Alleged GOP Plant Is Thrown Off O.C. Ballot : Politics: Judge removes Campbell as threat to fair election. One Democrat and four Republicans are left.

Wading into the recall election of Assemblywoman Doris Allen, a Superior Court judge Thursday removed from the ballot a Democratic candidate accused by her own party of being a Republican plant in the race to succeed the Cypress lawmaker.

Judge James T. Ford declared that Democrat Laurie Campbell was no longer a candidate, forcing Orange County election officials to reprint thousands of ballots and recasting the battle to replace Allen if she is ousted from her seat.

“The integrity of the election process has to be paramount,” Ford declared in handing down his decision. “I guess no one ever argued that democracy is cheap. . . . I’m going to take her off the ballot.”

Democrats pushed to have Campbell disqualified largely in the hope of helping the candidacy of Linda Moulton-Patterson, a former Huntington Beach mayor who now will be the lone Democrat in a field that includes four Republicans. The recall election and the possible selection of a replacement will help decide who controls the Assembly when legislators return in January.

But the judge’s decision was based on a provision of the state Elections Code. Ford ruled that Campbell’s nomination papers were improper because she contended in signing them that she had gathered the more than 40 signatures she needed to qualify. In fact, the signatures had been collected by someone else, a point Campbell’s own attorney conceded.

“The Republicans tried a scam, and the judge ended it,” said Bob Mulholland, California Democratic Party campaign adviser.

C. Emmett Mahle, Campbell’s attorney, argued that Campbell is “a legitimate candidate and obviously wants to be on the ballot,” and that her nomination papers were in “substantial compliance” with the law.

George Waters, the Democrats’ attorney, countered that Campbell’s candidacy was fundamentally invalid because of her flawed nomination papers and that the “most insidious part of what’s happening” is the possibility she could swing the election simply by draining votes from one of the other contenders.

Ford agreed. “I’m worried about the 2,000 or 3,000 votes she might get,” the judge said. “Those 2,000 or 3,000 might make a difference.”

Campbell has described herself as a conservative, and said in an interview that she is running to keep a liberal from winning. But she has not commented on the charge that her candidacy is being fostered by the Republican Party. She was at the funeral of her mother-in-law in Salem, Ore., on Thursday and did not attend the hearing.

Ford’s decision alters the calculus in the race to succeed Allen, who came under immediate heavy fire from GOP colleagues after she struck a deal with Democrats to become Assembly Speaker in June.

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Allen resigned the Speaker’s post in September, but the recall started when she took the job had gone forward and even some of her close supporters suggest the lawmaker’s chances of survival appear grim.

Officials in the Allen camp, however, insisted Thursday’s ruling only underlines the need to turn back the recall.

“If something isn’t done to stop the recall of Doris Allen, a Democrat--Linda Moulton-Patterson--will be the representative from this Republican district,” said Gil Ferguson, a former assemblyman who is helping Allen fight the ouster attempt.

Assembly Democrats have eyed Moulton-Patterson’s candidacy, but so far have not publicly committed to offering the hefty financial support she would need to overcome a big GOP registration advantage in the district.

“We haven’t made that decision yet,” said Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar). “I still think [Moulton-Patterson] is a long shot. But it’s certainly better now that the Republican Party doesn’t have a spoiler it can hide behind. They have to come out of the shadows.”

Orange County Democratic Party Chairman Jim Toledano said he and others might want to continue the lawsuit or follow up with another one so they can question Campbell under oath and press to recover the costs to the county of reprinting the ballots.

“We would like to recover the costs to us and the County of Orange from the people who have engaged in this political dirty trick and whose objectives are political power and nothing else,” Toledano said.

Moulton-Patterson called Campbell “a Republican shill” who sought “to confuse voters and drain votes away from a united Democratic stand in the district.”

Republican leaders, meanwhile, began to focus on rallying behind a single Republican. They are concerned the four-person GOP field could split the vote and allow a victory by Moulton-Patterson, who ran unsuccessfully for county supervisor last year. Voter registration in Allen’s northwest Orange County district, which is dominated by the city of Huntington Beach, is 52% Republican and 34% Democrat.

Assemblywoman Marilyn C. Brewer (R-Irvine) said Campbell’s disqualification “certainly complicates things” for the Republicans.

Brewer was among a dozen party leaders--including most of the county’s legislative delegation--who met last week to analyze polling data, assess the recall and weigh the likelihood of a GOP win in the replacement contest.

The group decided to delay endorsing a single GOP candidate, but several members said they are likely to coalesce behind one Republican by early next week. They said polling would be done this weekend to determine which candidate to support.

“I am getting anxious about moving forward with this thing,” said Doy Henley, president of the influential and conservative Lincoln Club, whose members attended the session last week. “I want to get behind a candidate.”

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The Republican candidates are: attorney Scott Baugh; nurse and school trustee Shirley Carey; former Huntington Beach Mayor Don MacAllister and businesswoman Haydee V. Tillotson.

The reprinting of the election material will cause a delay in the labeling and mailing of absentee ballots, which were due in the mail next Monday, 30 days before the election.

Absentee ballots will be available on time at the registrar’s office, but “my guess is they would go out in the mail no later than next Friday [Nov. 3],” Registrar of Voters Rosalyn Lever said. “We are still working out the logistics.”

She estimated the cost to the county to reprint the election materials--including sample ballot pamphlets, absentee ballots and election day ballots--at about $40,000. About 15,000 absentee ballots have been requested; approximately 37,000 absentee ballots and more than 200,000 ballots already have been printed.

During the hourlong hearing in Sacramento Superior Court, Ford admitted early on that he would prefer not to force election officials into a costly reprint.

But the judge ultimately decided to pull Campbell off the ballot and order the reprinting of ballots without her name after debating the issues with Oliver Cox, an attorney representing the secretary of state’s office.

Cox told the judge that “the possibility of [Campbell’s candidacy] affecting the result is a very real one, given some of the pundits’ projections” and suggested that it could “open up a Pandora’s box of problems” that could hurt the state electoral process.

An official with the district attorney’s office said prosecutors may want to question Campbell. “We are still in the inquiry stage right now,” said Guy Ormes, supervising deputy district attorney. “We may very well [question her] sometime in the future.”

The legal tussle came just days before Monday’s deadline for the county registrar of voters to mail absentee ballots.

The Democratic Party lawsuit challenged the authenticity of Campbell’s nominating petitions, which were signed by 43 Democrats who live in the 67th Assembly District. Democrats also alleged that Campbell committed the felony of perjury, a point the judge was unwilling to take up on Thursday.

The lawsuit came after stories in The Times reported on the strategy of Orange County Republican leaders and other conservatives who sought to limit the election field to three or fewer Republicans and recruit Democrats to dilute support for Moulton-Patterson.

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Campbell, a political unknown, earlier this month told The Times: “I know that by my running, I may prevent someone with a more liberal agenda from winning. . . . My personal fear was Linda Moulton-Patterson would win.” But she refused to say who persuaded her to run.

State law requires the circulator of nominating petitions to sign the document, and to declare under penalty of perjury that he or she is a registered voter in the political district.

Campbell declared she was the circulator of her petitions. But as part of the suit, eight registered Democrats who signed the petition have said in affidavits that they were asked to sign them by a white male between 25 and 35 years of age. Another whose name appears on one says she did not sign the petition at all.