Four Avenal council members remain in office four months after recall

California AG approves quo warranto lawsuit over disputed seats

Four of the five members of the Avenal city council have refused to vacate their seats since voters recalled them in April, alleging improprieties in how the election was conducted and filing lawsuits in an effort to invalidate the result. The California attorney general has approved a quo warranto lawsuit, the legal vehicle for resolving disputes over an elected official’s right to hold office, while the Kings County district attorney has opened an investigation and previously sued the city alleging multiple Brown Act violations.

The recalled officials are Mayor Alvaro Preciado and council members Leticia Gamez, David Reynosa, and Pablo Hernandez. According to recall organizers, the April vote was the first such recall in California. None of the four recalled members nor Avenal City Manager Antony López responded to requests for comment from the Guardian.

Preciado said in a recent interview that the recalled officials were entitled to “due process” and argued that stepping down would leave the city “in the lurch without a full council.” Recall organizer Delila Barajas called that explanation a “loophole” and said the officials’ oath of office obligated them to respect the election outcome.

The dispute traces to last year’s council decision to create a city-run volunteer fire department to replace service from Kings County, whose costs were scheduled to rise substantially. The decision angered residents with longstanding ties to the county fire service and crystallized what Barajas described as a broader pattern of disrespect toward the community in council meetings. The Kings County district attorney subsequently sued the city, alleging the council committed multiple Brown Act violations by discussing the proposed fire department in closed-session meetings where the public is not permitted. The county stopped providing fire service to Avenal in June, and the city began operating its own department with eight full-time workers.

Under California’s recall law, voters can force a removal election by collecting a sufficient number of signatures from registered voters. Organizers said they met that threshold despite a city lawsuit that sought to halt the process. Voters overwhelmingly backed the recalls in April, according to the organizers. The recalled officials and the city manager challenged the results from the start, arguing that recall organizers had misled signature-gatherers and that the election was unlawfully administered by the county. The city has since sued both the recall organizers and the county in an effort to invalidate the outcome.

Tensions inside council chambers have escalated alongside the litigation. During a June session, angry residents urged the recalled members to leave office. An unsigned communique on the city’s Facebook page condemned what it described as violent threats and racist remarks from recall supporters. City Manager López wrote on Facebook that the recall was “not based on transparency concerns”: “When racist slurs, threats, and harassment are tolerated, it becomes clear this recall was built on hate, not accountability.”

Recall supporters have rejected that characterization. Ginger Wallis, another organizer who is now running for council, said the allegations are an effort to distract from the core dispute: recalled officials who will not leave office.

Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and a 40-year veteran of elected office in Los Angeles, said he had never heard of recalled officials remaining in office through litigation. “If every successful recall is challenged by the people who are recalled, on whatever basis, it undermines the whole purpose of the recall process itself,” he said. “When does it end?”

Yaroslavsky said the idea that a court would overturn the recall results is “unprecedented” and accused the council of “gumming up the works by filing lawsuits and not adhering to the law.” He added: “We are a democracy of laws, not of whim. I don’t understand how people who were recalled in April can still be serving in August. They are making decisions on a constituency that they are not legally entitled to make.”

Avenal sits in Kings County in the Central Valley. It is a majority-Latino city of roughly 13,500 people that describes itself as the “pistachio capital of the world.” Once an oil town, it now leans on a nearby state prison and the agriculture industry as major employers. Residents described the community as tight-knit, with quiet, tree-lined streets that feel distant from Interstate 5 about five miles away.

Barajas, asked whether she was surprised the recalled members had stayed in office, said: “I’m not. Because that’s exactly what we’ve been dealing with. We’ve come to expect it.” She said the dispute had grown exhausting for residents who simply want the council to honor the vote. “He swore an oath to uphold the constitution of the United States of America,” she said of Preciado. “Part of that oath is exactly what we’re going through right now. Which is, give us our democratic process.”

Outside the Avenal Theater last week, about 20 residents gathered ahead of a scheduled council meeting — the city’s first official gathering since June — before it was canceled. Rae Packwood, a lifelong Avenal resident, said she had planned to attend to hear how the recalled members justified remaining in their seats and that she was not surprised the meeting was called off. “I might have cancelled myself,” she said. “Everyone here is totally against them.”