The San Benito County Election’s Department pronounced the
second recall attempt against District Attorney John Sarsfield
officially dead Friday, after concluding proponents fell short by
nearly 1,000 signatures.
Hollister – The San Benito County Election’s Department pronounced the second recall attempt against District Attorney John Sarsfield officially dead Friday, after concluding proponents fell short by nearly 1,000 signatures.
Though there were 6,961 signatures turned in to recall the district attorney, Registrar John Hodges said his staff found that only 4,420 of them were valid – not enough to meet the needed 5,296 to force a special election.
Although the recall effort failed, local businessman Ignacio Velazquez, who spearheaded the effort, believes the fact that proponents gathered nearly 7,000 in the first place says a lot about county residents’ faith in the prosecutor’s abilities.
“To get that many signatures was something in itself. He needs to realize that. He can’t keep abusing people,” Velazquez said. “He kept saying we’d never get the signatures. Maybe some people weren’t registered, but those are still people that want a change.”
Sarsfield did not return phone calls Friday, although he has said from the beginning that he was confident the recall would be unsuccessful.
Velazquez, who initiated the recall against Sarsfield in January, turned in the petitions on June 10. It took Hodges and his staff of six 15 days to count and verify all the signatures.
“Recalls in San Benito County don’t really go over,” Hodges said. “They never get enough signatures.”
A host of factors disqualified 2,541 of the signatures in the attempt to recall the district attorney. The biggest single reason was that 1,546 of those who signed the petition were not registered voters, Hodges said.
Another 430 voters had moved and failed to re-register, 499 signed the petition more than once, 48 signed the petition differently than they signed their registration cards, and nine signatures were thrown out because the signature gatherer was not registered in the county, Hodges said.
To qualify as a valid signature, a person must be a registered voter in San Benito County, state their correct residence address and sign their name the same way it appears on their application to register to vote, according to Hodges.
This is the second failed attempt to recall Sarsfield. The first attempt to recall the district attorney began last July, but failed after Sarsfield’s two dogs were poisoned. Sarsfield blamed recall supporters for the deaths, but police never determined who was responsible.
Although Hodges said proponents can initiate another recall attempt if they choose, they would have to gather the more than 5,000 signatures all over again.
“Or they can forget it,” Hodges said.
Although Sarsfield’s term is up next year, Velazquez said he’s undecided whether he’ll go for recall round three and has to talk to his group of volunteers before making a definite decision.
“It would be so easy to do it again,” he said. “Not that we want to go over and over and over with this, but I want to talk to everyone first.”
In the second attempt, 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. Sarsfield has repeatedly denied Velazquez’s allegations.
Erin Musgrave covers public safety for the Free Lance. Reach her at 637-5566, ext. 336 or [email protected].
