Recall organizers found job daunting

A novel idea imported from Miami — centralized locations to gather signatures from motorists — proved a boon in the effort to recall Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle.

Mild fall weather and help from a national expert on petition drives — term limits advocate Paul Jacobs — also aided the committee that collected some 37,000 signatures in 30 days.

It was a daunting task that looked easier at the beginning than at the end, one with its fair share of ups and downs, said Jeremy Aspen, a spokesman for the Mayor Suttle Recall Committee.

“To a layperson, it seems it would be easy to gather signatures, but, no, it’s very hard,” said Aspen, a 39-year-old property manager who took the job as the front man for the group, his first foray into organized politics.

It is not yet clear whether the group gathered enough eligible signatures to force a recall election — 26,643. The Douglas County election commissioner has until Dec. 4 to verify the signatures, and a legal challenge could extend the wait.

The Suttle recall effort was born among a group of local apartment owners, with input from restaurant owners upset at Suttle’s proposed tax hikes to balance the city budget.

Many members were angry about a property tax hike and a new tax on restaurant meals that Suttle supported and the City Council eventually approved.

After the tax hikes, months of percolating discussions within the Metropolitan Omaha Property Owners Association coalesced. This summer, the group hired a political consultant and commissioned a poll, said Aspen.

The consultant was no stranger to Omaha politics or local recalls. Jim Cleary, a former Omaha city councilman and former parks director under Mayor Hal Daub, spearheaded the 1986 recall of then-Mayor Mike Boyle.

The property group’s poll, taken in August, showed a significant number of Omahans were upset with Suttle — and that a recall was possible, Aspen said.

Most of the people behind the initial recall conversations are associated with the property owners association — John Chatelain, Tom Jizba and Bill Stowell. The group represents more than 500 rental owners and managers across the Omaha area.

Pat McPherson, a Republican political consultant who worked on Daub’s failed mayoral bid against Suttle, also was a key member of the initial group.

The men decided not to talk in public until after the recall election they seek — and would not return calls seeking comment — believing it best to have only one spokesman, Aspen said.

As the effort got off the ground, the recall committee planned to rely solely on 400 to 600 volunteers to gather signatures. Their goal was overly optimistic and “naive,” Aspen said.

In the end, they recruited about 300 volunteers.

They also had hoped that about 20 restaurants citywide would allow circulators inside to gather signatures. Only about eight did, said Nicole Jesse, owner of La Casa Pizzaria and immediate past president of the Omaha Restaurant Association.

Several restaurants feared losing patrons if they allowed circulators in, and finding volunteers to work the restaurants was tough, said Jesse, who allowed petitioners to gather signatures at her restaurant.

The idea that the group could rely on volunteers — many of whom held full-time jobs — was reconsidered after Election Day, on which organizers had planned a big push to gather signatures outside polling places.

Execution of the Election-Day strategy proved difficult. Recall backers had a tough time finding volunteers to staff polling sites, especially after recall opponents and Suttle supporters announced they would have people on the ground to persuade voters against signing, Aspen said.

The recall committee ended up staffing only about a third of the city’s polling sites, mostly in west Omaha, gathering about 6,500 to 7,000 signatures.

The group’s efforts might not have yielded as many signatures as hoped, but the Election Day performance did not dampen organizers’ drive. Contrary to some reports, Aspen said, the group never expected its Nov. 2 efforts to supply the bulk of its signatures. That contrasts with the 1986 recall effort against Boyle, which relied on signatures gathered outside polling places.

Instead, the Suttle recall committee held a meeting and decided to hire paid circulators.

In addition, they reached out to Paul Jacobs with Citizens In Charge, a Virginia-based group that supports the voter initiative and referendum process.

Jacobs is a widely known national figure who has led efforts over the past two decades to get states to adopt term-limit measures, including legislative term limits in Nebraska.

Jacobs said he was contacted in November by several people in Omaha — he declined to name them — who wanted his help with the petition drive. Eventually he came to the city at their request and worked as an unpaid consultant for about two weeks.

One of Jacobs’ biggest contributions was contracting and recruiting about 30 professional circulators to come to Nebraska and help oversee the efforts of local petition circulators.

In Nebraska, only people who reside in the state can circulate a petition, but the professionals organized, coached and trained paid circulators on how and where to get people to sign.

“I really consulted on every aspect of it. How best to connect volunteers and how to work with paid folks,” said Jacobs, who has worked on about 150 such drives.

And it was after Election Day that organizers began to implement the strategy of centralized signature collection sites.

Aspen had read about a mayoral recall effort in the Miami area in which the circulators set up centralized sites and then used paid advertisements to direct people to them.

It was a novel idea.

“It’s something that’s new, and it seems to work,” said Jacobs.

Aspen said he saw its effectiveness when they attempted a test run at a site near 44th and Dodge Streets, a day or two before the election. They gathered 400 signatures in about four hours that day, prompting an excited Aspen to call one of his fellow recall supporters and announce: “This is going to work.”

After that, the recall committee set up four or five centralized sites around the city, urging people via radio advertisements to visit and sign the petition. From time to time, the sites moved.

“People wanted a place where they could turn into, sign and leave,” said Aspen. “It was fantastic.”

Lastly, the petition drive was blessed with mild weather. It was much harder to muster volunteers on cold days, Aspen said, though on one such blustery day they gathered 1,600 signatures at the centralized sites.

In the end, he said, “weather was probably the only thing that could have stopped us.”

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