On Sunday afternoon, Democratic Assemblyman John A. Perez, who finished just 481 votes behind Board of Equalization member Betty Yee in the June 3rd primary, formally requested a recount in the controller’s race. Perez’s recount, which will begin in Kern and Imperial counties, could ultimately span 15 counties and decide which Democrat will face Republican Ashley Swearengin in the November run-off.

“Never in California history has the vote difference between two candidates for statewide office been so narrow, 481 votes or 1/100th of one percent, out of more than four million ballots cast,” Perez said in a statement released by his campaign. “It is therefore of the utmost importance that an additional, carefully conducted review of the ballots be undertaken to ensure that every vote is counted, as intended.”

Perez’s call for a “carefully conducted review of the ballots” is careful indeed. He’s requested a partial recount in 15 counties where he out-performed Yee. That’s in accordance with state law, which allows any voter to request a partial recount that is targeted at the precinct level.

Although the recount can be limited to select precincts, “all of the ballots in all of the requested counties would have to be recounted and the compilation of the recount in those counties would have to lead to a different candidate winning the contest before the results would be recertified,” according to the Secretary of State. 

Yee accuses Perez of “cherry-picking only 15 counties”

Yee’s campaign balked at the partial recount slanted in Perez’s favor.

“Cherry-picking only the 15 counties that he won, and sorting the precincts within the counties to reflect his strongest areas, indicates that he has no interest in a fair and impartial recount,” Yee said.

CalWatchdog.com’s analysis of the county recount list shows Perez’s margin over Yee, ranging from a high of 31 percent in Imperial to a low of just 1 percent in Orange.

1. Kern +10 Perez
2. Imperial +31 Perez
3. San Bernardino +8 Perez
4. Fresno +3 Perez
5. San Mateo +2.5 Perez
6. Orange +1 Perez
7. Ventura +5 Perez
8. Los Angeles +5 Perez
9. Riverside +6 Perez
10. Stanislaus +5 Perez
11. Tulare +7 Perez
12. Napa +8 Perez
13. Kings +9 Perez
14. Lake +7 Perez
15. Merced +9 Perez

The targeted recount can be stopped at any time, because Perez is footing the bill. A statewide recount could cost several million dollars. According to the Secretary of State’s office, if Perez begins to pick up votes, Yee’s campaign could at “any time during a recount and for 24 hours after it concludes” request her own recount, “as long as it does not include any precincts that were recounted as part of a prior request.”

That could be in the cards, based on statements from Yee’s campaign, which has criticized the unfair nature of the recount process. “No recount is going to be fair that doesn’t include more counties,” Parke Skelton, Yee’s campaign consultant told KQED’s John Myers by phone Sunday afternoon.

Independent election experts agree with Yee’s complaint, but acknowledge that under state law, Yee’s only recourse is to request her own recount.

“It’s completely unfair unless they do a re-canvass of the whole state,” Jimmy Camp, a Republican political consultant and expert on ballot counting, told CalWatchdog.com last month. “Recounts are a crap shoot no matter what.”

Perez’ strategy: Searching for invalidated votes

So, what is the Perez campaign’s recount strategy?

In addition to limiting the recount to counties he won, Perez requested a review of all unopened, rejected vote-by-mail and provisional ballots as well as precinct rosters.

“I am also seeking to review all voted ballots that were not counted in the official canvass, including unopened rejected vote-by-mail (‘VBM’) ballots and provisional ballots, and any relevant information related to those ballots, including, but not limited to, all VBM and provisional ballot envelopes containing each uncounted or rejected ballot, all precinct rosters, and any other materials related to the uncounted or rejected ballots,” Perez wrote in his recount request to the Secretary of State.

That falls in line with the predictions of an election expert CalWatchdog.com consulted last month. “One of the goals of any recount would be to get more of your supporter ballots counted,” Paul Mitchell, vice-president of Political Data, Inc., a company that specializes in election data, told CalWatchdog.com. “So, this could mean going into counties where there is a large potential for ballots that were disqualified because of signature problems, and digging through those to find any that can be challenged.”

