Frogue Recall Drive Lives On

The organizers of a campaign to recall a controversial community college trustee have missed the deadline to qualify for the November ballot, but they say they will continue their effort to force a special election.

“We are determined and we are quite confident that we will succeed,” said Harriett Walther, a spokeswoman for the Committee to Recall Steven J. Frogue.

Frogue, a second-term trustee who has served as president of the South Orange County Community College District board overseeing Saddleback College in Mission Viejo and Irvine Valley College in Irvine, has been under fire since last year.

Frogue proposed teaching a seminar on the assassination of President Kennedy that would have featured speakers who have written for publications considered anti-Semitic, including one who questioned whether 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust.

Frogue has maintained that he is a victim of demagoguery and has described the Holocaust as one of the “great atrocities” of history.

Earlier this year, he survived a recall effort after organizers failed to get the number of signatures required to qualify for the ballot. Two months ago, however, they started a new drive aimed at putting the matter to voters either on a general ballot or in a special election to be called by the Board of Trustees.

The petitioners have until Oct. 11 to collect about 38,000 verified signatures. If they make that deadline, the Board of Trustees can either set a special election or put the recall on a general election after November. To date, Walther said, they have collected about 16,000, slightly less than half the number required.

“We needed to act,” she said. “We could not stand by and let him continue with his outrageous words and actions unchallenged.”

Frogue could not be reached for comment.

In a written statement, he applauded the recall effort’s failure to meet the June 25 deadline for the November ballot and denounced its organizers.

“As I predicted,” he said, “the public will not be fooled by a campaign of lies, smears and demagoguery. Proponents of the recall are a small minority of faculty extremists . . . out of touch with the community mainstream who are rejecting their self-serving, radical political agenda that is in opposition to academic freedom.”