Court Ruling Shoots Down Zeanah Recall Bid

In a major victory for Councilwoman Elois Zeanah, a judge Friday blocked city officials from verifying petitions for Zeanah’s recall--mainly on grounds that they weren’t printed on a single page as required by law.

Technically, Superior Court Judge Joe D. Hadden only granted Zeanah’s attorneys a preliminary injunction preventing the recall signatures from being verified until there is a further hearing on the legality of the petitions.

For all intents and purposes, however, Hadden’s ruling spells the end of the current signature drive, according to its organizers, though they stressed that they may launch a new campaign as early as next week.

Peter J. Turpel, spokesman for Yes! Remove Elois Zeanah, conceded after the hearing that the group is reconsidering its options--including waiting until the 1998 elections to try to oust Zeanah. The committee has already spent tens of thousands of dollars in its recall campaign, gathering about 15,800 signatures with help from professional petitioners.

“I wouldn’t say I’m very pleased,” Turpel said outside the courtroom in the East County Courthouse. “Once again, Mrs. Zeanah has tried to skirt the issue and stop the will of the people. We’re going to have to regroup.

“As you can imagine, we’re all stunned,” Turpel added several hours later. “We collected more than 15,000 signatures. In my opinion, this is a slap in the face of voters. We realize we have a commitment to the people that signed this. But for all intents and purposes, these 15,000 signatures are invalid.”

Yes! Remove Elois Zeanah will announce its plans on Monday, Turpel said.

Zeanah, who said she spent a sleepless night Thursday pondering her political future, believes the time has come for her opponents to drop the recall. She predicted the current signature drive has been snuffed out.

“If they are hearing what the community is saying, the people are sick of the recalls,” Zeanah said. “The people want us to get back to business, and this is wasted time and wasted money.

“They could spend more money and wait more time for another hearing,” she added. “But it would probably be the same judge and the same result. The law is very clear, and I see this as a win for the community.”

In granting the injunction, Hadden humorously stated several times that the petition format used by Yes! Remove Elois Zeanah and approved by City Clerk Nancy Dillon clearly appears to break state election laws designed to ensure that voters understand the significance of what they are being asked to sign.

“Here we are, going into Target . . . and someone says, ‘Sign here to take the butterfat content of your milk,”’ Hadden quipped. “It could be a petition to recall someone. The people should be notified of what they’re signing.”

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Zeanah’s lawyers, Raleigh H. Levine and Frederic D. Woocher, will ask Hadden to force Dillon to throw the signatures out if the issue does not die.

They argued Friday that in the anti-Zeanah petitions, much of the recall information required to be on the same side residents are asked to sign was placed on the wrong side of the page.

To stress that using both sides was not the only way to accommodate all of the information--one of the principal opposing arguments by City Atty. Mark Sellers--they gave Hadden a sample petition showing how it could have been accomplished.

To drive home their point that such format violations could be seriously misleading, they presented Hadden with affidavits from residents who said they signed the petition under the impression it was to support Zeanah.

“[Hadden’s] butterfat analogy was actually very true,” Levine said after the hearing. “The whole point of the law is to protect voters.”

Quoting the Oxford dictionary’s definition of “page,” Sellers argued that state election law only requires the recall information to be on the same sheet of paper, not necessarily on the same side.

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Hadden was not persuaded.

“If you followed that, each book would only have half the pages we usually assume it has,” Hadden said. “That lacks common sense.”

Mitchel B. Kahn, the attorney for Yes! Remove Elois Zeanah, argued that his clients were a group of well-meaning citizens whose efforts should not be thrown out because Dillon made a technical error by approving a potentially flawed petition format.

Hadden did not buy that one either.

“The city clerk cannot, by her acquiescence, provide a Get Out of Jail Free card,” Hadden replied. “City clerks make mistakes too. The fact that she approved it doesn’t make it right.”

Kahn also argued that due to all the media coverage of the recall issue and since signature gatherers typically wore anti-Zeanah buttons and carried anti-Zeanah posters on their rounds, any rational person should have realized he or she was being asked to sign a recall petition.

Once again, Hadden disagreed.

“I can’t make a ruling on what someone was wearing that day,” he said.

Hadden also agreed with a point made by Zeanah’s lawyers that the councilwoman’s rebuttal to the recall was given short shrift on the petitions. It was reduced to a much more condensed version than the argument to oust her.

Woocher, whose Santa Monica law firm specializes in election-law cases, said afterward that he was surprised by the city of Thousand Oaks’ insistence to fight out the case.

“The arguments the city made, they really ought to be embarrassed,” Woocher said. “I don’t mean to be unprofessional or put anyone down, but they presented no logical arguments.”

Levine predicted that the hearing will mean the end of the petitions.

“If I were in their shoes, I would not take this any further,” she said. “They have nothing. It’s very clear where this is going.”