It’s unlikely such a strategy will prove fruitful in Los Angeles County. Perez’s campaign already closely scrutinized the counting of late absentee and provisional ballots in his home county. Even Perez’s campaign acknowledged Los Angeles as a lower priority, ranking it eighth in the order of recount counties.

Potential to flip outcome, but unlikely

What are the chances that the outcome will change?

In recent years, California has seen two recounts in statewide propositions. In July 2012, a Bay Area surgeon requested a recount for Proposition 29, a $1-per-pack cigarette tax increase defeated by voters. In Dec. 2012, a recount was requested for Proposition 37, a food labeling initiative that was also defeated. Neither outcome changed with the recounts.

However, those results weren’t nearly as close as the current state controller’s race. A study by the Center for Voting and Democracy analyzed statewide recounts from 2000-2009. According to the study, “In the five cases in which the total votes cast were above two million, the margin shift was on average 0.016% of the vote (fewer than one for every 6,400 votes cast).”

With more than 4 million votes cast in the controller’s race, that tiny margin, 0.016 percent of the vote, would be 646 votes. As Yee’s campaign consultant has pointed out, that figure should be expected to be spread among not just Yee and Perez, but all six candidates who were on the ballot for controller.

“It would be strange indeed for Perez to pick up every vote in a recount with multiple candidates,” Skelton, Yee’s consultant, has said.

Entering the California Democratic Party’s spring convention, Board of Equalization member Yee’s campaign faced a juggernaut.

With more money, power and influence over convention delegates, Perez, then the Speaker of the Assembly, seemed the inevitable Democratic nominee for state controller.

“With an army of paid interns, volunteers and campaign aides — and endorsements by most of his Democratic colleagues in the Assembly — John Perez made a major push for the party’s endorsement this year,” wrote Damien Luzzo, a convention delegate and member of the Yolo County Democratic Central Committee.

Perez had a substantial advantage in delegate appointments, in part because members of the Assembly are entitled to make five appointments to the state party convention. All but six of his Democratic colleagues in the Assembly backed Perez’s campaign. Under party rules, all endorsement votes are public in order to make delegates more accountable to their appointing official or committee. That meant that, for Yee to block an endorsement, she needed state convention delegates to risk their own appointments.

Shrewdly, Yee’s campaign turned it into an advantage. While not specifically naming Perez, Yee told delegates that hardball tactics, political intimidation and a 3-to-1 financial advantage for one candidate were how Republicans won.

It also helped that Yee, who has earned a reputation as a mild-mannered numbers-cruncher on the state’s tax board, gave the best speech of her career.

“Democrats, we are just as guilty of getting sucked into the influence of money and power about which we criticize Republicans,” Yee said shortly after successfully blocking the party from endorsing in the race. “It is time we have politics shaped by our values, rather than our values shaped by politics. If not, I believe Democrats will continue to lose ground with respect to the electorate.”

The thinly-veiled criticism of Perez exposed the fault lines within the state’s supermajority party and made Perez vs. Yee about more than two candidates.

Recount?

With all the provisional and late absentee votes tabulated, Yee has taken second place in the race for state controller, besting her fellow Democrat by just 484 votes. Ashley Swearengin, the Republican mayor of Fresno, already easily secured the other spot in the run-off with more than a million votes in the June 3 primary.

The difference between second and third place, just one hundredth of one percent, is so close that a recount still remains a possibility. But now the tables have turned: Perez must face the Democratic Party’s power brokers, who no doubt would prefer to avoid a costly and divisive recount.

The controller’s race, the closest candidate race and second closest statewide election in California’s history, has remained too close to call in the month since Election Day. The day after the election, Yee lingered in fourth place behind Perez and unknown Republican David Evans.

