Arkansas: Parkin mayor ousted in recall vote

Parkin Mayor Diane Patterson appears to have been ousted in a recall vote, 191-180. The recall seems to have occured after her sons were arrested for arson. One of her children was assistant chief at the Parkin Fire Department.

Arkansas: Wynne Mayor survives recall vote

Wynne Mayor Jennifer Hobbs appears to have survived the recall vote, 1217-1627.

The issue seems to be complaints about the recovery plan following a tornado. There is also a complaint about a rebuilding a historic park building.

Missouri: Carthage Councilmember ousted in recall vote

Carthage Councilmember Tiffany Cossey was ousted in a recall vote, so far the vote is 730-457. The recall was over a claim that she was creating a hostile work environment, which led the previous council to attempt to pass a censure motion against her. Cossey is also accused of stealing pro-recall signs. Here's an additional story on the fighting in Carthage Government.

Petitioners handed in 545 signatures and got 508 valids. They needed 486. Notably, a second wave pushed them over. 

Idaho: Marsh Valley School Board Member facing Election Day recall vote

Marsh Valley School Board Member Kathy Egan is facing a recall vote on Election Day, November 5. Egan, who is in her second term, is facing the recall over complaints about declining enrollment, poor financial oversight and poor performance of the district, though the focus seems to be discussion to close an elementary school.

Since this is Idaho, I would assume the  ]"queen of the hill" provision, which requires the pro-recall vote to top the amount of votes received in the official's original election, is in effect.

Idaho: Juliaetta City Councilor facing Election Day recall

A recall election against Juliaetta City Councilor Judi Fuller is on the ballot on November 5. Fuller was appointed to office in January. 

Petitioners claims the recall is about social media posts about a wildfire being close and safety of a bike path.  Fuller claims it is because of questions she asked about inappropriately collecting a $5 donation to pay for local TV channels. The  Association that oversees it is run by the current mayor. 

Oregon: Signatures handed in against Josephine County Commissioner

Petitioners handed in over 7500 signatures against Josephine County Commissioner John West over claims of insufficient law enforcement funding, defunding a service district and an auctioning off of timberland. 

One of the other Commissioners, Herman Baertschiger, was not targeted as he did not run for reelection. He did face a failed recall attempt in 2022.

Michigan: Warren Mayor recall petition rejected on clarity grounds

Petitions language against Warren Mayor Lori Stone was rejected by the Macomb County Election Commission of clarity issues. The recall is about social media posts by a member of the Historical Commission about Islam. 

Nebraska: Petitions taken out against Kimball Mayor

Petitions have been taken out against Kimball Mayor John Morrison, with a focus on a tax levy, a claimed delay in replacing a council member and other general issues.

Petitioners needs 280 signatures in 30 days. 

California: More updates on Oakland Mayor recall effort

 The Nor Cal Carpenters Union has endorsed the Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao recall over her inclusion of their logo on her material. 

The prime backer of the Thao and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price recalls, Phillip Dreyfuss, has donated $700K to the Price recall and $890K to the Thao one. 

The County Registrar claims that the Price recall costs about $6 million and would be $20 million as a stand alone special election. It's not clear why an additional vote would be another $6 Million, but there it is. 

There was a clash (though not a physical one) between pro and anti recall forces in Downtown Oakland.

And here's a look at the recall, with the owner of Fentons Creamery (a practical landmark ice cream shop/restaurant) discussing his support for the recall. 

California: Salinas City Councilmember facing recall effort

Salinas City Councilmember Andrew Sandoval is facing a recall effort over complaints about bullying and his questions of conflict-of-interest complaints against a former councilmember. Sandoval was elected in 2022. 

Petitioners would need 2275 signatures.

California: What to expect when you're expecting Two Recalls -- Alameda County District Attorney and Oakland Mayor overlapping editions

On Election Day, there will be at least 17 recalls nationwide, but California's East Bay will be the scene of two standout recall elections with a number of features and facts that are potentially historic in the long annals of recalls: Alameda District Attorney Pamela Price and Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao.

2nd largest local US recall by population ever?:

With over 1.6 million people in Alameda, the District Attorney recall is the single largest (non-Gubernatorial/LG) recall election since the Miami-Dade County Mayor in 2011 and may be the second largest in US history (from what I see Los Angeles had about 1.5M in 1938, when Mayor Frank Shaw was kicked out). The Oakland Mayoral recall is the largest mayoral recall by population in the country since 2011 (both Miami-Dade/Omaha -- while I've been following recalls since the 1990s, I started the blog in 2011, which is why I keep citing that year). 

