By Jeff Shuttleworth
June 4, 2008
The effort by state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland) to recall a Republican state senator who voted against the state’s budget last year went down in flames in Tuesday’s election, losing by a margin of 76 percent to 24 percent.
Perata, a former Alameda school teacher who’s considered one of the most powerful politicians in the state, organized the recall effort against Sen. Jeff Denham (R-Merced) as payback for Denham’s key vote against the state’s budget.
Denham’s refusal to go along with Democrats and become one of the two Republicans needed to pass the budget helped cause a lengthy deadlock that was only broken when Senate Minority Leader Dick Ackerman, R-Irvine, eventually voted for the budget.
Kevin Spillane, a spokesman for Denham, said today that Denham “feels vindicated” that voters in the 12th Senate district, which stretches from Modesto south to Merced and Madera and west to Los Banos, Hollister and Salinas, defeated the recall by a wide margin and said the result was “an overwhelming rejection for Don Perata.”
Spillane said the recall effort “was an abuse of the process” and he believes the measure shouldn’t have been on the ballot in the first place.
Spillane said the recall was denounced by most major newspapers in the Bay Area and across the state.
A spokesman for Perata didn’t return a phone call seeking comment today.
If the recall effort had succeeded, Denham would have been replaced for the rest of his term, which expires at the end of 2010, by Monterey County Supervisor Simon Salinas, a former Democratic assemblyman who was the lone name on the ballot to replace Denham.
Speaking on the steps of the state capitol in Sacramento on May 7, Perata announced that he would abandon his recall drive against Denham because he wanted to put politics aside and concentrate on solving the state’s budget woes.
But Spillane said after Perata’s announcement that he believes the real reason Perata dropped the recall effort was that “there was a lack of support and a growing rebellion from Democrats in Sacramento who believed it was a waste of money” and a distraction from the state’s budget situation.
Spillane said today that he believes the recall effort was “a divisive act” that kept the Legislature from focusing on the budget.
This has been a difficult political year for Perata.
In February, the state’s voters rejected a measure he backed which would have changed California’s term limits rules and allowed him to spend another four years in office. Instead, he will have to leave the state Legislature at the end of the year.
In addition, Denham filed a complaint with the California Attorney General’s office and the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office in late April accusing Perata of illegally pressuring senate aides into working on the recall effort.
The complaint alleges that Perata misused public resources and violated bribery laws.
Denham alleged that Perata sent a letter to state employees in April telling them that it was “not an optional activity” to work on the recall campaign.
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