Evans, who was largely ignored by the mainstream media and did not spend enough money to file a campaign finance report, was just 2,436 votes behind Perez, the top fundraiser in the race. As county registrars of voters worked their way through more than a million late absentee and provisional ballots, Evans temporarily claimed second place, even as Yee narrowed her gap with Perez.

In the ensuing weeks, Yee and Perez swapped insignificant leads in a race that would come down to the last votes in the last county. Yee held an 861-vote lead — before Lake County’s final 6,000 ballots were counted on Monday.

“I want to thank the voters of California for their trust and support,” Yee said in a written statement declaring victory with no votes left to count. “I look forward to bringing my extensive finance experience into the office of controller.”

Yee claims victory, but Perez hasn’t conceded

While Yee has declared victory, Perez’s campaign, as of Tuesday morning, was unwilling to concede defeat.

“There are still votes to be counted,” Pérez’s political consultant, Doug Herman, told KQED’s John Myers by email. “We look forward to the final vote count.”

Officially, Lake County held the only outstanding ballots in the race. However, Perez’s campaign may have been alluding to a possible recount that could target disqualified ballots.

“One of the goals of any recount would be to get more of your supporter ballots counted,” said Paul Mitchell, vice-president of Political Data, Inc., a company that specializes in election data. “So, this could mean going into counties where there is a large potential for ballots that were disqualified because of signature problems, and digging through those to find any that can be challenged.”

He added, “This can be particularly fruitful among older voters and foreign language voters who have specific issues with signature verification.”

Expensive recount “crap shoot”

CalWatchdog.com, the first outlet to raise the possiblity of a recount in the race, has spoken to election experts who say that a recount is essentially a “crap shoot.” Within five days of the Secretary of State’s official results, any voter can request a full or partial recount. California’s recount rules, which require the requester to pay, grant tremendous leeway for a recount to be started and then immediately stopped.

“It’s completely unfair unless they do a re-canvass of the whole state,” Jimmy Camp, a Republican political consultant and expert on ballot counting, told CalWatchdog.com last week.

Consequently, if Perez requests a recount in one of his counties, it could trigger Yee to request a recount in one of her strongholds, as a defensive maneuver.

Financial and political cost of a recount

A bitter recount would further exacerbate the divide between the two Democratic camps and allow Swearengin to gain ground. The direct financial cost could also prove to be a major hurdle. Last month, in the 31st Congressional District, third place GOP candidate Lesli Gooch, who was just 209 votes behind Redlands Mayor Pete Aguilar, requested a recount. Gooch picked up a single vote in a recount that cost her campaign $6,330. If applied to the state controller’s race, it would cost Perez $3.06 million potentially to gain the 484 votes that he is currently down.

As of the last campaign finance report, Perez had $1.8 million in cash on hand.

“Relying on grassroots and personal integrity, Yee, once again, showed that grassroots activism and her genuine personality can easily trump the onslaught of big money,” Democratic convention delegate Luzzo wrote back in March.

But if Perez mounts a serious recount effort, Yee will need to overcome “the onslaught of big money” one more time.

California State Controller: Election Results as of July 1, 2014

“Democrats, we are just as guilty of getting sucked into the influence of money and power about which we criticize Republicans,” Yee, a member of State Board of Equalization, said in one of the more memorable speeches of this weekend’s annual state party convention. “It is time we have politics shaped by our values, rather than our values shaped by politics. If not, I believe Democrats will continue to lose ground with respect to the electorate.”

The blunt criticism of her party came less than 12 hours after she successfully blocked the party from endorsing anyone in a closely contested race for state controller, in which she is a candidate. The “no-endorsement” vote was considered a major blow to her Democratic rival for the controller post, Speaker of the Assembly John Perez, who wields substantial power and influence over delegate appointments.

