ANARCHY - 481 votes separate two Democrat Controller candidates in recount

Bloated gas-bag union hack John Perez, Betty Yee
and GOP Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin.

A GOP Opportunity

• GOP Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin can concentrate on the general election while the two Leftist loon Democrats slash each other into chunks in a statewide vote recount.
• The State Controller keeps the books of the world's eighth-largest economy. He also sits on 81 state boards and commissions, including those that run the state's huge pension funds, administer its taxes, control its public lands, and fund school facilities, transportation and alternative energy projects.

Looney Toons Leftist John Perez thought he had the race for State Controller bought and paid for by his labor union backers.  He had a bankroll far bigger than those of his rivals, the political clout after four years as Assembly speaker and the Democratic stronghold of Los Angeles as his home base.

 

Yet the June primary election's initial tally found him 481 votes behind out of more than 4 million cast, behind Democratic rival Betty Yee, a Board of Equalization member from Alameda. Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin, a Republican, finished first.

Now Perez has demanded a recount in 15 counties, launching California's first-ever recount for a statewide office -- a process that critics say can let better-funded candidates try to buy their way out of defeat. The recount began Friday after Secretary of State Debra Brown certified the election reports the San Joes Mercury News.

California law lets Perez choose which counties are recounted, and in what order. He must pay for the recount as it goes, but can stop it at any time -- though Yee can promptly request one too. It's a time-consuming process on a hard deadline: The state must print ballots for November's election in time to start mailing them out Sept. 5 to overseas and military voters.

Perez argues that the razor-thin margin makes it "of the utmost importance that an additional, carefully conducted review of the ballots be undertaken to ensure that every vote is counted." But Yee counters that "cherry-picking only the 15 counties that he won, and sorting the precincts within the counties to reflect his strongest areas, indicates that he has no interest in a fair and impartial recount."

Perez, 44, is a former union political director, and state worker unions hope he'll be more likely than Yee -- or incumbent John Chiang -- to side with them on public pensions, salary disclosures and other matters.

So never before has 0.012 percent of the vote hurt so much or caused so much second-guessing.

"When you're talking about 500 votes ... you're thinking about everything you possibly could've done, everywhere you could've spent money, endorsements you could've gotten," said Corey Cook, director of the University of San Francisco's Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good.

Perez started 2014 with $1.87 million banked for the race, Yee with $502,000. Perez outraised and outspent Yee from January through May 17, and they entered the campaign's final weeks with $1.84 million and $116,000 left, respectively. Independent spending favored Perez, too: State-worker unions spent $48,500 on his behalf, while the National Organization for Women's California chapter spent $7,300 for Yee.

California Controller race results by county.