Additionally, Alameda County has not been an active user of recalls. The only two that went to a vote since 2011 were the Sunol Glen School Board recalls this July (plus there was a resignation in Newark in 2014)

Overlapping Jurisdiction Recalls:

This is the first recall that I can find since at least 2011 that involves overlapping jurisdictions, which I discuss in this Governing Magazine article. One factor to note is that Price appears on Page 3 of the ballot and Thao is much further down (page 8 or so). Very interested in how this will play out -- I'll point to the Michigan House Speaker Andy Dillon recall/reelection for why that may matter.

There is significant overlap in the issues (specifically how to deal with crime and criminal justice matters) and funders for the two recalls, though each has its own unique subjects, including a still not-fully-explained FBI investigation that led to a raid on Thao's house and complaints about leadership for Price (this editorial in the East Bay Times goes into depth on that). Some of Price/Thao's supporters apparently feel the best approach is a joint one, as there are anti-recall signs that actually just say "No on Recalls" without naming which ones. There are numerous prominent officials backing one recall but silent on the other (Representative Eric Swalwell against Price;  former Oakland Mayor Libby Scharf against Thao). I haven't seen anyone yet who is pro one recall, but against the other. There are a number of officials who oppose both recalls, including Representative Barbara Lee, who claim to be against recalls in general. 

Strange Pathways:

While these two recalls may be similar, the pathways to the ballot and the results of what happens if the recalls succeed are quite different. Each has run into distinct problems that were caused by two separate bodies. 

What is also clear is that voters are not aware of many of these facts, which has led to some believing that the recalls use the same replacement provisions. For example, I've heard from Alameda voters who are worried about the cost of the replacement vote, which only exists for the Oakland recall. So let's look into what happened:

Alameda County: Anything's legal as long as you don't get caught (or sued):

Historically, District Attorneys have not faced many recall attempts (partly because there are so many fewer DAs than other officials), but that has changed in recent years. I discuss the rise of and backlash against the Progressive Prosecutor movement here (SF's Chesa Boudin recall, and attempts against LA's George Gascon and Contra Costa's Diana Becton).

The Price recall has been a much longer affair than the Thao one, involving more than double the needed signatures, and in this case the combination of an old law and the actions of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors has thrown up challenging roadblocks to the use of the recall. We discuss this at length (and here and here as well).

California law allows charter counties and cities to have their own recall law, and Alameda had exactly that. However, it was passed in 1926, resulting in some particular difficult provisions (such as 10 days to count the signatures). The recall law also had likely unconstitutional provisions that caused trouble in counting the signatures. But changing the law mid-stream would radically increase the number of signatures needed and could greatly delay the recall. 

The Alameda Supervisors pushed forward regardless and promoted Measure B (which passed overwhelmingly and is discussed below in the Oakland section). The arguments they used for why the law needed to be changed were incredibly disingenuous, but, well, what can you do.

In order to avoid the new law, petitioners handed in signatures before the vote on Measure B, but (despite the law), it took much longer to verify the signatures. They appeared to combine both laws in how they approached the signatures, using the new law to decide how much time they had and the old laws to toss out an inordinate number of signatures and use a statistical sampling method (the old charter required signers to state their occupation and each signature to be counted). The result was a bit of chaos and some behavior that could easily have led to lawsuits. It is still not clear based on what rules they operated and how they decided to count the signatures. Perhaps it's not a surprise that they still have not shared the information, nor the details of the signature rejections despite a Public Records Request.

One major result was that the Supervisors were able to delay the recall (lots of issues here) -- something that California, unlike other places, had previously prevented others from doing -- and led it to being held in November rather than much earlier (such as June). 

There is also a significant issue with the replacement race. As mentioned in greater detail below, Alameda County's replacement model is not the one-day/two-step process that voters are used to. Instead, the temporary replacement will be chosen by the County Supervisors and voters will choose a permanent replacement at the next election. Here is where the delay really matters -- if the election was held in the 35-40 days under the old law, the replacement race would have been held on Election Day. Instead, the replacement will not be chosen by the voters until the next general election (probably in 2026).

