Hollister
– The signature-gathering stage in the second recall attempt
against District Attorney John Sarsfield is in its last leg, and
proponents claim to have more than half the needed signatures to
initiate a special election of the prosecutor.
Hollister – The signature-gathering stage in the second recall attempt against District Attorney John Sarsfield is in its last leg, and proponents claim to have more than half the needed signatures to initiate a special election of the prosecutor.
Members of the Committee to Recall John Sarsfield, headed by one of the district attorney’s most vocal critics, Ignacio Velazquez, have been staking out grocery stores and going door to door in the hopes of gathering 5,150 registered voters’ signatures.
Velazquez said if everything keeps moving along as it has, the group should have enough county residents’ John Hancocks by the June 10 deadline.
“We’ll be there,” he said. “We have people everywhere collecting signatures.”
But Sarsfield, who dealt with the first recall attempt against him last summer that fizzled after his two family dogs were poisoned and died, says he is about as worried about this effort as he was with the last one.
Sarsfield believes the attempt is simply Velazquez’s way of retaliating against him for prosecuting Supervisor Jaime De La Cruz for election violations. Velazquez was the campaign manager during last year’s supervisor race for De La Cruz, who is also the target of a recall effort headed by former Supervisor Bob Cruz’s campaign adviser Ruben Lopez. De La Cruz beat Cruz by only 10 votes, which touched off one of the year’s most heated political battles.
Lopez said the committee to recall De La Cruz, which includes between 30 to 40 people, is waiting to have the notice of intent to recall the supervisor certified and should be “rolling full blast” by next week. Members of the group believe De La Cruz cheated his way to a victory. De La Cruz denies cheating and says opponents are simply bad losers.
“We’re very patiently working on this to make sure we don’t make any mistakes and make sure everything’s in order,” he said. “Once that’s done we’re going to go full blast. We’re still intent on bringing this guy to justice.”
While opponents of De La Cruz await anxiously at the starting line, Velazquez is coming up on the finish line. He claims to simply want to help the county by ousting Sarsfield from his post as the county’s top law enforcement officer. He believes Sarsfield continually lied to the public, violated residents’ civil rights by launching investigations into people because he personally dislikes them and mistreated crime victims.
“We’re trying to inform people of all the problems going on in the DA’s Office,” Velazquez said. “The biggest problem is that people don’t know what’s going on out there.”
Although Velazquez’s recall fire has been subdued lately due to the birth of his first child six weeks ago, he said other committee members have been picking up his slack.
“It’s slowed me down quite a bit,” he said. “It takes a lot of time – being a dad comes first and then there’s everything else.”
Erin Musgrave covers public safety for the Free Lance. Reach her at 637-5566, ext. 336 or [email protected]
