I just got off of the phone with Tim Whitacre, the Campaign Manager of the Anthony Adams Recall. FR readers will recall that in February Adams was one of six Republican legislators who crossed party lines and voted with every Democrat in the legislature to smack Californian’s with well over $16 BILLION in higher sales, income and car taxes, as well as a cutting the child tax credit.
Shortly after that vote, an effort was started to try and gather enough signatures to force one of these legislators to a recall vote — that legislator is Adams. Although it requires just under 36,000 signatures to force Adams into a recall election, Whitacre told me that with turn-ins today at the Registrar of Voters offices in Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties, the advocates for recalling Adams collected and have turned in a staggering 61,593 signatures.
Political veterans know that a percentage of those signatures will be invalid. But since the campaign was checking signatures gathered against the voter registration rolls, Whitacre assured me that there is a 100% likelihood that this recall will qualify with many, many thousands of signatures over the required amount.
Given how the various time-tables play out, we’re looking at a special recall election to take place in January or February…
Whitacre added in a tongue-in-cheek fashion that, "To know Anthony is to love him." Apparently the signatures gathered by around a two-to-one margin are from the high desert end of the district which Adams calls home.
"Any official who signs any promise to the people might suffer a recall election. In fact I think I might expect it … Of course I support it." said Republican National Committeewoman and Assembly candidate Linda Ackerman of the recall of Adams last week.
As the question of whether there is a recall election fades and the actual existence of the recall election comes front a center, look for a higher profile statewide campaign to ensue. Volunteers and donors on this effort have come from Sacramento and San Francisco all of the way down to San Diego.
October 13th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Jon:
There is no need to exaggerate.
The proponents, obviously, obtained a lot of signatures, but to say that 61,593 “voters in the 59th AD” signed the petitions when they are only turning in 61,593 signatures is just plain wrong.
The truth is nobody EVER gets a 100% validity ratio on a recall, referendum or initiative petition
NEVER!
October 14th, 2009 at 12:00 am
This is totalitarian party regime no different then Saddam Huseyin regime. This action places party members in a straitjacket. It is immoral, un ethical, and antidemocratic.
October 14th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Saddam Hussein murdered people by the hundreds of thousands. If Anthony Adams
is recalled, he will simply leave public office (perhaps with a pension).
The Recall provision has been in the California Constitution since 1911, when voters
added it, along with referendum & initiative, at the instance of GOP Governor Hiram
Johnson. We were the 2nd state to approve Recalls (Oregon was first, so this is
definitely a Western tradition).
Voters promptly began removing corrupt state legislators in the 1910s, and it has
been an effective warning to elected officials ever since: (a) to keep their promises
and (b) to obey the law.
It’s the promise-keeping angle in AD 59, and voters will decide Mr. Adams’ fate….
just as they did in his 2006 and 2008 campaigns.
To summarize, Recall campaigns are a long-established California Tradition,
dating back almost a full Century, and they are entirely within the democratic
process.
October 14th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Adams needs to be recalled, he turned on the people that elected him, and politicians like him are the reason California is in such a sad state. He signed a no-tax pledge and he voted to raise taxes, simple in my mind he needs to go if for nothing else but to tell other lukewarm Republicans that the people rule not the elected officials.
October 14th, 2009 at 12:00 am
This is good news in that it puts teeth in the no new taxes pledge. The no new taxes pledge should be more than a campaign gimmick to get elected… it should be policy for governing after the candidate is elected. Anthony took the pledge and after the election it was shown he really did not mean it… Anthony lied to the voters and if he had any character he would resign in shame. Absent from that event it is incumbent upon voters to recall him and show him the door. Just don’t let the door hit you on the way out Anthony.
To take it a step further, this is exactly why the CA legislator has such low approval ratings… because they are lying scoundrels of low character, and Anthony Adams is the poster child.