This is the first election for controller and other state constitutional offices to be run under the Top Two system voters enacted in 2010 by passing Proposition 14. Under it, the June primary will select two candidates to face off in a November runoff. Candidates can run under any party, or no party. It’s even possible that two candidates from the same party could face one another in November. Political parties are reduced to deciding whether or not to endorse a particular political candidate.

Perez’s advantage in delegate appointments

In his own speech, Perez roused delegates by describing his party’s victories during his tenure as speaker, which ends this year due to term limits. “We’re expanding the map everywhere,” he said, according to the Sacramento Bee. “In California, red to blue is not a slogan. It’s a reality.”

With an army of campaign aides, Perez went against a request by California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton that statewide candidates not seek the party’s endorsement. Perez, who has been endorsed by all but six of his Democratic colleagues in the Assembly, made a major push for the party’s endorsement. He had a substantial advantage in delegate appointments. Members of the State Assembly, according to the state party bylaws, are entitled to make five appointments to the state party convention.

Yet, many convention delegates defied the orders of their appointing authority and openly backed Yee, who received 44.71 percent of the vote — just 3 percentage points less than Perez. Because neither got the 60 percent required by party rules, there was no endorsement.

Under party rules, all delegate votes are public in order to make delegates more accountable to their appointing official or committee. Following the vote, any member can review ballots, meaning some delegates backed Yee in the face of potential political retribution.

Perez spokesman Doug Herman said that the Perez promises not to take any action against delegates who defied their appointing authority in the endorsement vote.

Yee calls out party divide

Saturday’s no-endorsement vote, coupled with Yee’s rousing Sunday speech, exposed a simmering feud within the California Democratic Party between its principled idealists and power players.

“We as Democrats decry bullying and voter suppression tactics to silence the vulnerable among us,” Yee said. “Yet, within our party, similar tactics keep delegates and club members in line so power remain in the hands of a few political leaders.”

Perez had been criticized in 2011 for  retaliation against former Assemblyman Anthony Portantio. In 2011, after Portantino opposed the state budget, Perez retaliated by slashing his office budget, while also threatening to furlough Portantino’s government staff.

“There is no question that this is a punitive action because of my votes,” Portantino told the Sacramento Bee at the time. “Every member of the Legislature ought to have the right to vote their conscience.”

Women’s rights and the Democratic Party

“We as Democrats regard women’s rights as paramount, yet within our party, women are being manipulated and are being set up against one another, such that further advances toward pay equity and parity in representation continue to elude us,” Yee said.

Last year, a CalWatchdog.com analysis of payroll records found that female employees of the California State Assembly face a glass ceiling, substantial pay inequities and limits to their career advancement.  Women have been paid less than their male counterparts, are less likely to serve in leadership roles and remain stuck in secretarial positions.

The 10 highest-paid employees of the state Assembly, as of last year, were all men, according to state payroll records for the period ending on May 31, 2013.

“John Pérez has let the money flow into his and other legislators’ campaign coffers,” wrote Patricia Bellasalma, president of the California National Organization for Women, in a February blog post at L.A. Progressive, which has been widely-circulated among party activists. “The results have not been good for California’s women and children, for workers, nor for California’s economy, especially if you measure a thriving economy by the number of good-paying middle-class jobs.”

According to state disclosure reports released earlier this month, Perez accepted nearly $38,000 in gifts and travel payments last year. A report released last December by California Common Cause ranked Perez as the second biggest recipient of gifts in 2012.

Yee: PACs erode our Democratic values

Yee criticized the party for allowing political action committees to erode the party’s bedrock principles.

“We as Democrats demand the highest levels of transparency and accountability in our government, yet within our party, we see PACs erode our very own Democratic values and for which we are unable to follow the money,” she said.

From Sacramento to San Diego, delegates expressed support for Yee’s stinging rebuke of the party.

“Betty Yee speaks truth to power and says we as Dems need to do better #cadem14,” tweeted Alice Mercer, a Sacramento elementary school teacher.