Fireworks Cap Lopez Recall Fight

The battle over Nativo V. Lopez’s Santa Ana school board seat heated up Monday with Lopez and the district’s superintendent trading accusations about who is to blame for delays in the overcrowded district’s multimillion-dollar school construction program.

Supt. Al Mijares said he decided to speak out on the eve of today’s recall election because of what he termed “interference” by Lopez and his chief ally on the five-member board in how the district hires and manages contractors. He also said their “intimidation” of staff members had become “horrific ethical violations.”

Lopez criticized what he called Mijares’ lack of leadership and vision, which he said made it necessary for the board to become more closely involved in district affairs. He said Mijares never approached him about his concerns.

“It is extremely hard for me to attribute [Mijares’] motivations,” Lopez said by telephone. “As professionals, you try to contain [problems], fix [them], and move forward, and that’s essentially what we’ve done.”

Mijares’ unprecedented and public condemnation of Lopez and his ally, board member John Palacio, boosted recall organizers’ last-minute campaign efforts. Palacio, who was reelected to a second term after a bitter campaign last November, denied Mijares’ accusations.

“His response is consistent with his refusal to take responsibility for the actions and/or inactions of his staff and himself,” Palacio said Monday in a prepared statement.

The recall effort was launched last March by district parents and others who accused Lopez of promoting bilingual education in the 61,000-student, mostly poor and mostly Latino district.

It later became a referendum on the controversial immigrant-rights activist, who critics say has tried to divide the community along ethnic lines.

Recall supporters said they hoped that comments from Mijares -- who had remained silent about charges and countercharges involving Lopez and his board allies -- would help their cause.

“This is the icing on the cake for those who are still undecided,” said Tim Whitacre, a pro-recall volunteer, as he traveled around downtown Santa Ana in a military-style truck urging people to oust Lopez.

Meanwhile, dozens of parents picketed outside Santa Ana Unified’s headquarters Monday morning to show solidarity with Mijares, 49, who joined the district in 1994.

Also on Monday, Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona’s office released a memo dated Jan. 30, in which he urged Lopez to halt mailers and campaign telephone calls saying the sheriff opposed the recall.

In his memo, Carona told Lopez, “I have no position, either for or against, your recall, and I am disappointed that you have misrepresented my position.”

Lopez said Monday that he had not received any “formal” communication from the sheriff telling him to stop the practice, and that both men have supported each other in the past.

Political endorsements became another hotly contested issue in a recall campaign that has divided the district and the city for nearly a year.

But it was Mijares’ charges against Lopez and Palacio that gained the most attention in the final hours before today’s special election, which has drawn nearly $400,000 in campaign contributions from across the nation.

Mijares’ rebuke first appeared in a letter to the Orange County Register on Sunday. In it, he said Lopez and Palacio intimidated staff members and micromanaged the district’s $300-million-plus school construction plan.

The district and the board have been criticized heavily for the pace of school construction in the overcrowded district, where voters passed a bond measure in 1999.

Mijares said Lopez and Palacio shielded the consultant overseeing the construction plan, Del Terra Construction Group of Los Angeles, from criticism by district staff.

The two “have systematically pressured, coerced and threatened my staff and me to carry out their wishes regardless of the cost,” Mijares said in his letter.

“The micromanagement of the board has now reached a destructive level that has threatened most of what we have worked for ... over the past eight years.”

“My only regret is having waited too long” to come forward, Mijares told The Times Monday. “I was hoping we could work things out internally.”

Lopez and Palacio acknowledged Monday that the district staff and Del Terra had had differences, but defended the firm’s track record, saying the district staff had bungled projects.

“There is no reason to go backward, to go back to the vicious, divisive, blame game that was going on,” Lopez said.

Lopez also said the recall campaign is fueled by residents in a relatively affluent north Santa Ana neighborhood who oppose a new elementary school planned there.

Former trustee Nadia Davis said she had called attention to the issues brought up by Mijares while she was on the board, but was silenced by Lopez and Palacio.

She said she agreed with those two trustees on ideology, on serving poor immigrant children who constitute the majority of student in the district, but she did not agree with what she called their micromanaging style.

“That’s exactly how I felt,” Davis said. “But that is hard to put on a campaign flier.”