By Count Friedrich von Olsen
Up here in Lake Arrowhead, at 5,174 feet above sea level, the air is a little more rarified than it is down in 1,242-foot altitude Upland. As a matter of fact, up here we refer to places like Upland as the lowlands…
Despite the thin air in these parts, I don’t feel particularly dizzy or lightheaded. I wonder, though, about what the problem down there in the lowlands, er I mean Upland, is exactly. Have they developed some sort of condition from breathing all that thick air? For whatever reason, some of those lowlanders, er I mean Uplanders, are acting awfully dizzy or lightheaded…
I refer in this instance to the incipient recall effort against that city’s mayor, Ray Musser. In reading the newspaper accounts about this latest political undertaking in The City of Gracious Living, I found myself taking off my monocle and cleaning it with a tissue to see if I was perhaps misreading what was on the page before me. I reread the words, then squinted and reread them again. I read them right the first time. At that point I was left scratching my head…
Let me see if I have this right: Ray Musser is about 14 months away from the time he is to retire from the city council, at this point in the capacity of mayor, after having first been elected to the city council in 1998. At the first city council meeting in December 2016, which will be held on December 12 or thereabouts, he will call the meeting to order, lead the pledge of allegiance and then as his last official act swear in his successor, whoever that is to be, and then hand his gavel over to him or her. But a group of people in town, who it goes without saying don’t have too terribly high of an opinion of Ray Musser, are not content to wait until December 12, 2016 to be rid of him and they are going to some level of effort – at yet we do not know exactly how much or whether it will be sufficient – to end his tenure as an elected official…
Without getting into Mr. Musser’s merits as a human being in general, a public official in greater particular and mayor of his lowland city in precise exactitude at this point, let us right now examine the logic of pursuing a recall at this time and under the current circumstance…
Under California law governing the recall of local officials, recall proponents in cities with populations greater than 50,000 and less than 100,000, must gather the signatures of 15 percent of that city’s registered voters to force a recall question onto a ballot and they must gather those signatures within 120 days of the time they qualify for the right to circulate the petition. The signed petitions are then turned over to the city clerk who has two weeks or so to coordinate with the county registrar of voters and count the signatures, examine the petitions and the signatures to ascertain that the signatures are indeed of registered voters, determine whether the signatures can be reasonably ascribed to each of the registered voters purported as having affixed his or her signature to the petition and examine whether, in signing the petition, each registered voter used the same form of his or her name as was used in signing his or her voter registration affidavit. At that point, assuming the registrar of voters determines the 15 percent threshold has been achieved, the city clerk takes the petition for recall to the city council at its next scheduled meeting to either validate that the vote will take place or delay the matter by another 30 days by carrying out a “random sampling” of the signatures to determine that they are in order. If in the random sampling it turns out that a sufficient percentage of the signatures fall into question to suggest that enough valid signatures might not exist on the petition to force the recall, then another delay can be brought about in which all of the signatures are examined with exacting scrutiny. Assuming the petitions move beyond that point and the city council certifies the recall request and orders the recall, the recall election must then be held “not less than 88 nor more than 125 days after the issuance of the order.” That is the technical aspect of this as I can best explain it…
Now let’s do some math. Assuming the recall proponents have now, as of this date, October 9, 2015, qualified to circulate the petition, they will have 120 days hence, i.e., they will have until February 6, 2016 to circulate the petition for signatures and turn it over to the city clerk. At that point, the city clerk will have until February 20, or thereabouts to confer with the registrar of voters and make a preliminary determination as to whether there are enough signatures to proceed further. It would seem then that the item might be scheduled to come before the city council at its February 22 meeting. But February 20, 2016 is a Saturday, and Upland City Hall is open only Monday through Thursday. Moreover, agenda items have to be posted 72 hours in advance. So, under this scenario, given that February 29 falls on a Monday and the city council meets on the second and fourth Mondays of each month, the city council would not receive the item until its March 15, 2016 meeting. If at that point the council votes to do a random sampling of the signatures, it could delay by as many as 30 days further processing of the recall request. The first Upland City Council meeting after April 14 is to be held April 25. Assuming the council found at that point that enough of the city’s voters had properly endorsed the recall petition, it would then issue its order for the recall election, which would have to take place, again according to California law, “within 88 days and 125 days of the order.” Thus, the election, under this scenario, could not take place any earlier than July 21…
