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On a chilly, cloudy summer morning in Hollister, Stacie McGrady zipped up her black backpack, tucked a bottle of water into a side pocket and stepped onto Fourth Street. With one hand, she knocked on doors. With the other, she carried a folder with petition sheets, the tools of a campaign that is just starting in San Benito County.
McGrady is the co-chair of Safer San Benito, the organization leading the effort to recall county Supervisors Kollin Kosmicki and Ignacio Velazquez. Last year, she ran for a seat on the Board of Supervisors and lost to Dom Zanger. All three—Zanger, Kosmicki and Velazquez—were elected last year and now form the self-described “slow-growth” majority that opposes both commercial and housing development in the county. Since then, their performance in office has driven a push, particularly on social media platforms Nextdoor and Facebook, to remove them. Although their actions have spurred online anger, the number of dissatisfied voters is unclear.
When asked about what’s driving the recall, McGrady points to the fire protection services contract recently signed between the county and the city of Hollister. After nearly a year of intense debate, the board majority chose to increase payments to Hollister for services in the unincorporated areas. For McGrady, the issue isn’t just the contract itself, which she deems “not sustainable,” but the entire process that led to it, and the way Kosmicki and Velazquez have run the county.
“We need to do better,” she said. “We need people with ethical leadership and a holistic vision of the county and our community.”
If successful, the recall could flip the balance of power that has defined the board since January.
To get there, the group must collect nearly 2,000 valid signatures from voters in each official’s district by Sept. 29. That means, more specifically, at least 1,736 voter signatures in Kosmicki’s District 2, which includes San Juan Bautista, Aromas and parts of Hollister near Union Road and Hwy 25; and 1,833 signatures from Velazquez’s District 5, which stretches across north county between Highways 25 and 156, including downtown Hollister and the municipal airport.
If Safer San Benito collects enough signatures, the county’s Elections Department has 60 days to verify them. If enough are valid, the Board of Supervisors—or if needed, the Registrar of Voters—has 14 days to schedule the recall election, which would be held between 88 and 125 days later.
Most recall efforts in California don’t make it that far, but when they do reach the ballot, most officials end up being removed. Across the state, since 1913 only 11 of 181 recall attempts against statewide officeholders qualified for the ballot; and of those 11, only 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.
The Safer San Benito recall effort is complex, because each signature must come from a voter who lives in the targeted supervisor’s district.
McGrady said Safer San Benito is made up of 45 to 60 community members. They began knocking on doors and talking to neighbors the weekend of July 12, and in four days collected “a few hundred” signatures. McGrady said she has gathered about 50 herself.
If supporters obtain enough valid signatures, the cost of the recall elections could range from $25,000 up to $150,000, depending on when they are scheduled, according to Registrar of Voters Francisco Diaz. If the recall coincides with the June 2026 primary election, the cost would be $25,000 for a single supervisor and $40,000 for both. But this is unlikely to occur because, according to Diaz, if a recall is held, it would more likely necessitate a special election, taking place between January and March next year.
Costs of a special election would be higher: $70,000 to $75,000 for one supervisor, and between $125,000 and $150,000 for both.
On the day BenitoLink met with her, McGrady focused on downtown Hollister, Velazquez’s district. But the day before, she had been in Aromas, where she held four long conversations that turned into four signatures.
“A gentleman last night had reservations,” she told BenitoLink. “He didn’t want things in Aromas to change. He doesn’t want a gas station over there to change his world. But not having a gas station is costing us. How much fire equipment could we afford or roads could we fix with that?”
She said she told him something she repeats often: “The universe is always changing. What we have to do is to manage that change for the benefit of our community.”
McGrady said the man remained skeptical, but ultimately signed the petition.
McGrady hoped to do the same in downtown Hollister, but success was elusive. Nearly every door went unanswered, a predictable outcome on a Wednesday morning in a community where nearly half the population commutes to work. That’s why most of their efforts are concentrated on the weekends. Two people who opened their doors told her they weren’t citizens and couldn’t vote. Another one simply said she wasn’t interested.
Kosmicki and Velazquez have both dismissed the recall as politically motivated. In a written response to the petition, Velazquez dubbed it a “sham recall” driven by people who want more housing and faster growth, and “not about a fire contract that has already been approved and extended for five years.”
Kosmicki told BenitoLink the effort was “an abuse of the recall process.”
“We just started our terms, and there’s no reason for it,” he said. “The real reason that they’re trying to do this is because they know that the majority of the county board is in favor of responsible growth, and it’s their last-ditch effort to try and convince the public to go back to the way things were.”
On Fifth Street in Hollister someone responded to McGrady’s knocks. Behind a gate and half-hidden by plants and a tall tree, a young boy and a puppy answered the door. McGrady asked if an adult was home. The boy went inside and returned with his grandfather.
“Do you know about the recall?” she asked the man.
He said he didn’t know. “Let me get my wife,” he said, adding that she is the one who handled those things.
A woman in a green sweater came to the door. She listened as McGrady explained that a recall was happening. She asked for specifics; her main concern was that there was not enough housing.
McGrady told her how the county had just approved its updated housing element, the state-mandated document that outlines how every city and county in California will meet its community’s housing needs. San Benito County’s housing element didn’t meet the state’s deadline, and that has triggered the “builder’s remedy,” a provision in a state law that prevents jurisdictions from rejecting developments that provide affordable housing, even if they violate zoning rules. McGrady explained that this has opened the door to hundreds of new homes that could be built in the near future.
The woman said she would sign, and McGrady asked if her husband might be interested, too. She said he would. She went inside and a moment later returned with his signature. After two signatures and nearly an hour and a half knocking on doors, McGrady called it a day.
“Two signatures on a Wednesday morning is a goldmine,” she said.
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