Effort To Recall LA County DA George Gascón Fails, Again

LOS ANGELES, CA — Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón survived another attempt to unseat him Monday after organizers failed to collect enough signatures to force a recall election, according to the county clerk's office.

The news had a ripple effect far beyond county lines because the besieged prosecutor is the most prominent in a movement to reform the justice system and mass incarceration in California. Upon taking office, Gascón said his prosecutors would no longer seek the death penalty nor try juveniles as adults. The policies provoked a backlash from his own deputy district attorneys, some of who accused Gascón of being soft on crime.

Monday's development was a major blow to Gascón's critics, who fault his reform policies for rising crime in the nation's largest county. Recall organizers are contesting the county's method for verifying the signatures of registered voters.

According to the county clerk's office, organizers submitted only 520,050 valid petition signatures, well short of the required 566,857. Organizers of the recall submitted a total of 715,833 petition signatures to the county Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk's office and expressed confidence that the recall election would move forward. However, the county announced Monday that 195,783 of the signatures were invalid. In many cases, the person signing the petition was not a registered voter, and there were also more than 45,000 duplicate signatures, according to the county.

County officials initially conducted a random sampling of the signatures to verify their validity. Based on that initial sampling, the county undertook an effort to verify all 715,833 signatures individually.

Amid signs last week that about 22 percent of signatures were being deemed invalid, recall supporters cried foul.

Former Deputy Dist. Atty. Marian Thompson wrote the L.A. County Board of Supervisors arguing that the Registrar’s methods are outdated and complained that recall organizers were barred from sending observers to monitor the process, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Last week, organizers of the recall effort alleged the county was not adhering to current laws for signature verification, saying rules presume that a signature is valid unless there is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the signature on the petition differs in "multiple, significant and obvious" respects from the one on file. But organizers alleged that the county was not adhering to that standard.

"The outdated training materials and procedures provided by the Registrar, along with their denial of observation rights, raise grave concerns about the verification process," according to a statement by the campaign last week. "It appears the standards being applied to verify recall signatures are different than those mandated under current law and used in other recent elections. We remain confident that once a fair, transparent, and accurate verification process is implemented, it will ultimately determine enough signatures were submitted to qualify the recall."

According to the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk's Office, the signature-verification process "was conducted in compliance with the statutory and regulatory requirements of the California Government Code, Elections Code and Code of Regulations.

According to the county's breakdown of invalid signatures, however, only about 9,940 were ruled to be different than the one on file, with the vast majority rejected for other reasons.

Gascón has been under fire since taking office in December 2020, when he issued a series of reform directives. In addition to the rule against seeking the death penalty and the ban on transferring juvenile defendants to adult court, he prohibited filing sentencing-enhancements in most cases.

Gascón has repeatedly defended his policies, saying his stances were well-known during his campaign and his election signified public support of his agenda.

Monday marked the second failure of an effort to recall Gascón. A separate attempt last year was halted, with organizers blaming poor timing and the impact of COVID-19 health lockdowns.

The latest recall effort appeared to gain steam throughout the signature-gathering effort, bolstered by vocal criticism of Gascón by recall organizers and the leaders of dozens of local cities that took "no confidence" votes in the district attorney.

But just as the recall-petition signatures were being submitted to the county last month, there were signs of discord that threatened the effort. A petition signature-gathering company hired by the recall campaign sued the organizers, saying they were owed nearly $470,000 for unpaid work. The lawsuit by Let the Voters Decide also accused recall organizers of a series of missteps in the process, alleging they "made multiple strategic decisions related to the collection of signatures that were directly against LTVD's recommendations as to how to proceed."

"For example, against LTVD's recommendations, Defendants lowered the price they were willing to pay signature collectors during a time where the market demanded that, to prevent those individuals from leaving, Defendants maintain or increase the prices paid," the suit alleges.

Tim Lineberger, spokesman for the recall campaign, called the lawsuit "frivolous."

Responding to news of the recall effort's failure, LTVD spokesman David Leibowitz said in a statement, "This could not have been handled more like amateur hour. These consultants made poor decisions and ignored solid advice at every turn. You name it, they did it, from collecting signatures on the cheap to failing to pay their bills to expensive direct mail that failed to having zero clue how to verify signatures for submission. They have no one to blame but themselves for this disaster."

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.