Challengers in Auto Club Vote Soundly Rejected
The four insurgents who forced the Auto Club of Southern California to hold its first contested election in 30 years by running on a platform of big tax cuts for motorists were soundly defeated Monday.
The ballot results for four seats on the Board of Directors of the 100-year-old nonprofit organization were announced at a meeting held inside a huge white tent near the beach in Coronado.
The tent seemed an appropriate locale, as the meeting briefly took on a circus atmosphere. The challengers stood in a spotlight, taking swipes at the incumbents as more than 250 club members sat on folding chairs, cheering for their favorite candidates.
But in the end, nearly 600,000 of the club’s 5 million members who voted by proxy ballots or in person reelected the four incumbent board members by a margin of 66 to 1.
The challengers--Carl Olson, Peter Ford, Mark Seidenberg and Robin Westmiller--said they were not surprised by the results, considering that the Auto Club used members’ dues and club employees to campaign for the incumbents.
“It’s set records in unfairness,” said Olson, an accounting professor from Woodland Hills.
The incumbents--Edward M. Carson, Donn B. Miller, Joan A. Payden and Gilbert T. Ray--called the election fair and said their overwhelming victory is an indication that they have done a good job.
The incumbents each received more than 530,000 votes. Each of the challengers received about 8,000 votes.
“You don’t throw out people who do a good job,” Ray said.
The incumbents were reelected to three-year terms on the club’s 12-member Board of Directors. The Auto Club provides towing services, insurance coverage and travel assistance for members from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border.
In the last 30 years, candidates for the Board of Directors have been nominated by a committee of club members selected by the board. Because there have been no challengers in that time, the nominated candidates have been automatically appointed by the board without an election.
But that changed this year when Olson and his slate collected 2,300 signatures on a nominating petition, qualifying them for the ballot.
Olson’s slate campaigned on a platform of fighting to abolish the state’s car tax and the sales and excise taxes that are charged at the gas pumps.
Auto Club officials have accused the challengers of being a partisan slate controlled by conservative legislators like Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Northridge), who shares the challengers’ positions on taxes.
Auto Club officials concede that they have used the organization’s money to send out thousands of mailers to encourage members to vote for the incumbents. Club officials also acknowledge that the club has urged employees at its 70 offices throughout Southern California to campaign for the incumbents.
But Auto Club officials said such tactics conform to the bylaws of the club, which operates under the rules of a nonprofit corporation.
Lawsuit Is Filed
Olson and his slate have filed a lawsuit that challenges these and other tactics. A hearing is scheduled May 8 in Los Angeles Superior Court. Olson hopes the court will overturn the election results.
But during the meeting Monday, even before the ballot results were announced, Olson and his fellow insurgents raised additional objections to the election. Anticipating such a challenge, the Auto Club hired a retired associate state Supreme Court judge to act as an election inspector. The club also hired a lawyer to act as parliamentarian to ensure that the meeting was run fairly.
Among a long list of objections, Olson accused the club employees who collected the ballots and announced the results of being biased. He noted that all club employees have been asked by the Board of Directors to support the incumbent slate.
But some club members in the audience criticized some of Olson’s objections, calling them petty.
“It sounds like he is reading this from a book,” said Roger Algee, a club member from Carlsbad.
Among other objections, Olson asked that the meeting be adjourned because it was incorrectly advertised as taking place in San Diego, when in fact it was held on the grounds of a hotel in Coronado, several miles south of San Diego.
The parliamentarian, Marshall Small, an attorney from San Francisco, repeatedly told Olson to file his complaints with the judge.
