RECALL ELECTION IN MAY FOR KAMENA

Marin's chief elections officer says he will request the Board of
Supervisors to call a special election for next May asking voters whether
District Attorney Paula Kamena should be recalled from office.

Registrar of Voters Michael Smith said he will make the request at the
board's next meeting in January, after an official count of recall
petitions found enough signatures to necessitate sending the county's
first-ever district attorney recall drive to the voters.

Smith said five employees of the elections office finished two weeks of
counting 19,911 signatures yesterday afternoon. They found the recall drive
produced 13,942 valid signatures on Kamena recall petitions - 186 more than
legally required.

Smith said he would ask the board on Jan. 9 to call an election for May
within 14 days. If the board declines to do so, Smith said he would be
obligated by law to set the election himself. He said elections officials
are considering a special election date of May 15 or 22.

The petition drive targeting Kamena was launched in May amid a surge of
community resentment about decisions in the Marin courts in cases involving
child custody disputes. These cases included the prosecution by the
District Attorney's Office of a Novato woman who attempted to take custody
of her own daughter in violation of a court order.

Four judges were also targeted in the recall effort. But as the campaigns
against the judges dissipated, a second wave of opposition descended on
Kamena, led by critics of her office's marijuana prosecution policies.

The medical pot forces, led by a handful of paid signature gatherers, put
the Kamena recall campaign over the top.

Kamena said she was disappointed to hear of the petition drive's success,
and she reiterated her suspicion that recall backers used misleading
tactics in gathering signatures.

She also accused opponents of using the recall process to strong-arm her
into adopting more lenient policies for people claiming a medicinal need
for marijuana. Kamena claims the recall grows out of longstanding
opposition by the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana to county efforts to
launch its own licensing process for medical marijuana patients.

"This is not about medical marijuana," Kamena said. "This is about someone
or some group with one issue trying to misuse the political recall process
to get their way.

Kamena's critics, led by Lynnette Shaw of the Marin Alliance, raised an
estimated $15,000 to hire signature gatherers and otherwise support the
Kamena recall. Shaw delivered three boxes of recall petitions to Smith's
office last month.

News of the submissions prompted some people to call in complaints,
claiming they were misled into signing petitions by people who spoke only
of support for medical marijauna and nothing about a Kamena recall.

Despite indications that it was the medical pot forces that led the
petition drive to success, Smith said it's likely ballot arguments in next
May's special election won't mention medical marijuana.

He said that instead, arguments supporting the recall likely will be
limited to claims of abuse by Kamena's office in the recent prosecution of
Carol Mardeusz, a Novato mother who was convicted by a jury of attempting
to abduct her own daughter in violation of a court order forbidding her
from contacting the girl. That's because recall petition circulated in
Marin this summer and fall mentioned only the Mardeusz case, Smith said.

Kamena said complaints of misleading tactics led her to believe voters who
signed the recall petitions didn't know what they were supporting. She said
she had been contacted by a man at a San Rafael shopping center who urged
her to sign the petition, without mentioning a recall.

But she said she won't be taking any action to challenge the recall
campaign in court. Instead, she said she will reactivate her campaign
committee and focus her energy on urging voters not to support the recall.

"If the citizens of Marin County want to have an election I will do
everything I can to show that I'm doing an excellent job and that the
recall is a bad idea," Kamena said.

Shaw could not be reached for comment yesterday afternoon.

Prosecution guidelines adopted by Kamena's office last year made county
certification a central requirement for people seeking a medical exemption
to avoid prosecution for possession or cultivation of marijuana.

Shaw has said the guidelines were no good because some local police
departments disregarded them by seizing any marijuana they found and
sending cases to the district attorney even when the D.A.'s guidelines had
been met.

According to Shaw, some Alliance members have since had their plants seized
and destroyed, even after Kamena's office has accepted their claims of
legitimate medical use and declined to file charges.

Kamena said that much of this criticism is better put to local police
agencies that take action against pot growers.

She said her office's medical marijuana policies are among the most
progressive in the state and make a good-faith effort to recognize a
person's rights to medical marijuana under Prop. 215, the medical pot
initiative passed by state voters in 1996.

Smith said the recall election would cost an estimated $500,000 to hold.

He said these costs woud go toward the printing of ballots and ballot
booklets and staffing all 113 polling places in Marin on the day of the
election.

Kamena, who swept into office in 1998 with the support of 56 percent of
Marin voters, said it's a shame the county will have to bear such a high
cost, especially since she would have to run for re-election in March 2002
anyway.

"Instead of wasting taxpayer money on this, they could just wait 10 months
and tell people not to vote for me," she said.