On December 5, the Santa Ana City Council voted unanimously to accept the results of the failed recall election targeting Councilmember Jessie Lopez.
Lopez herself voted to “declare” and accept the results of the recall election – which she and her council allies Thai Phan, Johnathan Hernandez and Ben Vazquez had repeatedly attacked as “corrupt,” “illegal,” “illegitimate,” “unjust” and “undemocratic.”
Lopez claimed that even holding the recall election “disenfranchised” 1,200 voters in old Ward 3 from which she was elected in 2020, because the recall was held in the redistricted Ward 3.
Lopez even had her landlord – long-time Santa Ana political activist and Chicanos Unidos leader Albert Castillo – file a lawsuit seeking to stop the recall.
If Lopez, Phan, Vazquez and Hernandez truly believed the recall as illegal, corrupt, illegitimate, undemocratic and disenfranchised 1,200 Santa Ana voters, why would they vote to legitimize it? Why vote sanction what they claim was the disenfranchisement of 1,200 voters.
Lopez didn’t even pull it from the consent calendar to denounce it as the illegal, corrupt, illegitimate, undemocratic disenfranchisement of 1,200 Santa Ana voters. Hernandez told Mayor Valerie Amezcua he wanted to comment on the item but then never did.
Assuming Lopez, Hernandez, Phan and Vazquez be believed their own campaign rhetoric, what they were saying, one would think the principled thing for them to do would be to reject the results. Instead, they voted to sanction the “disenfranchisement” of 1,200 voters.
Why? Because Lopez won. If the recall had succeed, you can bet Hernandez, Phan and Vasquez would have loudly voted against accepting the results.
But since the results of the illegal, corrupt and undemocratic recall favored Lopez, none of that matters. According to sources, Lopez – or at least, her allies – are dropping the lawsuit challenging the legality of holding the recall in the current Ward 3 boundaries.
