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Against the advice of its own county counsel, a split San Benito County Board of Supervisors voted on Nov. 18 to decline the certificate which confirmed that the petition to recall Supervisor Ignacio Velazquez had gathered enough valid signatures to trigger an election.
The board majority, including Supervisors Velazquez, Kollin Kosmicki, and Dom Zanger, reiterated charges that the recall was a “scam,” and that petition signature gatherers had misled people into signing while pointing to several signers who claimed to have been “lied to.”
The vote, however, had no practical effect: the election will almost certainly move forward, unless it’s blocked by a court order, and the San Benito County Elections Department is set to schedule it for June 2.
The two-hour long discussion was marked by shouting, interruptions, tension between the supervisors and accusations of illegal conduct.
Since the Elections Department confirmed on Nov. 3 that Safer San Benito—the group leading the recall effort—had surpassed the threshold of 1,833 valid signatures, Velazquez, Zanger and Kosmicki have claimed in mailers and social media that the signers had been misled.
They have called the effort a “sham” or a “scam” and, at the Nov. 18 meeting Kosmicki argued the petition was “not sufficient” in their view, despite being approved and signed by County Clerk-Recorder and Registrar of Voters Francisco Diaz.
“I’m not going to support putting my name behind it at all,” he said. “I’m not going to personally support scheduling any sort of election.”
Kosmicki dubbed the recall a “disgusting scheme,” “a blatant scam,” and a “slap” to “democracy,” “the community,” and “honesty.”
County Counsel Gregory Priamos told the supervisors that there was no legal mechanism for rejecting the petition certificate, explaining that their role was strictly “ministerial,” or routine.
Priamos told the supervisors the only action it could take was to schedule a special election for the spring or postpone a decision for up to 14 days. If the board chose the latter or took no action at all, the Registrar of Voters could consolidate the recall into the June primary election. In that case, the election would cost $10,000, about eight times less than a special election.
“There are other legal remedies that are available to challenge the recall petition and to prevent the election from going on the ballot,” Priamos said. “But those issues are not before the board today.”
Four residents who said they had signed the petition told supervisors at the Nov. 18 meeting they did so after signature gatherers claimed it was to increase firefighters’ salaries. They said the petitioners never mentioned a recall.
Zanger also claimed he was approached by a collector at the Farmers Market who asked him to sign to “support the fire department” and increase firefighter’s salaries.
Safer San Benito has rejected these accusations, and has said it provided its hired signature collection firm a script to follow. In addition, its treasurer, Heidi Connor, told BenitoLink that the group had no collectors at the Farmer’s Market. “We never went there,” she said.
District Attorney Joel Buckingham told the board his office has received about 20 complaints from people who say they signed without knowing it was for a recall, and is investigating. One of those complaints, he said, involved a video in which a signature gatherer claimed he was collecting signatures for firefighter raises, only to acknowledge, when pressed, that it was actually for the recall.
Because the person in the video didn’t end up signing, Buckingham said his office could not take action on that specific incident and simply notified Velazquez.
He added that while the broader investigation remains open, it’s unlikely to affect the recall timeline. A misdemeanor investigation can take roughly six months, he said, and even if charges were filed, the outcome “may result in a misdemeanor warrant for someone who doesn’t live locally and sits in the system for a fairly long time, because the penalty is not particularly large.”
At this point, the only way to stop the recall election would be a court ruling, Priamos told the board.
Supervisor Angela Curro, who spent more than three decades as an elections official before joining the board, agreed and emphasized that it’s not the supervisors’ role to determine the validity of a recall.
“Every voter has the right to go to court and have the judge make the decision to remove your name,” Curro said. “If that happens, the judge has the right to order the Registrar of Voters to stop the recall effort and not have it on the ballot. That’s not my job.”
She added that misleading statements by signature collectors are unfortunately common. “I do not condone it. I think it is horrific,” she said. “I’ve seen it happen with local measures on banning fracking. I’ve seen it on local measures to stop growth. I’ve seen it on local measures that actually are misrepresented while they’re circulated and I think it’s appalling.”
Supervisor Mindy Sotelo echoed this, and said their job was to approve the certificate and not judge whether it was valid or not.
“I know there were a lot of people that said, ‘I was very misled with Measure A,’” Sotelo said. “Bottom line is, you get enough signatures, it goes to a ballot. Everybody will have the opportunity to vote on this.”
Curro and Sotelo voted to accept the certificate but to take no action on setting an election date, thus allowing the registrar to schedule the election. Their motion failed, and Velazquez, Kosmicki and Zanger voted to not accept the certificate.
Safer San Benito’s Connor told BenitoLink that what happened at the meeting was a “shocking abuse of power by the three supervisors,” adding that the group “will be seeking a formal investigation by all appropriate state and local agencies over this behavior in the meeting and also the behavior previously on social media.”
She said that the posts on social media showed it was “a coordinated” effort by the three supervisors in violation of the Brown Act.
Meanwhile, Kosmicki has proposed the board discuss at a future meeting a law or ordinance to “increase transparency and accountability regarding the signature gathering process.”
“This item would give the Board the opportunity to potentially develop rules requiring signature gatherers to identify their names, where they reside, whether they are paid or volunteer signature gatherers, and who is paying them if they are paid,” he wrote on the form to request future agenda items. “I also propose the Board discuss/explore whether there is potential to enhance exposure for signature gatherers who explicitly misinform voters about the contents of a signature petition.”
During the meeting, the board did not mention the recent recovery of nearly $700,000 in attempted vendor-payment fraud. The Auditor-Controller addressed it separately in a Nov. 14 press release, saying his office is strengthening financial controls amid increasingly sophisticated cyber-fraud schemes.
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