As of March 7, 2017 Andrew Hamilton was served with a notice of recall as a member of the City Council, signed by 23 Lake Forest registered voters (only 20 valid signatures were needed). Councilman Hamilton replied to the recall notice on March 16, 2017 and we are now awaiting the certification of the petition. After the petition is certified, the petitioners will have 4 months to collect signatures from 20% of the registered voters in the City, which is about 8,000 signatures needed.
Later this week I will begin a multi-part series about the recall, including The recall history, The recall notice, Hamilton’s response, Hamilton’s record as Mayor and Councilman, Hamilton’s voting record, What’s at stake, and finally a Summary
As a result of the recall, you will probably see “The James Gang” resurface. The “James Gang” refers to a bunch of anonymous bloggers who use the name James Ross, James Houston, James Rees, etc. None of these refer to real people who are registered voters or even residents of Lake Forest. They appeared when Andrew Hamilton was last being recalled and disappeared as soon as the 2016 election ended. In addition to blogging on the Patch they made complaints to the FPPC and other agencies against nearly half a dozen people. As far as we know none of these complaints were valid.
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Andrew Hamilton was suspected by many people of being the real James Ross. Ross was challenged by award winning writer Martin Henderson, a Lake Forest resident, to debate the issues raised in Ross’s articles and blog posts, but Ross never showed up. Henderson and others publically challenged Hamilton to deny that he was Ross, but Hamilton refused to comment.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.
Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 4 pm to 6 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a Town Hall meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be in May.
