitable for Allen. “The voters are going to recall Doris Allen regardless of when the election is,” he said. “The goal is to get her out of there and take control of the Assembly.”

To date, the Orange County registrar of voters’ office has validated 19,479 signatures on petitions to recall Allen, who outraged her GOP colleagues by securing the top Assembly post with the support of legislative Democrats. Petitions bearing another 2,000 are in hand but have not yet been processed.

Recall manager Jeff Flint said his forces will muster a significant effort over the three-day weekend and will close the 6,000-signature gap “in the next week or so.”

The governor must set a recall election for between 60 and 80 days from the date that the secretary of state’s office certifies that sufficient valid signatures have been accumulated. Even if the campaign gathered the remaining needed signatures during the weekend, the registrar would have to validate 6,000 of them by Sept. 8 to meet the 60-day cutoff point.

“We would be unlikely to finish it next week,” Assistant Registrar Don Taylor said.

Allen was targeted for recall in June when she joined 39 Democrats in the Assembly to win election as Speaker. Her only Republican vote was her own. At the forefront of the recall campaign are conservative Republicans in her district, led by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) and Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove). The county and state Republican parties have also endorsed her recall.

Knowing that Allen supporters might claim that a recall election would be too costly for the cash-strapped county, recall proponents in June hoped to place the issue on the Nov. 7 ballot. At the time, they believed the county might be placing a bankruptcy-related issue on the regular election ballot and hoped to save money by consolidating the recall with it.

But there are no countywide issues on the ballot this November. Within Allen’s 67th Assembly District, however, the city of Cypress will conduct its own recall election, which targets three City Council members.

Registrar Rosalyn Lever said a recall election against Allen would cost the county about $140,000.

In a related event, Assemblyman Michael J. Machado (D-Linden), who last week escaped recall in an election that cost San Joaquin County $300,000, said he is “seriously considering” asking the state to reimburse his cost fighting the recall.

A section of the state Constitution requires that a “state officer who is not recalled shall be reimbursed by the state for the officer’s recall election expenses legally and personally incurred.”

Machado said he spent $850,000 fighting the recall. He said that if is reimbursed, he would pay for half the county’s election bill. He challenged Republicans, who were active in prosecuting and funding the recall campaign, to pay the other half of San Joaquin County’s expenses.

State Republican Party Chairman John Herrington rejected the idea. “It is not up to us to cover the costs of a recall election,” he said. “We did not start it.”