Residents Want a Recall; Will City Council Make it Happen Quickly?

Residents of Lake Forest have been trying to get rid of Councilman Andrew Hamilton for two years. It began about two years ago when Hamilton voted against doing anything about the dangerous changes proposed to Saddleback Ranch Road. His attitude, shared by Scott Voigts and Dwight Robinson, was to wait until there were problems and then deal with them. Big mistake.

A Portola Hills resident didn’t like his attitude and was seriously worried about the well-being of her family and fellow residents. She started attending Council meetings and saw that Hamilton’s vote on Saddleback Ranch Road was a mere symptom of an overall voting pattern that put special interests above the interests of the people. By December 2015, she started a recall attempt and in a few months gathered nearly 7,000 verified signatures to remove him. That figure exceeded the number of people who voted for Hamilton in 2014, but it didn’t reach the threshold set by the Orange County Registrar of Voters. That woman was Leah Basile and she went on to win the 2016 election by an overwhelming margin with 13,912 votes, nearly 4,000 more votes than Hamilton’s advocate and financial supporter, Robinson.

Hamilton avoided being removed in 2016 by a slim margin, but that didn’t stop the people of Lake Forest who wanted to take back control of their city. A new recall was set in motion, and this time they gathered 9,155 verified signatures. The leader was another woman, from the opposite end of town, but equally upset with Hamilton’s votes, his attitude, and his behavior, all of which have been well-chronicled. Larissa Fellick Clark led the charge this time, and she managed to collect more than 10,000 verified signatures before Hamilton’s anti-recall campaign convinced 886 people to withdraw their signatures.

So, let's look at the trend:

• In 2017, there are 9,155 registered voters who want Hamilton out, and went to the effort to sign a petition to do so.
• In 2016, 6,682 registered voters wanted Hamilton out after watching his act for two years.
• In 2014, 6,068 registered voters, in the convenience of a voting booth, actually voted for Hamilton to be their councilman.

Can there be a stronger indication of how the people feel?

Hamilton needs to go. Actually, Hamilton, Robinson and Voigts need to go, but removing Hamilton releases residents from being held hostage by three elected officials who hold a voting majority on the Council and who routinely look out for each other and the special interests that support them -- at the exclusion of the residents who voted them into office. Removing Hamilton removes the majority lock, with the potential to place a new leader who is more independent than the one who voted the same as Robinson and Voigts on practically every item for more than two years.

Hamilton didn’t have the dignity to resign after Larissa Clark submitted more than 16,000 signatures for his removal. He didn’t have the dignity to resign after the Registrar of Voters certified 9,155 verified signatures. And he won’t have the dignity to resign now.

Hamilton doesn’t care, but the rest of the Council should. Hamilton needs to go and he needs to go as soon as possible because that represents the will of the people; there are more than 9,000 opinions that say so. It’s already been shown that Hamilton's poor voting record costs the City about $1,000,000 per month in lost savings, lost revenue, and excess spending. The Council should set the date for the special election at the earliest possible date. And then residents need to elect a candidate who can still salvage the remainder of Hamilton’s term that ends in 2018.

About the author: Martin Henderson won several Los Angeles and Orange County press club awards while an editor at Patch in 2012-13.