Oakland Mayor's Recall Carousel: 

The Oakland recall ran into trouble from other sources -- the state legislature. Oakland (like many places in the state) simply uses the local recall provisions in the state law (which Measure B ends up accomplishing for Alameda County). Previously, this was an excellent law. However, in 2022, the state legislature decided to radically change this law. For Oakland, the biggest problem is that it moved the replacement race law from one that specifies a one-day, two-step process to instead using the "by law" or "automatic replacement" model. This was a surprise to most (see Shasta). For Oakland, the existing replacement law (which seems to be focused on death or resignation) involves a temporary replacement and an election three months later. For the Thao recall, there is a particular issue -- the temporary replacement, Oakland City Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas, is running for Alameda County Supervisor, which could lead to four mayors in three months. The result is confusion on how the previously straightforward recall operated and complaints about a more expensive process -- which has bleed into the Alameda DA race as well.

The usual anti-recall arguments: Man, he's opposed to fair play, he wants it all and he wants it his way:

The election has seen complaints that this is a misuse of the recall, which is based on the (incorrect) belief that California adopted the recall solely to be used against corruption. There is also a focus on the odd claim that the recall is anti-democratic. This type of campaign has not worked well, as I would suspect, voters see the recall more as raw democracy.

So what will happen? How the hell would I know, but here's some cool facts!

As a general rule, recalls are incredibly successful -- 61.4% resulting in removal since 2011 and another 6% resignation. Recalls are even more successful in California -- 103 of the 130 recalls in that time saw an ouster (79%), plus 21 resignations. The fact that it is on Election Day may have a significant impact, something that Price's team appears to be banking on, as they worked to delay the recall so that it would be scheduled for that day. However, the results show that officials are more likely to survive a standalone special election recall (57%) than a general election one (67%). I suspect ballot placement may be the reason. We'll see if that track record keeps up.

There is a poll from the Chamber of Commerce saying the recalls are leading, though I haven't seen any details, so make of that what you will. The different elections for the two candidates may matter. Price won a top two election, where she received 43% in the first round. This was much better than her across-the-bay peer Chesa Boudin (who got 35% in the first round). Might this be a hopeful sign for her?

Thao ran in a ranked choice system and came in second with 31.8% of the vote in the first round, which actually took 9 rounds. Once thought is that the original vote matters quite a bit. While a large number of recalls are blow-outs either way, we have seen with the four gubernatorial recalls that the results tracked with the original election. Could that happen here?

Well, one way or another, we'll see (not) soon enough if those facts matter.

At least 17 (update 19) Recalls set for Election Day -- including Alameda District Attorney and Oakland Mayor

This Election Day will see at least 19 recalls throughout the country (and a noteworthy asterisk). There are also two recalls scheduled the week before in Oregon, so it is possible they will pushed off till Election Day. It could be that other recalls will pop up on our radar (this seems to happen, especially with Arkansas), so view this as a floor, not a ceiling.

Two points: 1) It's noteworthy that there are so few in our nation's recall leader, Michigan, though they did have 12 on Primary Day in May (plus two resignations). 2) Presidential Election Days have the highest turnout (though perhaps we're in for a drop from the post 26th Amendment high), but this doesn't help the official. In fact, recalls on Election or Primary Days seem to have a higher ouster rate. 

The most noteworthy ones are right out in the Bay Area, with the Oakland Mayor and Alameda County District Attorney, which I will deal with in a separate post, but all recalls are special in their own special way. So here's the links to the upcoming ones:

Arizona: 

Cottonwood Councilmember Lisa DuVerrnay

Page Councilmembers David Auge and Michael Farrow

Arkansas:

Wynne Mayor Jennifer Hobbs

California: 

Alameda District Attorney Pamela Price

Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao

Avenal's Reff-Sunset School Board's Claudia Cazares,  Lilia Rizo, Lissette Padilla

Grover Beach Councilmember Daniel Rushing

Los Banos Councilmembers Brett Jones and Douglas Begonia

Montebello Councilmember Angie Jimenez

Idaho (Update):

Juliaetta City Council Judi Fuller

Marsh Valley School Board Kathy Egan

Michigan:

Onaway School Board member John Palmer

Missouri 

Carthage Councilmember Tiffany Cossey

Nebraska:

Brownville Councilmember Colleen Volkmer and Jennifer Hobbs

Additionally, Flint Michigan had a recall scheduled against Councilmember Quincy Murphy, but he died and while the vote will take place, it will be ignored (though there are lawsuits over that, but it seems like they won't be counted).

Colorado:

Loveland Councilmember Troy Krenning (though this seems to be pushed off by continual suits)

Norwood Mayor Candy Meehan is set for December 10