The release last week of an investigative report into District
Attorney John Sarsfield’s office that concluded he retaliated
against his own employees for political reasons has supporters of a
recall attempt against the prosecutor chomping at the bit to use
the controversial information to their advantage.
Hollister – The release last week of an investigative report into District Attorney John Sarsfield’s office that concluded he retaliated against his own employees for political reasons has supporters of a recall attempt against the prosecutor chomping at the bit to use the controversial information to their advantage.
However, while recall ringleader Ignacio Velazquez said some residents are more than happy to sign a recall to oust Sarsfield after reading the report’s findings, he said many people are not aware of the information and are still leery of putting their John Hancock on
something they’re not convinced is warranted.
“A lot of people are still saying they don’t have the information,” Velazquez said. “By this weekend a mailer will be going out, quoting everything in (the report). We need to educate these people.”
Only two of five randomly selected county residents contacted by phone Monday had heard about the information contained in the report. Hollister resident Joan Hillard said she’d heard about recent events surrounding the district attorney’s office but wasn’t too interested in it.
While she conceded an investigator concluding that Sarsfield mistreated several women in his office was “not a positive thing,” she wasn’t convinced the information reported was unbiased and accurate enough to persuade her to sign a recall petition.
“It depends on how credible all the evidence is, who’s hiring the investigators and who’s investigating (his office),” Hillard said. “I could care less, really. To each his own.”
Sarsfield would not comment on the investigative report, but said he’s confident this recall effort won’t get any farther than the last one – which started off with a bang but fizzled out after a couple weeks when Sarsfield’s dogs died after being poisoned with antifreeze.
“The purported report sounds like it comes out of a lawsuit so I can’t comment on it,” Sarsfield said. “(The recall) is nothing more than a personal vendetta by Ignacio Velazquez and a few others who are not happy about people I’ve prosecuted. It’s that simple.”
Velazquez was the campaign adviser for Supervisor Jaime De La Cruz, who Sarsfield charged with four counts of felony election forgery. Sarsfield later dropped the felony charges and De La Cruz pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of obstructing a police officer.
While the first recall’s supporters collected only about 1,000 signatures in an 120-day period, over the past week and a half Velazquez and about 20 volunteers have already stockpiled 600, Velazquez said. Velazquez and his volunteers have been scouring neighborhoods and knocking on doors to collect signatures, and plan to station themselves in front of grocery stores and other public places to gain more visibility, he said.
Velazquez, owner of The Vault restaurant in Hollister, initiated the second recall attempt against Sarsfield last month – only one month after the first recall effort against the prosecutor officially failed. Velazquez believes once the information contained in the investigative report becomes more widely circulated it will supplement his effort to oust Sarsfield for good.
The confidential report obtained by the Free Lance and commissioned by the Board of Supervisors last year, concluded Sarsfield retaliated against four of his employees because he believed they were aligned with his predecessor’s administration, who Sarsfield believes to have been corrupt, according to the report.
The report sustained a number of allegations made in a sexual harassment lawsuit brought against Sarsfield by two women in the Victim Witness Department. Besides retaliating against his employees, it sustained the prosecutor “openly engaged in a romantic relationship with his office manager,” Nancy Leon, and that he behaved “in an openly rude and contemptuous manner toward female personnel,” in his office.
The report’s release spurred the San Benito County Board of Supervisors to order an investigation into how the report was leaked to the public, and has board members worried that the county could begin fielding lawsuits from all directions – including from Sarsfield and Leon. County Counsel Karen Forcum said Friday that board members instructed her to send a letter to the state Attorney General’s Office asking for an investigation into who was responsible for the report’s release.
A month before the report went public, Velazquez claimed in his notice of intent to recall Sarsfield that the district attorney continually lied to the public, violated residents’ civil rights by launching investigations into people because he personally dislikes them and mistreated crime victims. Velazquez hopes to align county residents’ opinions with his, and plans to use the report to further his cause.
Sarsfield has continually denied Valezquez’s allegations.
After several paperwork mistakes that shot the recall petition back to Velazquez to correct, he finally got the OK from the San Benito County Elections Office and the County Counsel’s office on Feb. 11, said Registrar John Hodges.
Velazquez has until June 10 to collect signatures of 5,150 registered voters, but Hodges said he will probably need to gather nearly 6,000 because of the stringent rules attached to recall petitions.
“There are going to be people who will sign but are not registered voters, or moved from their old address and forgot to tell us,” Hodges said. “There’s going to be a lot of weeding to be done, and he (Velazquez) knows that.”
Hodges said he remembers only one recall effort in San Juan Bautista many years ago ever making it to the finish line. Whether this one will follow in its footsteps is anyone’s guess, he said.
“Recalls in this county…” Hodges said. “They’re pretty hard to get through.”
Erin Musgrave covers public safety for the Free Lance. Reach her at 637-5566, ext. 336 or [email protected]