But wait. According to California law, “A recall may not be commenced against an officer if… the term of office ends within six months or less.” The November 2016 election is less than four months from July 21…
I realize there are alternate scenarios here. One is that the recall proponents will be whirling dervishes of signature gathering efficiency and they will have enough signatures by the end of the month we are in – October 2015 – to get the show on the road and the recall election might be scheduled as early as March. Another weakness in my scenario is that the interpretation of the word “commenced” above might pertain to the effort itself, rather than the election. Nevertheless, my point stands, I think. There are questions as to whether the recall proponents, who don’t appear to have thought this through, will be able to gather the requisite number of signatures in the time allotted. Perhaps they can. But if they do, the smart money would bet it will take them something close to the 120 days permitted to them to do just that. Assuming they qualify the recall vote for the ballot and it is held as early as June, or let us say as early as late May, and assuming further still the voters choose to remove Ray Musser from office when that vote is held, if indeed it is held, what will have been gained? Ray Musser will leave office five or six or at most seven months before he would have otherwise. Is that what these people are working so hard to achieve?
There are other considerations. Try this one on: What if this recall effort fails? What if it fails abjectly? What will that do to Ray Musser? He recently had heart bypass surgery and my sources tell me he was preparing to call an end to his political career and not run in 2016. But there is a saying that goes: “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I don’t know if I believe that, exactly, but I can’t speak for Ray Musser. Maybe he does believe that. Maybe, after he bounces back from his cardiac condition and he stands down those who would have laid his political head on a platter, he will feel his oats and run again. Will this recall fail and embolden him to heights that his enemies will rue? If history is any guide, if he runs again he just might win…
Here are two other considerations: The so-called basis for the recall and the tactics employed by the recall proponents in seeking to convince their fellow voters to support them. In their recall process paperwork, the recall’s proponents list one of the grounds for seeking Ray Musser’s removal from office is that he was a “beneficiary of Mayor Pomierski’s political machine.” John Pomierski, of course, was the now discredited former mayor of the lowland city who in 2011 was indicted, then convicted and subsequently housed in a federal prison…
What the recall proponents are more than suggesting, indeed stating, is that Ray Musser was in with John Pomierski. That is an out and out prevarication. John Pomierski ruled Upland with an iron fist from the time he came into office in 2000 until he was forced to resign ten years-and-not-quite-four-months later. The record clearly shows that John Pomierski had one political opponent and one political opponent only: Ray Musser. Ray Musser opposed John Pomierski for reelection in 2004. He almost beat the entrenched incumbent that time, but fell short. John Pomierski and his henchmen and political allies on the council – Brendan Brandt, Tom Thomas and Ken Willis – retaliated by stripping Ray Musser of his internal city committee assignments and his outside agency membership appointments. Even as questions were emerging about the way John Pomierski was doing business and using his authority at City Hall to shake down people with permit applications and projects under city review, he continued to draw support from the likes of the district attorney, the sheriff and other local city officials. Ray Musser alone stood up against John Pomierski and he did not benefit from it but suffered as a consequence, even as Brendan Brandt, Tom Thomas and Ken Willis cowered in the wings and spinelessly and slavishly licked John Pomierski’s boots and then headed for the tall grass when his political machine imploded under the weight of an FBI investigation that was impervious to influences of local governmental graft and corruption…
The question now is: When the recall proponents say that Ray Musser was a “beneficiary of Mayor Pomierski’s political machine,” do they really believe that? Or do they know it isn’t true, but are using that as a propaganda tool to achieve their political end? Which is worse: That they are ill-informed, ignorant or just mistaken? Or that they are deliberately lying? I would say the latter is worse, but even if we give them the benefit of the doubt and conclude that they just don’t know that they are talking about, doesn’t that alone go a long way toward discrediting this whole recall effort?