Vote NO on the DA Recall - Friends of Paul Gallegos - Humboldt County District Attorney - The Pacific Lumber County [Arcata Eye Editorial]

The suggestion that Humboldt and other rural counties are regarded as colonial possessions by distant industrialists who find their resources attractive is not new.

It may have sounded like just more extremist rhetoric the first time you heard it. That's surely Humboldt's most abundant renewable resource these days, welling up from the deepening political chasm dividing the county, arriving daily over the airwaves and even in glossy form in the mail.

What's the justification for the claim that we live in the equivalent of a Third World state? Try this:

A resource extraction company controlled, say, from Texas, is challenged by a young new government official. The company is accustomed to paying fines for its shabby practices as the cost of doing business, but this time the financial and political consequences are orders of magnitude higher.

The company reacts with an immediate, broad-spectrum assault on the public representative.

First, public process is turned against itself with an expensive, sloppy petition drive based on misrepresentations and fear tactics. Complaints to the government disappear down a bureaucratic black hole. The company succeeds in engineering a referendum on the official's continued tenure.

Next, since price is no object and principle no consideration, the official is painted as a bad, bad person - ineffectual, an ally of violent criminals and an enemy of prosperity.

Can one business - one man, really - buy control of a rural California county with these tactics?

If Humboldt County's District Attorney is recalled, his replacement will know that he or she too serves only at the pleasure of the Pacific Lumber Company, parent company Maxxam Corporation, directed by Mr. Charles Hurwitz.

Other local elected officials will get the message, too: county supervisors, the sheriff - even judges will work under the glare of Maxxam/PL's scrutiny. Want to stay in office? Don't impede this company's will.

But next time, it might not be Maxxam. What if Calpine makes the business decision that spending a couple hundred thousand in the right places might earn it millions? What if marijuana growers organize and pool their collective economic might?

And what would you think of ambitious opportunists who jump through the hole the moneyed interests tear open in the democratic process?

"The recall is here," reasons Worth Dikeman. True. So are junk faxes, Internet scams and nose rings. That doesn't mean we have to participate in them. Dikeman's joining forces with this commercial attack on local government amounts to an agreement to serve at the pleasure of anyone with enough money to turn the political system inside out.

Most disappointing is local law enforcement buying in to this escapade, especially the formerly non-political officers of the Arcata Police Department. The police have every right to have a say in who's DA. But along with that goes a responsibility to help fend off the wholesale commercial corruption of the electoral process and recommend a "no" vote on the recall.

What's surprising is, despite all the money, how sloppily this recall has been manufactured. Eight-dollar-a-name hirelings cynically invoking harrowing images of sexual assault to gain signatures. Unattended petitions. Last-minute, apparently panicked infusions of cash. Duplicitous, contradictory statements.

If this is how Maxxam/PL behaves in public, what do they do in the woods, where no one sees them? Probably the kind of thing that's gotten the company cited, fined and suspended so many times for violations of forestry regulations.

Last week, PL's spokesperson was quoted in the Times-Standard as saying, "When people hear Ã¢â‚¬ËœPL' they think of the battles we've gone through and a time when we weren't as environmentally aware." In other words, during Redwood Summer and beyond, when PL was assuring us it was the true custodian of the environment, it was actually lacking in environmental awareness. But now, as it spends tens of thousands of dollars to get rid of an elected official, we are supposed to accept its assurances.

That could be a challenge. "This is exactly why we want a trial in court instead of trial by press release by Paul Gallegos and Tim Stoen," the company said in a press release responding to an embarrassing revelation from a former state forestry official.

But Friday, just after reporting that environmental awareness is something new for PL, the company acknowledged that its demurrer - an attempt to throw out the county's fraud lawsuit against the company before any trial - still stands.

So that stuff about wanting a trial in court isn't the case after all. But Dunn and company President Robert Manne only implement the will of Mr. Hurwitz, who wishes to extend that control to county government. Manne even managed to write an entire column on the matter for Sunday's Times-Standard, mentioning numerous organizations involved - even the Beatles - but never the words "Maxxam" or "Hurwitz." Maybe it's forbidden.

PL's intimidation of what's supposed to be an independent judiciary might already be taking place. It was last July - yes, of 2003 - that Judge Christopher Wilson heard arguments regarding PL's demurrer motion. A decision was due in November, but months later, has never been made. Is the judge waiting for the outcome of the March 2 recall election to find out what kind of decision he has to render in order to remain on the bench?

Give Judge Wilson the encouragement he needs to make an objective decision. Tell Worth Dikeman to wait for a real election, not a purchased one, to realize his ambitions. Let Hurwitz/Maxxam/PL know that the public won't be swayed by demagoguery. And show the world that Humboldt County is not Pacific Lumber/Maxxam/Hurwitz's banana republic.

Vote no on the recall.