Councilmember Bonin Recall Effort Fails To Qualify For Ballot

By LILY TINOCO | Reporter

The number of verified signatures filed by a number of Westside residents in the petition to recall Councilmember Mike Bonin were insufficient, Los Angeles City Clerk Holly L. Wolcott announced Tuesday, January 18.

Bonin was first elected to represent Council District 11 in 2013 and was reelected in 2017 for a second term with 31,865 votes, or 71%. CD 11 spans from Sawtelle and Marina del Rey to Pacific Palisades, Venice and beyond.

Nico Ruderman, a resident of Venice, coordinated the recall campaign with another Venice local, Katrina Schmitt. The two voted for Bonin in the past, Ruderman in 2013 and Schmitt in 2017.

Schmitt said the recall group began collecting signatures on July 14 after the petition was approved a day prior. They amassed over half of the necessary signatures required to call for an election by September 7.

Under the city’s election rules, the campaign was required to turn in 27,317 valid signatures from registered voters in Bonin’s coastal district.

Proponents filed a petition to recall Bonin on November 10.

Wolcott said the group was given a conditional approval of the petition pending initial review—the initial review counts the signatures.

“Each signature must now be checked,” Wolcott said to the Palisadian-Post in November. “If there are enough valid signatures by the end of the signature verification process, then we report to the council and they would call a special election.”

The office of the City Clerk concluded its examination on January 18.

The petition was found to have a total of 25,965 valid signatures—1,352 less than the amount necessary to certify the petition as sufficient.

Venice resident Traci Park who announced her candidacy for CD 11 and to unseat incumbent Mike Bonin in August, released a succeeding statement that says the results may be “just short of those needed to trigger an immediate recall of Mike Bonin, but it’s just a fraction of the voters who will vote him out on June 7.”

“The effort to recall me from office has failed. It didn’t qualify for the ballot,” Bonin shared to Twitter Tuesday evening, January 18. “Today is the end of a wasteful, distracting abuse of the electoral progress.”