OMG! Board Meeting Dispatches

Constant Readers,

I actually came down to City Hall today to watch the meeting because I heard that there would be a showdown over the SEIU Local 1021 layoffs, which were supposed to be voted on again this week.  Word was that Mistermayor himself might show up to speak.  (Basically, this morning Chris Daly amended the ordinance that would have taken the $7 million needed to save the Local 1021 jobs from the General Fund Reserve, and made it so that the money will come from another special reserve - this amendment means that the matter cannot be heard until next week.) 

Dejected, others left the press booth after a while.

But they missed an announcement - made during public comment - by Bayview Hunters Point activists that they are launching a recall effort against Sophie Maxwell. The "deadbeat supervisor" they called her, and angrily accused her of neglecting the issues of their district (District 10).

According to one of the speakers, they need 20,000 signatures. I don't know if that's true (though it might be!). State law requires signatures of 20% of registered voters in the district of the recalled official if the number of registered voters is between 10 and 50 thousand, and 15% if that number is 50 to 100 thousand. (Cal. Elections Code sec. 11221.) I don't know much about the numbers of any particular district, so that's something to look into.

I know there are plenty of you who aren't fans of Supervisor Maxwell, but remember that only D10 residents can sign the recall petition.

-Melissa

Comments

[Jim]

Believe about 15k people voted in Sophie's last election, so 20k sigs sounds way high. Figuring 30K-something registered voters.

http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/elections/candidates/NOV2009recall090809withsamplepetition.pdf

It's easy to talk about a recall but it's never happened in SF history, AFAIK

[R. Ress]

Well Melissa-
Here we go again. It seems that a recall Sophie Maxwell movement comes together every couple of years. There was a move to recall her in 2003 and in 2004 the RBA threatened to fund a recall. Also there was some discussion again last year. There have been at least 3 or 4 recall attempts but none has actually made it to the polls. Really why bother as she is termed out at the end of 2010? What is the activists' short term strategy that they can't wait until the election?

[Melissa Griffin]

Jim and Ron: Excellent points! There was no statement about why this effort will be different from others. Basically it was: we're mad as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore!

[generic]

Yeah, but any effort to recall someone who's termed out in, like, 5 minutes reflects badly on the campaign and the issues they're trying to address.

[rpnorton]

Shades of the attempted Jake McGoldrick recall about five minutes before he was termed out . . . I'm thinking it was launched sometime in 2007?

[jbloncko]

how many signatures would it take to recall david campos?

[jbloncko]

shoot. how many to recall the entire BoS?

THAT would be true activism.

[Melissa Griffin]

Honestly, I don't think there's much hope of a recall actually happening, but it made for some interesting political theater in an otherwise boring meeting!

@jblonko - There's no mechanism for recalling the entire Board at one time - it would have to be done district by district, but the Dept. of Elections says that there are 451,988 registered voters in SF. If you divide that by 11 districts to get an approximation of the number of registered voters per district, it comes to 41,090. Twenty percent of that number is 8,218 - so that's about how many signatures per district would be required to get a recall election in any one of them.

[Howard Epstein]

The statement of vote for the May 2009 elections shows 38470 registered voters in D10. 20% = 7694 valid signatures needed. They'll need a about 9600 gross signatures. As a practice matter, she won't be recalled.

The statement shows 35962 for D9 - Campos. 20% = 7192. Not going to happen.