LaRouche Follower Loses Bid to Overturn Election

An attempt by a follower of political extremist Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. to overturn an election recount was thrown out of court in Santa Ana on Wednesday, temporarily ending his bid to replace Bruce W. Sumner as the Democratic nominee in southern Orange County’s 40th Congressional District.

“We’ll probably appeal,” Art Hoffmann said after Superior Court Judge John C. Woolley ruled that he lacks the authority to either order a new election or review the results of the 16-day recount that resulted in Sumner’s victory.

“I don’t expect them to drop it,” Sumner said. “It’s their nature. They’ll appeal, and they’ll get the same results they got here.”

It was the second setback of the day for LaRouche followers. In New York, the state’s highest-ranking court refused to review lower court rulings that kept three LaRouche candidates off the Sept. 9 primary ballot.

Those courts had barred LaRouche candidates Webster Tarpley, running for U.S. Senate; Judah Philip Rubinstein, running for governor, and Fernando Oliver, running for lieutenant governor, from the ballot because some of their nominating petitions failed to list on their cover sheets the number of signatures collected for each candidate.

Their nominating petitions contained 58,790 signatures--far more than the 20,000 required--but the courts ruled the petitions failed to list on their cover sheets the number of signatures collected for each candidate.

The ruling in Santa Ana, however, was on constitutional grounds.

Woolley ruled that under the federal Constitution, only the House of Representatives may judge the qualifications of its members. That exclusive authority also applies to disputes among primary election candidates, at least once the process of a recount has concluded, as in the Hoffmann-Sumner contest.

Sumner petitioned for a recount of the June 3 election, claiming that there had been irregularities in the vote tabulation. The issue was complicated by Sumner’s running as a write-in candidate.

After 16 days, during which each of the about 30,000 ballots was scrutinized, Hoffmann’s 267-vote winning margin turned into a 1,228-vote victory for Sumner. The recount put Sumner, chairman of the Orange County Democratic Party, against incumbent U.S. Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach), who is seeking his fifth term in a strongly Republican district.

Both Hoffmann and his attorney, Robert R. Levy, declined to discuss the cost of the case to date or their expectations of additional expenses from an appeal. While Hoffmann theoretically could make an appeal directly to Congress, Levy said any further proceedings will be before a state appellate court.

‘Price on Freedom?’

Asked whether he could afford the cost of an appeal, Hoffmann said: “We’re talking about whether registered voters are going to be counted or not. Can you put a price on freedom?”

Sumner said his lawyer, Frank P. Barbaro, had donated his time.

County Registrar of Voters Alvin E. Olson, who ran the election and oversaw the recount, was among the last to leave the courtroom Wednesday. He walked alongside a six-foot dolly stacked with dozens of boxes of election records, which would have been used as evidence had the case proceeded.

“It just points up the problems of a write-in vote in primary election,” Olson said.

Asked if Woolley’s decision means the end of the debate over how well his employees had performed in the election, Olson responded: “For now, anyway.”