San Gabriel Group Predicts Success in Recall Drive Against Blaszcak

SAN GABRIEL —  Amid charges that they are engaging in “dirty politics” by trying to buy support for their cause, opponents of the slow-growth majority on the City Council say they are nearing their goal of bringing about a special election to recall Vice Mayor Frank Blaszcak.

The 3-month-old recall drive, which has become the focus of the rancorous rivalry between slow-growth partisans and the city’s political Old Guard, has already garnered 2,300 signatures, leaders of the petition group say. To qualify for a special election, they must collect at least 2,700 verified signatures, representing 20% of the electorate, by the end of this month, according to the city clerk’s office.

Blaszcak was elected last April on a slate of slow-growth candidates. Since taking office, he has aggressively attacked the development policies of the previous council and criticized some members of the city staff. He has also riled his opponents by buying a $2,100 portable telephone at city expense and acquiring a key to City Hall, to which he makes nocturnal visits.

“He’s just a sleaze bag,” said Councilman Sabino Cici, the only remaining member of the five-man council from the old administration and one of Blaszcak’s most vocal opponents.

Blaszcak ultimately returned the portable telephone to the city, and he has vociferously defended his late-night visits to City Hall as his only means of picking up his mail.

The vice mayor’s supporters, including the slow-growth group Citizens for Responsible Development (CFRD), charge that the petitioners have taken the “low road” by trying to hire high school students to collect signatures, for which they offered to pay $1 apiece. CFRD has been the city’s dominant political group in the past two years, leading the attack on what many perceived as headlong development.

Intimidation Charged

The petitioners charge, on the other hand, that CFRD has sought to intimidate them by videotaping people attending an organizing session for the recall campaign at a private home last Saturday.

Critics of the petitioners say they may have sought to illegally involve high school students in their effort. CFRD member Caroline Thrall said flyers had been left on the windshields of cars around San Gabriel High School last Thursday, offering “quick cash” for door-to-door petitioning.

Thrall said that when she called the telephone number on the flyer, the woman answering told her that she was representing the recall campaign against Blaszcak. A telephone operator told The Times that the number was apparently an unlisted extension in Los Alamitos.

The woman answering the phone “said the campaign was being paid for by a political action committee called Concerned Residents of San Gabriel,” Thrall said. “She said there would be a precinct walk (to collect signatures) on Saturday, starting at 8:30. But she said a lot of students did not want to start that early, so somebody would be maintaining a headquarters all day.”

The woman said canvassers, who must be at least 18 years old and residents of San Gabriel, would be paid $1 for each verified signature they collected, Thrall said.

Responding to a call to the telephone number Wednesday was a woman who identified herself as Kim Davis. She said she was helping coordinate the recall campaign.

“I put the flyers on the students’ cars thinking that high school students would jump at the chance to make a few extra bucks,” she said. “But we ran into a dead end.”

Describing herself as a good friend of members of Concerned Residents of San Gabriel, which represents the city’s Old Guard, Davis said all the canvassers in the campaign are now volunteers.

Concerned Residents of San Gabriel led the campaign last spring for three council incumbents who were defeated by the CFRD slate.

CFRD Chairman Greg O’Sullivan, complaining about the tactics of the campaign organizers, said the high school recruiting effort “is consistent with the low road they’ve taken” for the past year and a half.

“They want to win at all costs, and they have the money to back it up with,” O’Sullivan said. “They draw the line at being illegal, but they do unethical things.”

City Atty. Stephanie Scher said it is not illegal under the Elections Code to pay canvassers. “But there are some definite restrictions on who is allowed to gather signatures,” she said. “They have to be registered voters within the district.”

She acknowledged that it was possible that some San Gabriel High School students could be over 18 and registered voters. “But not all that many,” she said.

“It’s the same dirty politics that has prevailed for the past 18 months,” said Blaszcak, who contended that the city’s voters are “too smart” to go along with the recall campaign in large numbers.

Dorothy Schneider, the 76-year-old San Gabriel resident who filed the original recall petition, said she knew nothing about attempts to hire canvassers for pay. “It’s a rather loose-knit group doing this,” she said. “That’s the whole problem. It’s rather silly trying to hire people because we don’t need it.”

She denied that the primary group conducting the campaign was Concerned Residents of San Gabriel. “I don’t know anything about that,” she said. “We’re organized as the Committee to Recall Blaszcak.”

O’Sullivan acknowledged that he had videotaped participants at a meeting last Saturday at the home of Fred and Suzanne Paine. He said he merely wanted to document the fact that Mayor John Tapp was active in the recall campaign. “I just wanted to show that John Tapp is not the innocent individual that he portrays himself to be,” O’Sullivan said. “He’s really an integral part of Concerned Residents of San Gabriel.”

Tapp, who was elected on the same slow-growth slate as Blaszcak, could not be reached for comment. But since taking office, the mayor has had a public falling out with his former allies in CFRD. He resigned from the organization last August, though he has reaffirmed his commitment to the principles of slow growth.