A California state judge dismissed efforts this past week to halt a recall vote led by a local police union who are attempting to oust a progressive city council member.
The union, which is upset that the politician voted against officers’ pay raises, has so far spent more than $660,000 on the vote to recall Santa Ana council member Jessie Lopez, with voting happening 14 November.
In California, only 10% of signatures from registered voters in jurisdictions with 100,000 or more voters is required for a recall petition to be approved, giving such measures a much higher chance to succeed than in many other parts of the US – which is why the state has seen recall efforts against its governor, Gavin Newsom; the San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin; and the Alameda county district attorney Pamela Price (Newsom remained governor, Boudin was ousted and the effort against Price is ongoing).
The city of Santa Ana in southern California – adjacent to Anaheim, home of Disneyland – has a population of more than 300,000, divided into six wards.
The recall petition began after Lopez voted against the police union’s demands for pay raises in December 2022. Property and landlord groups have also backed the recall effort in response to Lopez’s support for a 2021 rent-control law. Notable support came in the form of a recent $100,000 donation from the National Association of Realtors Fund.
If Lopez loses the recall, she’s out of office and can’t run in a special election to find a replacement for the remainder of her term.
The judge’s decision to allow the recall to continue was in response to a request for a temporary order to halt the vote, which was filed by a resident who voted for Lopez in 2020 but would not be eligible to vote in the recall vote because she doesn’t live in the ward’s current boundaries.
“This recall effort is corrupt and will cost Santa Ana taxpayers $1.2m if the special interests get their way,” Jessie Lopez said on her campaign website against the recall.
Lopez’s website alleges that the recall effort utilized canvassers who were paid per voter signature, and it characterized the recall as an effort by the Santa Ana police association president Gerry Serrano to flip control of the city council in his favor.
This prompted the Orange county registrar’s office to rescind its certification of the recall petition signatures. But the Santa Ana city council deadlocked in a 3-3 vote, with Lopez abstaining, on whether to take action to halt the recall.
The judge said the court would revisit the signature issue after the recall vote in January 2024.
Lopez has received support from local labor unions, including the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 324 (UFCW), Unite Here Local 11, the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), the National Union of Healthcare Workers, Painters and Allied Trades District Council 36, the Orange county Democratic party, the Working Families Party and congresswoman Katie Porter.
UFCW Local 324 has noted Lopez helped Santa Ana residents win hazard pay during the Covid-19 pandemic and led efforts on rent control as well as cannabis tax reform legislation.
The Orange County Register newspaper’s editorial board wrote in opposition to the recall, saying: “We certainly have our differences with her on policy. But this recall really is about the lock-grip on power in the city of the Santa Ana police officers association. The police union and its allies have offered a litany of tangential reasons for the recall, but there’s no reason to pretend this is anything other than a power grab.”
In 2020, the Santa Ana police association also backed the successful recall of city council member Ceci Iglesias after she voted against police pay raises. The police union also attempted to trigger a recall vote of city council member Thai Viet Phan but did not gather enough signatures by the 7 August deadline.
