Re: “Dear Fires Lawsuit Against Two Old Rivals”
Dateline Carson – On the way to answering the throbbing question of why Carson City Hall is rocking again with another heavyweight political clash:
The sizzling, long-running feud between now-City Clerk Jim Dear and two rivals from the days they sat together on the City Council bitterly exploded with fireball fury at last night’s raucous Council meeting.
Mr. Dear angrily roared his disapproval over what he regarded as the illegal seating of Pastor Jawane Hilton as the fourth Council member.
Over boos and objections from the Council, Mr. Dear threatened new lawsuits.
The trouble originated when Mayor Al Robles and Councilperson Lula Davis-Holmes, impatient with the city clerk for what they regarded as a delay in certifying results of a June 2 election, called a special meeting last Friday. City Hall was closed. The third member of the Council, Elito Santarina, a Dear ally, checked in by telephone. He sided with Mr. Dear.
In a probably unprecedented and possibly illegal move, Mr. Robles and Ms. Davis-Holmes voted 2 to 1 to bypass Mr. Dear, retain an outside person to finish the vote count, certify the results, and have the winner seated by last night.
While exploring with Mr. Dear the reasons his rivals sought to mysteriously tiptoe around him last Friday to hasten the denouement of a special City Council election ballot count, Mr. Dear characteristically was candid in weighing the political poundage of the lady and the gentleman.
Mr. Robles became interim mayor after Mr. Dear stepped aside. Mr. Robles wants the job fulltime. He is running in November. Ms. Davis-Holmes has both of her eyes on the prize, too.
How good are her chances?
“Against Little Al?” said Mr. Dear. “Good. Anyone has a good chance against him. He is in hot water, starting with the harassment lawsuit by Lynn Dymally.”
Mr. Dear filed a lawsuit on Monday against two of the three surviving City Council members on the grounds they “illegally usurped” his authority. With a hearing due this morning in downtown Los Angeles Superior Court, he is seeking an injunction to invalidate the meeting at which Mr. Robles and Ms. Davis-Holmes voted to find someone not named Dear to certify the election’s last 1200 ballots, the question arose:
Why couldn’t they wait?
“Here is the answer,” said Mr. Dear. “When Little Al Robles got appointed to the mayor’s position, his City Council seat became vacant.
“They have 60 days from the day his Council seat becomes vacant to either call a special election or appoint someone, a qualified voter in the city, to the office of City Council.
“They can do that at any time during the 60 days. They did not do it.
“Now it is getting down to the wire. They realize the deadline from April 21 would be June 21, this coming Sunday. Then it would be June 23 when the election would be certified, which is the normal, typical way we certify elections in Carson,” Mr. Dear said.
“State law says we have until June 26 to certify the election. I made a plan to certify it three days early, and I am setting it for Tuesday, June 23, which is a normal time for us in Carson to certify an election and have oath-taking.
“The Councilwoman (Ms. Davis-Holmes) realized ‘Oh, no, the 23rd is after the 21st. And so they are trying to expedite and rush me through a process that has legal requirements that have to be followed to somehow certify the election beforehand.
“When I gave them my timetable, which they didn’t like, they wanted to remove me from being the elections official and therefore making the decision. They tried to do it last Friday in a special City Council meeting, on a day that City Hall was closed and I was out of town.”
Ms. Davis-Holmes told the Daily Breeze that Mr. Dear is “delaying this vote for self-serving purposes.”
She and Mr. Robles complained that Mr. Dear was taking too long to complete the count, presumably because a candidate he did not back, Mr. Hilton, led Alex Cainglet by 141 votes.
“Jim doesn’t like the fact he is not a part of the policy-making arena anymore,” Ms. Davis-Holmes said.
Furthermore, “I am not going to let him run this city from the city clerk’s office.”
Back to the lawsuit.
“At the meeting where they voted (2 to 1) to remove me,” said Mr. Dear, “I am deeming it illegal because they did not have a quorum. They say they don’t need a quorum. They can talk on the phone.”
(Editor’s Note: Mr. Robles and Ms. Davis-Holmes met face to face but the third member of the City Council, Mr. Santarina, spoke from a hospital room where his wife had been taken on an emergency.)
Mr. Dear noted that while Mr. Santarina spoke by telephone to his colleagues, “the phone doesn’t count.”
Will he succeed in court in overturning the Council’s vote?
Will there be additional lawsuits?
