Zeanah Recall Group Sets Spending Record

Surpassing the largest sum ever shelled out to elect anyone in this city, the group working to recall Councilwoman Elois Zeanah has already spent $67,766, according to a quarterly financial statement released Friday.

Yes! Remove Elois Zeanah, however, has only received $32,735 in contributions--including $14,500 in loans from Domino’s pizza magnate Jill Lederer--and is saddled with $40,272 in unpaid bills, the report shows.

Lederer’s company, BTR Inc., has paid $24,753 of those unpaid bills for the group, and that assistance will probably be regarded as a loan in future reports, according to group spokesman Peter J. Turpel.

The remainder of the unpaid bill consists largely of attorney fees arising from a legal dispute with Zeanah earlier this year.

That brings Lederer’s total contribution to more than $39,000, of which most will probably never be reimbursed, Lederer said Friday.

“Frankly, even if we don’t get a dime of it back, we consider it money well spent,” said Lederer, a former Chamber of Commerce president and campaign manager for Zeanah rival, Councilman Andy Fox. “The committee has some good fund-raisers planned, but I doubt I’ll get that money back.

“You don’t make a loan like that with the expectation you’re going to get it back,” Lederer added. “You do it to commit seed money to a cause you believe in.”

A rival recall group, seeking to oust Fox and Mayor Judy Lazar, has yet to submit finance forms, which are due Wednesday. The anti-Zeanah group decided to file a few days early to show it has nothing to hide, Turpel said.

Turpel argued the report shows the group’s money has come from local residents and business owners, not out-of-town developers, as Zeanah has charged.

“You’re not going to find any developers on our list of contributors,” Turpel said. “You’re going to find property managers and people [political opponents] will say [they] are developers, but they’re really not.”

Well, not exactly. The list of contributors does not appear to contain any donations from large, out-of-town developers. But it does include $300 from local developer Moshe Silagi and $1,000 from the Building Industry Assn. of Southern California’s political action committee in Diamond Bar.

Other than Lederer, the cast of contributors is largely made up of local consultants, property managers, Realtors and business owners. In many cases, their livelihoods are at least indirectly linked to the development industry.

Zeanah argued Friday that the report proves what she has been saying all along: that developers and other special interests are banding together in hopes of ousting her.

“They’ve been exposed,” Zeanah said. “This group has been saying their effort is financed by the local residents and the small-business community, but that’s clearly not the case.

“They tried to hide it, but they weren’t able to,” she added. “These are clients of developers’ attorneys and out-of-town special interests who want to change the slow-growth direction of this city.”

Turpel said the report shows nothing of the kind, saying the bulk of the donations are from locals such as Westlake Realtor Joan Young, who gave $400.

“I could have the Mickey Mouse Club giving money, and Zeanah would say it was responsible for the development of Club Disney,” Turpel said. “Regardless of who gave money, she would say it was all coming from developers.”

Among the larger contributors are attorney Harvey Bookstein of Los Angeles accounting firm Roth, Bookstein and Zaslow, who gave $1,000; Dana Point consultant Robert Montgomery, who gave $1,000; and local engineering consultant Robert Haaland, who also gave $1,000.

A company called Open Spaces LTD, which listed a Thousand Oaks post office box number as its address, gave $5,000. Turpel said he is not sure what the group does or where it is based, but believes it’s a hiking-related company.

The expenditures of Yes! Remove Elois Zeanah show most of the group’s money was used to advertise the recall, hire paid signature-gatherers and fight Zeanah’s attorneys.

The group gathered more than 16,000 signatures earlier this year to oust Zeanah, but Zeanah’s attorneys successfully argued the petition format violated state law. The signatures were thrown out in February by Superior Court Judge Joe Hadden, and the group had to start from scratch.

Expenses included $32,326 for paid petitioners from Progressive Campaigns Inc. of Santa Monica, $12,388 in mailers and literature from Strong & Associates of Newbury Park, $4,000 for radio advertising on local station KNJO, and $15,518 to England, Whitfield, Schroeder & Tredway, an Oxnard law firm.

Recall groups are required by state law to disclose their finances at least four times a year, and more often as a recall election nears.

Both groups need to gather signatures from 15% of the city’s registered voters to place their recall measures on a ballot. That amounts to 10,169 signatures, according to the city clerk’s office.