According to latest returns for the election held yesterday, Mission Viejo councilman and the currently appointed Mayor, Lance MacLean has been recalled by 6,858 to 6,740, a total of 118 votes. A total of 1,140 votes remain to be counted, and knowledgeable observers state the margin of recall will narrow a little, but that the recall should stand, and MacLean will be forced out of office when the election is formally certified.
Successful recalls don’t happen that often – just ask Assemblyman Anthony Adams that question. The success of the Mission Viejo recall is something significant. It is also significant in who the biggest loser was as a result, which was not MacLean, the target of the recall, or Dale Tyler, a replacement candidate that lost. More on that later….
The "Notice of Recall" Mission Viejo citizens voted on that gave the reasons to recall MacLean, included a charge that he had voted for "lifetime medical benefits" at taxpayer expense for himself and other councilmembers, had voted for a tax increase, and that MacLean had been detained on a charge of assault and battery on a co-worker in 2007. Recall proponents obtained about 14,000 signatures in the city to schedule the election on whether or not MacLean should be recalled. The recall proponents included Dale Tyler, who was a replacement candidate on the ballot, and 50 other Mission Viejo residents, including Councilmembers John Paul Ledesma and Cathy Schlicht, and permanent local activist Larry Gilbert.
To Lance MacLean’s support came the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriff’s, Wayne Quint, president. Newspaper reports over the weekend stated that the deputy’s union pumped $105,000 into Mission Viejo, for advertising to generate "no" votes on the recall, an unprecedented amount of money to spend on just one of Orange County’s many jurisdictions covered by the union, and a big loss of precious political funds at a time when Orange County is in the midst of a potentially competitive Sheriff’s race, which one would think would have much stronger implications for each individual union member throughout the county than whether or not Lance MacLean stayed on the Mission Viejo council.
A good question is why did the union take this extraordinary step? I asked Councilman John Paul Ledesma why he thought Quint and Company poured all this money down the drain in Mission Viejo, and his answer was, "I have no idea." "It makes no sense, especially since Lance voted against adding deputies in our city." Ledesma conceded that perhaps rumors of Mission Viejo going to its own police department, rather than contracting with the county for police services, might have been a reason, but John Paul also said the idea has never been formally or informally discussed on the council and he didn’t think it was a serious idea.
Republican Dale Tyler, a proponent, apparently lost his election to be the replacement councilman and Democrat Dave Leckness won with about a 900 vote margin. Leckness is described as "likable" and "gregarious."
Tyler’s loss does not make him the biggest loser last night. He won his recall against MacLean, which is a much bigger deal, and presumably Tyler can run again for office this November, though he will need to ditch his "Indiana" auto registration and get one from our own DMV. Leckness will be wise to not get too polarized from the recall proponents on the council (after all, they did get 14,000 valid signatures in the city) and to have some staying power in this Republican city he should think about being open to Ledesma and Schlicht on key votes. Leckness and the recall proponents, including Ledesma and Schlicht, were clearly the winners. But the biggest loser was also very clearly the deputy sheriff’s public employee union. They didn’t need to get involved in this race, didn’t figure in the outcome, and now they have $105,000 less to influence the sheriff’s race, and a notable election loss on their record. In tennis parlance, a big "unforced error."
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:00 am
Mission Viejo Dispatch says voting may actually trend against recall when we hear about final ballots tonight at 5:00 pm. Stay tuned!
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:00 am
Final vote issued at 5:00 pm tonight has recall winning by 19 votes. That will hold up on a recount. The deputy’s union could have stopped the recall if they spent about $5,000 more on GOTV!
February 4th, 2010 at 12:00 am
MacLean could have stopped the recall if he wasn’t such a hothead. This recall was as personal as it gets, people were motivated to do this because Lance is a jerk.