Gun Owners Push Roberti Recall Drive : Politics: A spokesman says more than 45,000 voter signatures have been collected to put the matter on a March or April ballot. The senator’s bid to seek state treasurer’s post may be affected.

Anti-gun control activists and others said Wednesday they have collected enough voter signatures to force an election seeking the recall of state Senate Leader David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) this spring, when he will have less than eight months left in office.

A spokesman for the Constitutional Rights Federation, a Mission Hills-based gun owners group, said anti-Roberti activists gathered more than 45,000 voter signatures, more than twice the number needed to stage a recall in late March or April.

The powerful Senate president pro tem, who must leave that post in November because of term limits, plans to run for state treasurer this year. His prospects for statewide office could be damaged if voters in his home district toss him out of the Senate.

Gun owners remain angry at Roberti for co-sponsoring a 1989 ban on military-style semiautomatic assault weapons and his current efforts to limit the number of bullets that can be held in rifle and pistol magazines.

Gun activists mounted a nationwide grass-roots campaign to defeat Roberti in his bid for the Van Nuys-based 20th Senate District seat in a 1992 special election. They mailed more than 400,000 leaflets to local voters attacking him on a variety of issues.

Despite heavy campaign spending, Roberti barely defeated a novice Republican candidate, Carol Rowen of Tarzana. A Roberti aide later said that the gun owners’ flyers had a significant impact on the race.

For the recall election to be held, anti-Roberti activists must submit 20,670 valid voter signatures by today. A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County voter registrar said Wednesday that more than 10,000 signatures already have been certified as valid. The county has until Feb. 5 to certify all the signatures.

A spokeswoman for the voter registrar’s office said she did not know how much a recall election would cost.

A Roberti spokesman lashed out at recall proponents, labeling them “radical gunners” willing to waste taxpayer dollars to wreak political revenge on Roberti.

“This is much bigger than David Roberti,” said spokesman Steven Glazer. “This is a battle about whether or not the state has the right to provide reasonable limits on guns.”

Dolores White, a Reseda real estate agent and a sponsor of the recall effort, said anti-Roberti forces are a coalition of groups that includes more than just gun owners. The coalition’s members include crime victims, environmentalists and former Roberti supporters who have turned against him, she said.

But White acknowledged that most groups in the coalition represent gun owners.

Manuel Fernandez, chairman of the Constitutional Rights Federation, which represents gun owners in the San Fernando Valley, said the recall is indeed intended as a pay-back for Roberti’s gun control efforts.

“The whole purpose of the recall of Roberti is retribution for the passage of the semiautomatic rifle ban,” said Fernandez, who helped spearhead the 1992 campaign against Roberti.

Fernandez, a law firm researcher from Mission Hills, is a former leader of another anti-Roberti group, Californians Against Corruption, which participated in the 1992 campaign and is part of the recall coalition.

According to a letter obtained by The Times, CAC this year asked the National Rifle Assn. to help bankroll the recall effort.

“We have to engage the enemy, to work the enemy, to get in so close we can smell ‘em,” said the Feb. 5, 1993, letter, signed by CAC advisory board member Richard L. Carone.

“Roberti is the most vulnerable high-visibility target in California, and we need a major victory here. With (President) Clinton in power, the nation needs one too.”

But George McNeill, who heads NRA lobbying efforts in statehouses around the United States, said the NRA has declined to give money to the recall group.

Under state recall rules, Roberti must win a majority of the votes cast to retain his office. Other candidates can qualify for the same ballot and if Roberti is recalled, the top vote-getter among them would be elected to serve out the balance of his term.

Glazer said the senator will survive any recall, adding that Roberti plans to “fight like hell” and has at least $250,000 in campaign funds.