Santa Ana Moves Ahead With Controversial Recall Election

The Santa Ana City Council has opted to continue with a special election to recall Councilmember Jessie Lopez even after the Orange County Registrar of Voters raised concerns about the election's validity.

Ballots had already been mailed out for the Nov. 14 election when the city got a letter from Orange County Registrar Bob Page saying a mistake had been made. Page said recall supporters actually hadn't collected enough voter signatures to trigger an election, based on his reading of the law.

That's in part because some signatures were collected from parts of Lopez's current district, which are called "wards" in Santa Ana, that were not part of her district when she was elected. The city went through redistricting after the 2020 Census.

Lopez's district, Ward 3, also had more registered voters when she was elected, meaning more signatures would've been required to trigger a recall.

Ultimately, in a special meeting Monday night, the Santa Ana City Council deadlocked on whether to cancel the election, so the recall will go forward, at least for now. Some council members and community members at Monday's meeting warned that legal challenges to the recall election would likely follow.

The snafu has intensified the already controversial recall effort, which is being funded by the Santa Ana police union. That same union led a recall against a previous city council member in 2020, and won.

Why were potential problems with the recall just discovered?

Page told LAist in an email that the issue of Santa Ana's ward boundaries had come to his attention when he got an email last week from the registrar in Kings County asking for advice on what to do about a school board recall election where districts had been redrawn since three of the board members were elected.

Page realized that the city of Santa Ana had relied on the current number of registered voters in Ward 3, after redistricting took place, to determine the amount of signatures required to trigger a recall election. He said the city should have been using previous voter data about Ward 3 from the time Lopez was elected.

Ward 3 covers the northeast corner of Santa Ana, bordering the cities of Orange, Tustin and Garden Grove.

In his letter to Santa Ana's city clerk, Page cited a 2014 opinion from then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris that newly drawn election boundaries should not apply to special elections held before an elected official's term is up.

What's the problem with using the new ward boundaries?

Page, the registrar, said the recall effort actually would have failed to make it to the ballot — by 230 signatures — if the city had used voter data from the original Ward 3 that elected Lopez rather than the current, smaller and geographically different Ward 3.

He also concluded that nearly 1,200 voters in Lopez's original district won't get to vote because of the mistake. And some 360 voters who were newly added to Ward 3 will get to vote even though they had no role in electing Lopez to begin with.

On Monday, Page officially rescinded his July 17 certification verifying signatures for the recall.

What are people saying about it?

At the special meeting Monday night, some residents said they wanted the recall to go forward, citing their discontent with Lopez. Vanessa Dávalos said homelessness and crime were taking over the city and she felt it was unsafe for her and her son.

"I support this recall because I want someone who really works for the city," she said in Spanish.

Others said it would be undemocratic to let the recall go forward because more than 1,000 people who should have gotten ballots may not get to vote. Tania Navarro, a resident and community organizer with the group Chispa, said the registrar's letter confirmed that the recall "has been illegitimate from the start."

"The fact that the city did not immediately move to cancel this recall is extremely upsetting and concerning," she said.

Who's funding the recall?

The Santa Ana police union has spent heavily to influence city elections in recent years, including the Lopez recall.

So far, it has spent around $500,000 on the recall effort, which was launched after contentious contract negotiations late last year. The union sought to recall another council member, Thai Viet Phan, but didn't gather enough signatures to put it on the ballot.

The recall effort has also received significant funding from two real estate groups, the Western Manufactured Housing Communities Association and California Real Estate PAC. In late 2021, Santa Ana became the first city in Orange County to enact rent control, which Lopez and Phan supported.