O.C. Votes Itself the Recall Capital : Politics: Increasingly, activists won’t wait for next election to try to oust officials. Eleven are targeted now.

Day after day, holidays included, they work the malls and markets, streets and parking lots, snagging signatures where they can.

Their tools are simple. A clipboard, a pen and a well-consulted article of the California Constitution containing the blueprint for removing an elected official from office.

Unfamiliar with the recall at hand? They’ll enlighten you. Not registered to vote? They’ll sign you up. Their bottom line is your signature on the dotted line.

Los Angeles may be the birthplace of U.S. recall elections, and California the spawning ground of more recall attempts against governors (30), Supreme Court justices (27) and state lawmakers (52) than any other state.

But Orange County is command central for the recall movement, with voters in one community being summoned to the polls not once, but twice, in a single month this fall. And at one crowded beach hot spot in Dana Point, those seeking to oust two City Council members find themselves bumping into another group wanting to remove a judge from office.

The issues igniting the most recent spate of recalls are the typical hot buttons--from tax increases to the county’s bankruptcy, from real estate development to a rift in Republican party ranks.

Simpler concerns have prevailed as well: Contributing to a recall drive in Dana Point was the City Council’s decision to build new ball fields at the local high school.

“Orange County has always been the hotbed for recall politics,” said Charles M. Price, a Cal State Chico political science professor, who has studied recalls nationwide. “With a population that is middle-class, somewhat elderly and white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, it seems to be the ideal testing ground for recalls.”

Price said a more well-to-do electorate with time on its hands is more likely to push recalls than residents in poorer areas with more pressing worries.

Since the late 1970s, nearly 200 public officials in Orange County have come under the threat of recall, and 24 have been removed from office. By way of contrast, only three elected state officials have been removed from office in the 84 years since the recall was adopted.

Of late, the recallers have tapped into the fury of Cypress residents outraged over council approval of the building of a carpet-distribution warehouse near a peaceful residential neighborhood. They are railing against a local judge who spared from prison two young men charged with slaying a San Clemente teen-ager.

Distrustful of Supervisors Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez’s promise to leave office last month, they continued to collect signatures seeking his removal, even after the governor publicly invited nominations for Vasquez’s replacement.

Vasquez departed Wednesday as promised and the recall has been dropped.

But in its place is a fresh recall against William G. Steiner, another county supervisor, and the promise of yet another against colleague Marian Bergeson. Meanwhile, the dust has barely settled on a failed bid, earlier this year, to oust yet a fourth supervisor, Roger R. Stanton.

Doris Allen, the Cypress Republican who became the first female Speaker of the Assembly on the strength of 38 Democratic votes and her own, but none from Republicans, faces a Nov. 28 recall launched and funded by her own party because she cut a deal with then-Speaker Willie Brown, a Democrat, to succeed him--even though she has since resigned the post.

Meanwhile, a majority of the Irvine City Council is threatened with removal for gambling with borrowed money in the county’s failed investment pool.

In Orange County, getting elected to public office doesn’t always mean you get to serve the standard two- or four-year term. And lately, the drives to remove politicians from office are turning increasingly nasty.

“I learned a long time ago never to underestimate the goodness of people, and the evil of people,” says Vasquez, who was served his recall papers as he made a speech at a local university where he once taught political science. “I’ve met some of the nicest people in the world and some of the meanest people in the world.”

Vasquez might have been talking about W. Snow Hume, the bombastic architect of last year’s recall of three Fullerton City Council members who decided to balance their budget by tacking a 2% tax on their constituents’ monthly utility bills. That successful recall effort spawned the Orange County Recalls Committee and the attempts to remove Vasquez, Steiner and possibly Bergeson.

The Yale-educated Hume, a Fullerton accountant, presides over a network of recall and reform groups that have used the Orange County bankruptcy as a platform to help pull elected officials from their perches and to push some of their fellow activists onto various oversight committees keeping a watchful eye over the county.

“Recallers are a suspicious bunch by nature,” Hume says. “You don’t get involved with something like this unless someone has tricked you or lied to you.”

Aside from engineering recall campaigns of their own, Hume’s colleagues serve as advisers for other Southern California activists thinking about trying to remove their public officials.

They counseled residents of Agoura Hills who wanted to oust five council members for approving a 4% utility tax, and one of those officials presently faces recall in a special election.

The Fullerton crew also helped the Cypress recall committee, and its members are providing guidance to San Clemente residents angry over a recent City Council vote to levy a tax of as much as $90 a year per household to repair the city’s streets.

“I’m more than happy to talk to anyone about the recall process,” said Tom Babcock, a Fullerton recall committee leader who coaches others on the process. “The most important thing I tell people is if they don’t have the heart for it, then don’t get into it.”

During the Fullerton council recall, Babcock devoted more than a year to helping mobilize the signature-collection effort, and his hospital lab equipment business suffered as a result. By the time the election was held, he had to let go of two of his four employees.

