A group of county residents seeking to recall District 5
Supervisor Jaime De La Cruz say they will soon file a notice of
intent with the county Elections Office, the first step before
gathering signatures to put a recall on the ballot.
Hollister – A group of county residents seeking to recall District 5 Supervisor Jaime De La Cruz say they will soon file a notice of intent with the county Elections Office, the first step before gathering signatures to put a recall on the ballot.
The group has formed a committee called Citizens for Responsible Local Government and has already begun gathering signatures, according to former City Councilman and recall supporter Brian Conroy. The committee needs 10 people to publicly request the recall through a notice of intent filed with the Elections Office before gathering signatures from 25 percent of the voters in District 5 – about 1,090 signatures in all – to put the recall to a vote, according to Head Elections Official John Hodges.
The committee currently has six signatures on the notice of intent, four of whom are actively seeking signatures from other proponents.
Hodges said Wednesday the committee hadn’t filed any paperwork with his office yet.
“I’ve heard rumblings, but nobody’s come in here asking the kind of questions they’d need to ask to get started,” Hodges said.
But Conroy said the members of Citizens for Responsible Local Government are ready to hit the streets.
“We’re not going to stick an old lady behind a folding table behind a decrepit building downtown to get signatures,” Conroy said yesterday. “We’re going to walk it and talk it… That’s how a recall works. That’s how you win an election. You go door to door and talk to people. Blood, sweat and tears.”
Ruben Lopez will be the spokesman for recall committee Conroy said. Lopez, who was the campaign manager for Bob Cruz during his bid for a third term as the District 5 Supervisor last March, is also the president of the League of United Latin American Citizens. LULAC initiated an investigation into De La Cruz’s campaign after Cruz lost by 10 votes in March of 2004.
Lopez couldn’t be reached for comment by press time.
Ignacio Velazquez, the campaign manager for De La Cruz in last March’s election, said yesterday he was not at all surprised to learn Lopez was involved in the recall campaign, just as he had not been surprised to find out Conroy was also involved last month.
“It’s a bunch of the corrupt people that tried to steal the election in the first place. It’s the same group of people,” Velazquez said. “The recall, that’s for the people to decide in the end, but look at where our county went when these people were in charge.”
De La Cruz was accused last March of breaking the elections code on Election Day – when he beat incumbent Bob Cruz by 10 votes – by illegally handling ballots and coercing a voter, among other claims. Velazquez was accused of similar allegations, but they were later dropped. De La Cruz ultimately pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor charge of obstructing or delaying a police officer.
In addition to announcing a spokesperson and its intent to file, the De La Cruz recall committee has also changed the name of its Web site. Formerly registered at www.recallcriminal.com, the group has now set up a new site at www.recall delacruz.com. Conroy said the name was changed because some committee members’ felt the original name sounded too negative.
The site includes a scanned copy of a letter De La Cruz sent out to 1,200 of District 5’s 4,360 voters in which he writes:
“As I said from the very beginning all the charges of misconduct on my part were false and were simply politically motivated by four former incumbents steel [sic] the election.”
De La Cruz also sent out a seven-question survey with the letter asking constituents for their opinions on issues like housing, the job market and the proposed Miwok casino.
The recall campaign’s Web site questions the source of funding for De La Cruz’ letter, which was printed on county letterhead and sent out via first-class mail.
Both De La Cruz and Velazquez said Wednesday De La Cruz paid for postage out of his own pocket, and used only one copy of county letterhead which he then color-photocopied, also at his own expense. The “Housing Opportunity Project Education,” or HOPE organization credited with funding the letter, is an organization De La Cruz founded to research local opinions on jobs and housing, De La Cruz said.
“Now they’re trying to shut me up, saying ‘You can’t inform your constituency about what the prior board did,'” De La Cruz said yesterday when he heard of the recall committee’s questions about his letter. “It’s another example of the prior board working on this method to silence the majority.”
Staff Writer Erin Musgrave contributed to this report.
Jessica Quandt covers politics for the Free Lance. Reach her at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or at [email protected].
