Murrieta Mayor Trails in Recall

A contentious recall election triggered by rapid growth in suburban Riverside County appeared Wednesday to topple the pro-growth mayor of Murrieta, but two City Council members were clinging to their seats by slim margins.

Murrieta Mayor Jack van Haaster appears to have been ousted by about 200 votes of about 12,000 votes cast. About 700 absentee and provisional ballots remain to be counted, according to the Riverside County assistant registrar.

“I knew it would be close,” said Van Haaster, a 13-year City Council veteran. “The town is divided.... It reminds me a little bit of politics nationwide these days; it seems everybody is kind of split down the middle.”

Voters also selected Rick Gibbs, a business developer for Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems, to replace Van Haaster. “The strong message being sent to City Hall was that ... at least half the voters in the city that voted don’t believe we had responsive government.”

Murrieta, incorporated in 1991, had an estimated population of 78,000 in 2004. The city’s population has nearly quadrupled since 1990 as commuters have flocked to the lower-cost bedroom community along Interstate 15 in southwest Riverside County.

The city’s first recall has split both voters and city government over Murrieta’s direction in response to that growth.

“The pace of growth is so great, it’s overwhelming the people that are there,” said Ed Faunce, a spokesman for Rescue Murrieta, the group that led the recall effort.

Recalls are nothing new to Southern California, especially on the local level, said Shaun Bowler, a political science professor at UC Riverside. If anything, the shake-up shows “the demands of the region are being voiced now,” Bowler said.

“This is going to prompt the people in the county to work harder.... There are some wake-up calls going on here,” he said. “It’s really the system working as it should.”

The nearly yearlong recall campaign was started by Murrieta residents unhappy with the City Council’s approval of commercial development in residential areas, and the fact that the mayor lobbied city planners to approve his daughter’s day-care center.

The recall campaign concentrated on Van Haaster, Mayor Pro-Tem Kelly Seyarto and Councilman Doug McAllister, who often voted together on the five-member body. As of Wednesday afternoon, Seyarto was holding on to his post by about 200 votes and McAllister looked certain to stay in office with a more than 1,000-vote lead.

About 31% of Murrieta’s registered voters showed up at the polls Tuesday, a jump from the 24% turnout in the November 2003 council race.

Rescue Murrieta supporters were guardedly enthusiastic.

Murrieta residents “feel like their city is letting the quality of life deteriorate” with increasing traffic congestion and the growth of commercial development bumping up against residential areas, said Gibbs, whose victory was all but assured.

Van Haaster agreed the council was not always as open to the public as it could have been. “If there’s one thing that I can say the council did not do a good job of, it was trying to keep our citizenry informed of what was going on and why.”

People on both sides of the recall were surprised at Rescue Murrieta’s success considering the wide gap in fundraising between opposing PACs.

The Southwest County Taxpayers for Responsible Government PAC, made up mostly of businessmen against the recall, spent more than $300,000 to defeat it. Rescue Murrieta and political challengers spent about $20,000.

“People that actually went to the polls were low -- something we don’t understand,” said recall opponent Rex Oliver, president and chief executive of the Murrieta Chamber of Commerce.

“We had an awful lot of publicity out there.... Why did they not step up and vote?”

Members of Rescue Murrieta were also amazed at their unlikely political muscle.

The election results are “pretty astounding,” said Faunce, a spokesman for Rescue Murrieta, “because we ended up being opposed by what is essentially the entire power structure of Riverside County and then some.”

Seyarto, one of the council members who appeared to survive the recall, said he hoped the council would begin to work together, because a functioning council is crucial to attracting businesses.

“We have to step up and somehow forge a working relationship amongst all of us,” he added, “and move the city forward.”