First the pro-Wal-Mart council majority call off a recall election using a recent liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on the Voting Rights Act. (BTW: This ruling creates lots of possible problems for citizen democracy in the future.) See it here. Then one of the majority’s members changes sides and votes to have the recall election. See it here. Now one of those being recalled went to federal court and successfully got an order stopping the recall process— for now. See the local story here.
If Wal-Mart can only get the bulldozers started.
March 13th, 2006 at 12:00 am
The point is that this isn’t just about Wal-Mart. It’s about disenfranchising an entire city because you don’t think you can win an election. That’s what Mayor Imperial’s suit did.
And, so, of course, the bulldozers started and the building is rapidly taking shape. And Rosemead voters never got a chance to vote on this because the city council refused to put it on the ballot as a referendum, and the folks responsible for this decision will never again need to face the voters [both councilmembers targeted for recall are saying they will not seek reelection–because they know they can’t win].
It shouldn’t matter whether you support Wal-Mart or not. How can you support incumbent members of a city council working so hard to keep from having to face the voters? First the two targeted councilmembers took on the role of judge and decided that the decision should be applied retroactively [when they voted to cancel the election in January]. Then they found an activist judge [a conservative activist, but an activist, nonetheless] to retroactively apply Padilla v. Lever to Rosemead’s recall election.