One Recall Drive Is Dead, Second Is Ailing

A recall campaign against Board of Supervisors Chairman Harriett M. Wieder is expected to fail and a similar campaign against Supervisor Thomas F. Riley already is dead, organizers of the drives said Tuesday.

Doug Langevin, a Huntington Beach businessman who is heading the anti-Wieder drive, said it is unlikely that volunteers will gather the signatures of 20,651 registered voters--the required 10% of those registered in Wieder’s district--in time to meet next Tuesday’s deadline to put the measure on the ballot.

“We’re not conceding defeat,” said Langevin, “but at this time, I don’t think we’re going to make it.”

Terri Quam, a slow-growth activist who helped organize the anti-Riley campaign, said that drive fizzled this summer when volunteers who promised to circulate petitions later backed out.

Quam and Langevin said the unexpected defeat of a countywide slow-growth initiative on the June 7 ballot was a blow to the recall campaigns, which were based on allegations that Wieder and Riley were allied with developers and had supported unchecked growth in the county. Both supervisors have denied those charges.

Langevin said Wieder’s defeat in her bid for a congressional seat also hurt his recall drive.

“Basically, the timing was quite bad,” he said. “When Harriett Wieder was defeated, a lot of people felt she had learned her lesson.”

Wieder’s congressional campaign was embroiled in controversy when she admitted to having falsely claimed on her resume that she held a journalism degree from Wayne State University. She also lied under oath about the degree in a deposition taken in a civil lawsuit in October.

At the time, Wieder, 67, said that she had been “ashamed” that she was never able to attend college because of her family finances.

Wieder later brought in volunteer Drew Simpson, on leave from a job as public information officer for Coastline Community College in Fountain Valley, to handle calls from the news media regarding the flap.

Simpson, however, generated even more controversy after he posed as a radio reporter to question Langevin about the recall effort.

The recall drives were begun in April after the Board of Supervisors approved by a 3-2 vote an agreement that protects plans by the Irvine Co. to build 3,200 homes in largely undeveloped Laguna Canyon.

Langevin and others angered by the vote said then that Wieder and Riley--who along with Supervisor Don R. Roth voted for the agreement--had consistently favored such pacts to the detriment of the general public.