Recall Group Files Bribe Complaint With D.A.

THOUSAND OAKS — The group spearheading the signature drive to recall Councilwoman Elois Zeanah has filed a complaint with the Ventura County district attorney’s office accusing slow-growth activist Dan Del Campo of trying to bribe petitioners.

In a Jan. 15 letter to Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury, the spokesman of the committee Yes! Remove Elois Zeanah charged that Del Campo violated state election law by offering $100 and $500 to professional petitioners on two occasions if they would stop gathering signatures to recall Zeanah.

Del Campo, the first runner-up in November’s City Council elections, strongly denied the accusations Friday, calling them a desperate attempt to undermine the opposition to the recall.

“That’s really funny,” Del Campo said of the accusation. “I asked [the signature gatherers] if they were interested in higher-paying jobs outside the area. I suggested they could do better to make a living. I was not trying to bribe them.”

He said he had first learned of the bribery accusations during a meeting with Ventura County sheriff’s deputies earlier this week, but that he had not been interviewed by any investigators.

The purpose of the meeting, organized by Sheriff’s Cmdr. Kathy Kemp, was to explain to members of Residents For Slow Growth, an anti-recall group, what they could and could not do to express their opposition at the various supermarkets and other public places where petitioners were gathering.

Sheriff’s deputies also held a meeting with the recall organizers to go over the same themes in response to numerous complaints of harassment and intimidation by both sides.

Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeff Bennett, who heads the district attorney’s political corruption unit, declined to comment on the bribery accusation, saying he did not discuss which matters his unit may be investigating.

“If they want to tell you that, that’s their choice,” Bennett said of the recall group. “But I can neither confirm nor deny that we are investigating that.”

In his letter, businessman Peter Turpel contends that Del Campo offered money to signature gatherers on Jan. 5 and Jan. 12 in an attempt to get them to abandon their efforts.

During the first incident, Del Campo offered $500 to Joan Mitchell of Los Angeles as she was collecting signatures outside the Lucky’s supermarket in Newbury Park, Turpel wrote.

In the second, Del Campo allegedly offered $100 to Rick Weinberger of Los Angeles as he was doing the same. Both work for Progressive Campaigns, a Santa Monica-based professional signature-gathering firm hired by the recall group.

Neither Mitchell nor Weinberger could be reached for comment Friday, but a Progressive Campaigns employee said that both had complained to their superiors about Del Campo’s remarks.

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Del Campo, whose nomination to Thousand Oaks’ Planning Commission was rejected by a majority of the City Council this week, said there is no substance to the bribery accusation--or many of the other charges being levied in the recall fight, for that matter.

“It’s a sickening thing that’s going on in this city right now,” Del Campo said. “There are so many accusations being thrown around. It’s awful.”

In an interview Friday, businesswoman Jill Lederer and two of the other principal recall organizers strongly denied claims by Zeanah and her supporters that developers are funding the drive, and that it was the brainchild of Councilman Andy Fox.

“Out-of-town developers? We don’t need them,” said Dixie Vollmer, a small-business owner and 30-year Thousand Oaks resident. “We’ve got money coming in from everywhere.”

Lederer, who owns a chain of Domino’s Pizza franchises, was recently criticized by recall opponents for placing notices calling for Zeanah’s ouster atop outgoing pizzas. She said it was not the first time that she had used the so-called “box-toppers” for political purposes, and added that she had no regrets about doing so.

Zeanah supporters are handing out fliers asking residents to call Domino’s corporate office and complain about Lederer.

“Her effort to tie me and this recall to Andy Fox is weak,” said Lederer, who managed Fox’s 1994 council campaign. “I placed those messages on pizza boxes to get the word out. I knew I would hurt Andy politically by doing that, but I felt it was important.”

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Zeanah reiterated Friday that numerous sources have told her Fox was behind the recall, and pointed out that Fox’s appointee to the planning commission, Ronald Polanski, is active in the drive.

She argued that Lederer and some of the other recall organizers are too close to Fox to ever launch such an effort without his approval, if not his cooperation.

Organizers of the Zeanah recall must collect signatures from 15% of the city’s 69,049 registered voters--10,357 signatures in all--to place the recall measure on the ballot. They have 160 days from Jan. 2, the day their recall papers were certified, to gather the signatures.

Yes! Recall Elois Zeanah issued a press release earlier this week saying they have already gathered more than 5,000 signatures.