Hart Challenging Ferguson Despite GOP Recall Warning

The Newport Beach City Council member who is bucking the county’s GOP leadership to challenge incumbent Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) in the June primary was warned last week that she could face a recall if she did so.

Despite the warning, Newport Beach Mayor Pro Tem Evelyn R. Hart later announced publicly that she will run against Ferguson. On Tuesday, three days before the filing deadline, she paid her $408.16 fee to the county registrar’s office to place herself on the ballot.

Newport Beach Councilwoman Ruthelyn Plummer said she and Hart had been warned about Hart’s possible recall by political consultant Frank Caterinicchio, who has worked with many county GOP stalwarts in developing local campaign strategies. This year, Caterinicchio is a consultant to Irvine City Councilman C. David Baker in his campaign to succeed Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach), who is retiring from Congress.

At a breakfast meeting Wednesday at a restaurant at Newport Center, Plummer said, Caterinicchio told Hart that if she challenged Ferguson “there are some very powerful people who are ready to start a recall campaign against you, and they’re very well funded.”

‘Don’t Need a Basis’

“I asked, ‘On what basis would the recall be?’ ” she said. “The response was, ‘They don’t need a basis.’

“I couldn’t really take it seriously at first,” Plummer said, “but then as time went on, I got the feeling that this was a very thinly veiled threat.”

Caterinicchio, who helped prepare campaign mail for Hart during her city council race two years ago, said he was merely acting as a friend by telling Hart that there had been talk of a recall.

“It wasn’t like I was carrying anyone’s message,” Caterinicchio said. “I was sharing with her things I had heard on the street that I thought she needed to be aware of before she made her decision to run. . . . That’s not a threat.”

Baker was also at the breakfast meeting, Hart said, but he arrived after the recall conversation. He was there only to seek Hart’s endorsement in his congressional race, Baker said, explaining that four of Newport Beach’s seven City Council members had already endorsed him.

Hart, 57, said that despite Caterinicchio’s warning and other “very heavy pressure (that) was brought to bear by influential people,” she felt “I was entitled to run.”

“I got a little bit angry that I might be considered to be detrimental or something to the Republican Party,” she said.

Hart said she was challenging Ferguson because of his legislative record and his failure to support transportation legislation and remedies for the county’s tort liability for local beaches.

Ferguson could not be reached for comment.

Republican leaders are openly angry with Hart for forcing Ferguson into a primary because the two-term incumbent will have to spend money that otherwise would have gone to Project ‘90, a GOP effort to win five more seats in the Assembly to get a majority and thus control the redistricting that is to occur after the 1990 census.

County Republican Party Chairman Thomas A. Fuentes said that while he knew of no recall threat, “I do know that every Republican Party leader and elected official in the county to whom I have spoken have expressed their displeasure at Gil being challenged by Evelyn.”

Urged Not to Run

Fuentes said he spoke to Hart three times in a bid to talk her out of the race. Two leaders of the Lincoln Club, an influential county GOP support group, also said they had strongly urged Hart not to run.

“The numbers are legion,” John Cronin said of those who contacted Hart. “I asked her on behalf of the party not to divide the party’s efforts at this time.”

Cronin added: “I wouldn’t call up this lady, who is a Republican, and threaten her, but if you ask me for my opinion, I think she’s going to lose this thing and lose bad. And I think it’s going to affect her image in her own community and certainly affect her stature in the party.”

Lincoln Club member Buck Johns said he had also talked to Hart. In fact, he had scheduled a meeting with her today in another bid to persuade her to stay out of the race. When he learned that Hart had already turned in her filing papers, Johns said: “Oh, rats. Once they turn those papers in, it’s all over.”

Under state law, once candidates have returned filing papers, they cannot remove their names from the ballot even if they want to.

Cronin said he estimated that it would cost Ferguson $250,000 to $350,000 to defend himself against Hart’s challenge. He said Ferguson, who is one of the Assembly GOP’s better fund-raisers, would have used that money to support other GOP Assembly candidates. In this sense, he said, Hart’s candidacy is “aiding and abetting the Democrats.”

Overplayed Their Hands

Republican political consultant Eileen Padberg, who talked with Hart after her meeting with Caterinicchio, said while she understood the Project ’90 goal, she thought that those who supported it may have overplayed their hands with Hart.

“I think she felt bullied, so she felt she had to run,” Padberg said. “It all could have been resolved if they had not put pressure on her.”

Padberg said she was “ticked off” by the effort to keep Hart out of the race and told Fuentes and others to leave her alone.

“I think they’ve mishandled this so terribly,” Padberg said. “She (Hart) does not deserve the treatment she’s been given.”

Plummer said that after the meeting with Caterinicchio, she felt “concerned from the standpoint that our system of government means the officeholder must stand for reelection every so many years, and citizens decide whether they’re doing a good job or not.

“Evelyn has been challenged in the City Council. I’ve been challenged in the City Council. Why shouldn’t Mr. Ferguson be challenged on his record?

“To me it is a little bit disturbing in that there’s nothing in the Constitution that says once an officeholder is elected that it’s his until he decides to step down.”