Lubbock Left

El Editor has released a “web-only” article about how two former District 1 City Council Representatives have signed the Linda DeLeon recall petition. KCBD 11 has coverage as well. It looks like there’s a full-on feud within the Lubbock Hispanic community, with current and past elected officials taking sides over Linda’s Council position.

Personally, I wonder what Linda has done to deserve this kind of vilification. Walking out of a town hall meeting was not a good idea, but the circumstances may speak to that. (I was not at that particular meeting.) Closing South Beach to build a visitors’ center was also not a good idea, but she was only 1 voice out of 7 in that unanimous decision of the Council. Do either of those events stack up against 20+ years of public service?

On the other hand, the petitioners are flexing the muscles of democracy, which is always a good thing. Any elected official should welcome a chance for the voters to express themselves directly, even if it’s to vote on whether to recall them.

My prediction: now that the petition organizers have gotten a trial run out of their systems, the second recall attempt will succeed. Then, the November election on whether to hold a recall election will probably succeed. If it does, Linda will win her re-election in May 2008.

(I’m pretty sure that’s how the mechanics of the recall would work — feel free to correct me in the comments if I’m off somehow.)

Anyway, today (Monday) is the day that the new round of recall petitions are due. We’ll most likely know the results of the recall petition by the end of this week, hopefully on Friday.

It sucks to have friends on both sides of a feud. So, whatever the outcome, I hope everyone will be satisfied by the results of our electoral process.