Recalls Become a Way of Life in Orange County

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.

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

But in Orange County, recalls are pursued with almost religious fervor, with the county’s bankruptcy, the Doris Allen speakership battle and the controversial votes of half a dozen city councils whipping up a conservative electorate that is deeply distrustful of government.

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

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 Allen’s rift with Republicans in the Assembly.

“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. In contrast, three elected state officials have been removed from office in the 84 years since the recall provision was adopted.

Distrustful of county Supervisor Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez’s promise to leave office this month, recall groups continued to collect signatures seeking his removal, even after the governor publicly invited nominations for his replacement.

Vasquez has since resigned and the recall has been dropped.

In Orange County, getting elected to public office does not 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,” said 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.

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 push some of their fellow activists onto various oversight committees.

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

Hume’s colleagues also serve as advisers for other Southern California activists thinking about removing their public officials.

In the early part of this century, the city of Los Angeles was the first government in the nation to adopt a recall provision. Voters approved a new City Charter in 1903 by a ratio of nearly 4-to-1.

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 that same year.

California far outpaces the rest of the country when it comes to targeting elected officials.

Every California governor since 1960--both Browns, Ronald Reagan, George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson, who is facing his fourth recall attempt this year--have been targeted.

Whatever the faults, there appears to be no movement to do away with recalls. Among theirstaunchest supporters is a man who was the target of the state’s most expensive local recall election.

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 2-1 margin.

“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.”