Despite the toll it took, the effort was worthwhile, said Babcock, whose disillusionment with national politics led him to join Ross Perot’s United We Stand America and eventually convinced him to get involved in a more grass-roots movement.

“Based on your efforts locally, you can really experience change much more than you can at a national level,” he said. “My feeling is, maybe if you get politicians started right at the local level, then they’ll behave by the time they get into national politics.”

Hume’s Cypress counterpart, Bob Pepper, organized voters to go door to door for the past eight months to help get rid of three City Council members he accuses of being unresponsive to their constituents.

Cypress voters were mostly riled up over a recent vote to place a 439,650-square-foot carpet warehouse near an upscale neighborhood. While council members focused on the jobs and taxes the warehouse would bring, neighboring residents worried that their property values would plunge, because the giant carpet distribution hub--the size of 10 football fields--is being allowed to operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Pepper’s group needed 4,600 signatures to qualify its recall petition and got 6,700. But it was no easy task. One of the targeted council members had been in office less than 90 days--and was thus protected by state law from recall--so signatures were first collected against only two council members, before the recallers could start again from scratch to collect signatures against the third.

The group’s persistence at pounding doors and standing outside supermarkets paid off. In a November special election, Cypress voters will decide whether to oust Mayor Cecilia L. Age and council members Walter K. Bowman and Gail H. Kerry.

“These City Council members are not responsive to the people,” Pepper said. “We’re their ultimate employers and they have forgotten that. They don’t have the right to disagree. They work for us.”

As he collected signatures, Pepper was repeatedly asked why recall backers didn’t just wait until next year when their targets’ terms expire, and vote the trio out of office then.

“You can’t depend on the electorate to remember,” he said. “They’d just go out and vote for the incumbent. Remember Marion Barry.”

In much of the rest of the nation, recall is largely a non-issue. Only 17 states permit the recall of state officials, and 11 of those are west of the Mississippi.

Although 36 states allow for the recall of county or municipal officials, studies show it is seldom used in most areas. California far outpaces the rest of the country when it comes to targeting elected officials.

Price, the Cal State Chico professor, found that Californians organized nearly 400 local recall attempts during the tumultuous 1970s. That was more than the next most active states--Oregon and Michigan--combined. And the frequency of California recall attempts has increased steadily throughout the 1980s and 1990s as distrust of government has swelled, recall experts say.

In Orange County, recalls have been pursued with almost religious fervor, as the bankruptcy, the Doris Allen battle and the controversial votes of a half-dozen city councils have whipped up a conservative electorate already deeply distrustful of government.

“People are frustrated and very angry,” said Dana Point Mayor Karen Lloreda, who has been targeted for recall by some city residents. “Things in their lives are out of control and local government is a real easy target right now.”

Easy or not, local government is certainly a target. Although exact numbers are hard to come by, it is believed that three-fourths of all recalls occur at the local level, either against city councils or school boards.

The reasons have much to do with the nature of local government. For one, it is easier to gather from 6,000 to 10,000 signatures for an attempt to oust a locally elected official than the tens of thousands needed for a state lawmaker, for example, or about half a million for someone elected statewide.

Despite near constant criticism that the California recall process is being used in arbitrary and unfair ways, those who have been involved in its inner workings seem unfazed.

“Whether it’s appropriate is something that has to be answered in the marketplace,” said Jack Roberts, one of the organizers of the Dana Point recall. “We’ve had 5,000 people who have signed up, so they must think it’s a good thing.”

Don Bankhead couldn’t disagree more. Turned out of office along with two others last year during the Fullerton recall election, the former police captain was voted back onto the council five weeks later. When the new council voted to repeal the utility tax that led to the recall, Bankhead held his ground and voted against rescinding the levy.

Bankhead maintains that the recall has become an overused and expensive tool, intimidating would-be office-seekers, and often initiated out of political vindictiveness. Unhappy voters would do better to wait until the next election to turn out unwanted officials, he says, rather than embark on costly and time-consuming special elections.

The Fullerton recall, for example, cost $300,000. Cypress’ council election will cost at least $70,000. The Allen recall election in late November, which also involves Cypress voters, will cost between $150,000 and $300,000. And it could get much more expensive if Allen isn’t ousted.

Invoking a never-before tested provision of the state Constitution, Assemblyman Michael J. Machado (D-Linden), who recently defeated a Republican-backed recall, has threatened to file a claim for the $800,000 he spent to defend his office.

“Recall shouldn’t be used unless someone has done something that would be considered illegal or immoral,” Bankhead says. “Otherwise, deal with that person at the ballot box during the regular election time. The recall is being used on a whim.”

The recall process traces its roots back thousands of years to Athens’ heyday, when the populace could vote to banish a politician for up to a decade. A provision allowing the recall of state delegates was among the Articles of Confederation during the 1780s, but was not included in the U. S. Constitution, which relies on the impeachment process instead.

