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Following the verification of the more than 1,800 valid signatures needed to trigger an election to recall Supervisor Ignacio Velazquez, San Benito County Clerk-Recorder and Registrar of Voters Francisco Diaz is set to present the results to the Board of Supervisors at its Nov. 18 meeting.
Then, the board can set the election date immediately or within 14 days, Diaz told BenitoLink. If it fails to do so, the county elections office will set the date within five days afterward.
Supervisors can choose between holding a special election—within 88 to 125 days of scheduling, at an estimated cost of $75,000 to $85,000, according to Diaz. Or they can consolidate it with the June primary election for about $10,000, he said.
Safer San Benito, the group leading the recall, needed at least 1,833 signatures from registered voters in Velazquez’s District 5, which stretches across north county between Highways 25 and 156, including downtown Hollister and the municipal airport.
The group cleared the threshold by just nine signatures: of the 2,256 submitted, 1,842 were verified and deemed valid.
Stacie McGrady, co-chair of Safer San Benito, said the group will continue outreach efforts and may send mailers next year.
Velazquez told BenitoLink that the recall effort is a “scam by developers” who want to take him out “so they can again start getting more projects approved.” He said he was going to campaign for the next few months by letting people know that the recall is being “sponsored by developers.”
The group had originally planned to recall Supervisor Kollin Kosmicki as well, but dropped the effort midway, deciding not to overreach and to focus instead on a single recall, which the group indicated was challenging enough on its own.
Few recall efforts in California make it to the election stage, but those that do often succeed.
Across the state, since 1913, only 11 of 181 recall attempts against statewide officeholders qualified for the ballot; and of those 11, six led to an official being removed.
Nationwide, Ballotpedia found that in 2024, of the 326 officials targeted for recall, only 110 made it to an election, and 77 were removed from office.
In California, 83% of the recall elections against countywide officeholders between 2010 and 2019 resulted in the official being removed, for a total of 15 successful recalls.
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