First of two parts.
Dateline Carson – When Jim Dear, the muscular mayor of the city, gave up that office three months ago after he was elected city clerk, no one doubted he would be heard from not only again but regularly.
Old political rivals have driven him back into view volubly.
Mr. Dear filed a lawsuit yesterday against former City Council colleagues whom, he said this morning, attempted to surreptitiously usurp his electoral authority. The case is scheduled to be heard tomorrow morning at downtown Los Angeles Superior Court, 111 N. Hill St.
Why Councilmembers Lula Davis-Holmes and Al Robles – both mayoral candidates in November — quietly engineered a unique action last Friday in an election matter while Mr. Dear was out of town, reposes at the heart of this latest political drama. It squeaks with unrelieved intrigue.
With Mr. Dear off to the clerk’s office, as of last March, and Mike Gipson having been elected to the state Assembly, more recently, the Carson City Council is down to three live members.
The backstory is decidedly more fascinating than the frontstory, which is that Mr. Robles and Ms. Davis-Holmes are eager for somebody, anybody – not necessarily Mr. Dear – to certify the results of a special June 2 election.
Except that certifying elections is one of Mr. Dear’s principal responsibilities.
Mr. Dear’s lawsuit is pursuing an injunction that would invalidate last Friday’s meeting that only featured two live bodies, Ms. Davis-Holmes and Mr. Robles. The third Councilman, Elito Santarina, as they say, ‘phoned it in, from a hospital where his wife had been taken.
The organizers of the meeting voted teamed to outvote Mr. Santarina 2 to 1 to temporarily, and perhaps creatively, override the absent Mr. Dear and find someone else to count and validate the remaining 1200 ballots 1200 ballots. Pastor Jawane Hilton is 141 votes in front of Alex Cainglet.
All of that is salad, not the entrée, in Mr. Dear’s account of what happened, as he related it just ahead of today’s Council meeting
Mr. Dear said this morning that Ms. Davis-Holmes is the chief culprit in the freshest edition of South Bay Wing.
“She is angling, as she always is,” he said, “because she wants to be the next mayor. She is going to sucker in Little Al. Then she is going to betray him, and he doesn’t even know what is coming.”
(To be continued)
