AS SURPRISING COMMENTS GO at Stockton City Council meetings, Mayor Christina Fugazi offered a whopper that captured plenty of notice.
Only six months into her term, she challenged all comers to take a shot at recalling her from office. Noting her resounding victory in the November election, she said:
“If anybody is interested in starting a recall, there were 45,674 votes (for Fugazi). If you want to recall me, you almost got to get (17,000) signatures,” she said June 24 at the tail end of a six-hour meeting. “So I wish anybody and everyone the best of luck.”
Like, where did that come from? No one seems to know. And Fugazi, who did not reply to request for comment on this story, hasn’t elaborated. She might have misspoke: it appears it would take nearly 17,000 signatures to launch a citywide recall.
So far as anyone can tell, there is no recall movement afoot. Recalls, after all, are usually reserved for monumental scandals, not unlike presidential impeachments — accepting bribes, absconding with city funds, being indicted, egregious personal conduct or alike. No one has pointed a finger at Fugazi as being involved in any sort of major malfeasance.
She is, however, at the center of a City Hall drama over the choosing of a permanent city manager. Not the best look, but so far hardly recall fodder.
Saying she had the power to do so, Fugazi dissolved an ad hoc committee intended to choose a permanent city manager. But as Stocktonia reported, the committee had been created by a vote of the City Council. So it would typically take another council vote to change or abolish the committee.
The move didn’t sit well with Councilmember Mario Enriquez, who had been chosen to join Fugazi on the ad hoc committee.
“I won’t let political games or unilateral decisions distract from what our community deserves: real accountability and a fair, collaborative process,” Enríque said last month.
At the same time, Fugazi engaged in a verbal tussle at the June 24 meeting with Vice Mayor Jason Lee, the third member of the committee, the same meeting where she made the recall statement. Until recently, Lee had been viewed as steadfast ally.
‘Out of left field’
Councilmember Michael Blower, who has managed to stay above the fray, said the mayor’s comment about recall did indeed come out of the blue.
“Yeah, it was kind of out of left field,” he said. “It didn’t make a lot of sense to me as to ‘why now?’”
Blower, who served briefly on the council in 2016-17 and is in his first full term representing District 3, said that council affairs lately has Stocktonians paying more attention.
“I think people are keeping a very close eye on the city manager situation,” he said.
The ad hoc committee is only the latest development. The city manager issue has percolated since new City Council members took office in January. At that time, City Manager Harry Black resigned under pressure. A month later, the City Council appointed Steve Colangelo, former CEO of the San Joaquin County Fairgrounds, as the interim city manager.
Colangelo’s tenure has been rocky. Stocktonia revealed in May that Colangelo, who had no experience running a big city when he was installed, had hired Lathrop City Manager Stephen J. Salvatore as a $11,000-per-month consultant. The city said last month that Salvatore’s contract had ended and that he had only billed for two-months worth of work.
Fugazi, who defended Salvatore’s contract as “a strategic move” to expedite Colangelo’s transition into the role of interim city manager, was right about one thing: Even if there was a groundswell for her recall, it wouldn’t be easy.
A recall would require 50 signatures to initiate. Then it would take petitions with enough signatures to include 20% of all the voters in the last election, confirmed the Stockton City Clerk’s office. There were 84,576 total votes cast in the mayor’s race. Sure enough, the math works out to 16,915 based on the number of ballots cast in the mayor’s race. Or rounding up, just what the mayor said: 17,000.
And it’s not cheap. A local political consultant, who prefers to remain anonymous, estimated gathering the signatures to get a recall on the ballot against Fugazi would cost more than of $250,000.
Will the challenge surface?
In Stockton, few are willing rule anything out when it comes to city politics.
This story originally appeared in Stocktonia.
