On December 7, the Oakland City Clerk approved a petition submitted by the Committee to Recall Jean Quan and Restore Oakland. Then, on January 24, the City Clerk approved another petition submitted by a second group, the Committee to Recall Jean Quan Now. Gene Hazzard, one of the organizers of the first group, has since broken off and formed a third committee, which is also circulating the first petition.
Differences over legal technicalities and infighting have plagued the various recall campaigns within Oakland. From now until their June deadline, expect to see volunteers from three different “committees”—currently all unpaid—collecting signatures for two different petitions.
On Tuesday, Terence Candell, working with both the “Recall and Restore” and new Hazzard committees, was out in front of Grocery Outlet on Broadway, while later that night, volunteers for the first two groups collected signatures side-by-side in front of the Grand Lake Theater.
Corrections: Gene Hazzard’s new committee is circulating the first petition, and not a different, third one. Terence Candell is working with both the new Hazzard committee and the “Recall and Restore” Committee.
You have the essential point correct: the recall committees are not competing with each other.
One correction: There are only two petitions even though there are three committees
One was originally submitted by Gene Hazzard, but is circulated by Hazzard’s “new” committee and by the Recall and Restore committee.
The second petition is the one from the Committee to Recall Mayor Quan Now. That’s the one with the red, white, and blue signage.
Len Raphael, Temescal
RecallQuan.com and follow us @recallquan
Since I am the one that has the most signatures, allow me to explain why I will not submit them. Once they heard that we got over 5,000 signatures in February, individuals who had previously publicly spoken against the recall, began to quack like politicians and declared themselves candidates for Mayor. In fact, to add to the divisiveness, De La Fuente, in my opinion a long time corrupt and inept politician in the City of Oakland, began giving money to the second petition drive, which had no signatures at all, and declared himself a candidate should the recall be successful. In fact, milquetoast candidate Joe Tuman also declared himself a recall candidate. It was at this point that my group, the Oakland Coalition for Justice, the group that started the petition drive but supported the Gene Hazzard petition, decided we did not want our city going from extremely bad [Quan] to worse, and that is why we called it off. We called it off, because only we had the power to move it forward. When we stopped, it died. ‘You think these two numbskulls were working with Quan to thwart the Recall?