Poway voters are favoring the recall of City Councilmember Tony Blain in early returns Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
The recall effort against Blain, who is facing felony charges of perjury and bribery, appeared to be succeeding when polls closed.<\/p>\n
The San Diego County Registrar of Voters released the first batch of results at 8 p.m. based on ballots cast in the weeks leading up to the election, through Nov. 3. They were overwhelmingly in favor of recall.<\/p>\n
Blain has been accused of vote trading, along with threatening recalls against his colleagues and trying to use law enforcement to silence his critics, which led to the citizen-initiated recall effort. The City Council also has censured him twice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe returns are proving what we knew from the start of the recall campaign \u2014 when Poway residents see a problem, they\u2019re willing to stand up and take action,\u201d said Anita Edmondson, who along with John Mullin and John Couvrette led the recall campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis community came together to protect our city and we couldn\u2019t be prouder of our volunteers and recall supporters,\u201d Edmondson said. \u201cWith a successful recall, voters are sending a clear message they want representation that brings solutions, not problems, to the city.\u201d<\/p>\n
A comment from Blain\u2019s spokesperson was not received by press deadline.<\/p>\n
On Oct. 24, the San Diego County District Attorney\u2019s Office filed five criminal charges against Blain. The felony charges are perjury, asking for a bribe by a member of a legislative body, soliciting a bribe and destruction or removal of public records. The misdemeanor charge is for petty theft, pertaining to the removal of a campaign sign.<\/p>\n
Blain was to be arraigned Monday, but that was postponed to January because he is deployed overseas as a U.S. Army Reserve doctor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Poway voters are favoring the recall of City Councilmember Tony Blain in early returns Tuesday night. The recall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,23,100,13,74,76,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-38660","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-latest-headlines","9":"tag-local-news","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-politics","12":"tag-san-diego","13":"tag-san-diego-headlines","14":"tag-san-diego-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}