Progressive Era reformers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries pushed the recall, along with the initiative and the referendum, because they believed public officials were more beholden to party bosses, political machines and corporate interests than they were to their constituents.

The newly formed governments in western states, where political machines were weaker, embraced the reforms. In California, Republican Gov. Hiram Johnson helped spearhead the movement beginning in 1910.

The city of Los Angeles was the first government in the United States to adopt a recall provision, when voters approved a new city charter in 1903 by a ratio of nearly 4 to 1. The charter also included provisions for initiatives and referendums.

Within a decade of the Los Angeles vote, 25 other municipalities in the state--including San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Monica and Pasadena--followed suit and included recall provisions in their charters.

In 1911, California became the second state in the country--after Oregon--to adopt a statewide recall device. Orange County’s recall provision went into effect during that same year.

Unlike their counterparts in some other states, voters in California can launch recalls over anything, or nothing. Alaska, Kansas, Montana and Washington, by contrast, require that specific grounds be listed for recall. In Alaska, it must be for incompetence, negligence or corruption; in Kansas and Montana, a felony conviction is needed; and in Washington, the charge of malfeasance or violation of an oath of office is required.

Every California governor since 1960--Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, Ronald Reagan, Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown, George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson, who is currently facing his fourth recall attempt this year--have been targeted.

Deukmejian and California Chief Justice Rose Bird each faced nine recall attempts. Bird weathered six attempts in 1982 alone, and Deukmejian fought back three in 1986. Among state legislators, Assemblyman Sam Farr (D-Carmel) was targeted the most often with eight recall attempts between 1985 and 1990. None of the attempts against Bird, Deukmejian or Farr ever made it to the ballot.

Over the years, the recall has been used for the serious as well as the frivolous in California. In 1924, the mayor of Azusa was nearly ousted for making a “hilarious comment” about the annual parade of the Portuguese Society during the celebration of Pentecost. Angry voters filed a recall against the mayor of Paradise in 1981 because he banned parking on Main Street during the city’s Gold Nugget Days Parade.

Orange County has had its share of silliness: A recall was launched in 1987 against the San Clemente City Council for losing the Richard Nixon presidential library to Yorba Linda; in 1988, recall petitions were circulated against three members of the Laguna Beach City Council for refusing to allow a business owner to put a display rack outside her clothing store; and the Newport Beach school board was under recall for transferring two high school principals that same year.

Whatever its faults, there appears to be no movement to do away with recall. Among its staunchest supporters is a man who was the target of the state’s most expensive local recall election, who happens to support the Doris Allen recall.

Former Mission Viejo Councilman Robert A. Curtis, who watched as large developers raised $500,000 to remove him from office in 1990, says his recall was tantamount to an “unrelenting siege” that lasted more than a year and left him emotionally drained.

The recall failed by a 2-to-1 ratio.

“It certainly left a bad taste in our household with respect to the political process. But I understood what was at stake and what the motivations were behind the recall,” he said. “I think the system is fine the way it is. The public can determine the issue on its merits. They did in my case.”

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Recall Central

Orange County is a hotbed of recall movements, with 11 attempts in progress from Cypress to Dana Point. Since 1979, nearly 200 public officials in Orange County have come under the threat of recall; 24 have been removed in 14 special elections.

CURRENT ATTEMPTS

* County Supervisor William G. Steiner, for his role in Orange County’s bankruptcy

* Cypress Mayor Cecilia L. Age and council members Walter K. Bowman and Gail H. Kerry, for approving a huge carpet warehouse near a residential neighborhood

* Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress) for cutting a deal with Democratic then-Speaker Willie Brown to become his replacement; she has resigned the speakership, but recall continues

* Dana Point Mayor Karen Lloreda and Councilman Harold R. Kaufman, for supporting development in the city, including the decision to build new ball fields at a local high school

* Irvine Mayor Michael Ward and council members Barry J. Hammond and Paula Werner, for approving a plan to borrow $62 million of city money to put in county investment pool

* Orange County Superior Court Judge Everett W. Dickey, for sentencing the killers of a San Clemente teen-ager to the California Youth Authority instead of prison

* Recalls of Supervisors Gaddi H. Vasquez (who stepped down Wednesday) and Roger R. Stanton, for their roles in the Orange County bankruptcy, were recently abandoned

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IN AN ANGRY STATE

Since the passage of California’s recall law in 1911, there have been more than 100 attempts to oust state officials. Fewer than 3% have been successful.

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Office Attempted Qualified Successful Governor 30 0 0 Lieutenant governor 1 0 0 Attorney general 2 0 0 Supreme Court (all members) 1 0 0 Supreme Court (chief justices) 11 0 0 Supreme Court (associate justices) 15 0 0 State senators 16 4 2 Assembly members 36 2 1 Total 112 6 3

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Sources: Orange County registrar of voters; California secretary of state’s office

Researched by MARK PLATTE / Los Angeles Times