LA Times-Voters Reject Recall of North Coast D.A

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http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-me-humboldt3mar03,1,5960500.story?coll=la-news-science

CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS

Voters Reject Attempt to Recall North Coast D.A.

A timber company bankrolled the effort to remove the Humboldt County official.
By Kenneth R. Weiss
Times Staff Writer

March 3, 2004

Humboldt County voters rallied behind their district attorney Tuesday,
rejecting a campaign bankrolled by Pacific Lumber Co. to recall the prosecutor
who had accused the powerful timber company of fraud.

With all precincts reporting, voters decided to retain Dist. Atty. Paul
Gallegos, 61% to 39%, despite an intensive campaign of radio, television and
direct mail advertisements that portrayed Gallegos as soft on crime and a
friend of illegal tree-sitters, rapists and pot growers.

"It's a triumph of the people over the influence of money and lies in
politics," said a jubilant Gallegos, 41, a former Southern Californian who
moved to Eureka a decade ago. "This recall election wasn't about me, it's
about a corporation trying to control politics here in Humboldt County."

"This is about a defendant getting rid of the prosecutor," he said. "If this
was the will of the people, they [Pacific Lumber] wouldn't have had to spend a
quarter of a million dollars to get this on the ballot and convince people I
was no good."

The recall election, the most expensive race of any kind in Humboldt County
history, generated an unusually high turnout on a day when voters elsewhere in
the state largely stayed home.

The race emerged as a test of the century-old political dominance of timber
interests in a county of 130,000 people that has seen a sharp drop in logging
jobs and a surge in environmentally concerned newcomers who work in the
tourism and service industries.

The debate over Gallegos cleaved the county along familiar battle lines in the
North Coast timber wars: Whether redwoods should be considered a draw for
tourists and a subject of poetry or a source of lucrative lumber and abundant
jobs. Passions flared to the bitter end, with allegations of improper
electioneering.

Richard Salzman, Gallegos' campaign manager, joined volunteers on a busy
intersection to wave "No Recall" signs for the early morning commuters — most
of them in pickup trucks.

"We got many more thumbs up than we got middle fingers," he said. "For these
guys who gave us the finger, it's not the way Paul [Gallegos] handled a
particular case, it's that they fear that their job's at stake."

Last year, Pacific Lumber and its corporate parent, Maxxam Inc., based in
Houston, paid $8 a signature to help fill out petitions needed to qualify the
recall for the ballot.

Then the timber company and its contractors donated more than 80% of the money
— $266,000 disclosed so far — to the campaign to persuade voters that Gallegos
should be bounced from the job as the county's top prosecutor.

Pacific Lumber denied that its contributions had anything to do with the civil
fraud case that Gallegos and his top assistant, Timothy O. Stoen, filed in
March 2003, accusing the company of lying to state regulators during the 1999
Headwaters Forest deal. The deal capped a decade-long battle to save the
state's remaining stands of giant redwoods not already protected in parks or
preserves.

Prosecutors contend that the fraud has allowed Pacific Lumber to harvest about
$40 million worth of trees each year on 211,000 acres that were supposed to be
protected under logging restrictions as part of the deal, which cost taxpayers
$480 million.

Company spokeswoman Erin Dunn said the firm joined the recall out of a duty to
help protect public safety from a prosecutor with a "miserable" record.

Supporters of Gallegos raised $180,000 and put together teams of volunteers to
counteract the ad campaign against him. They phoned thousands of supporters in
places such as Arcata, a liberal college town, to urge them to the polls.

"We're doing a booming business," said Lindsey McWilliams, Humboldt County's
election manager, who predicted a turnout of about 65%. The county issued
about 18,000 absentee ballots, about 6,000 more than usual, and he fears it
will take weeks to sort through the final 1,500 to 2,000 or so ballots which
were smudged, adorned with write-in candidates, or turned in at polling places.

Although these ballots will not change the outcome of the recall election,
McWilliams said, "It's going to take us a lot of time to clean this up."

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times