Congratulations to the campaign to recall 3rd District Supervisor Gail Marshall! With hard work, perseverance and cunning, you collected the 8,914 signatures needed to challenge the liberal supe.

It just goes to prove the old saying that you can never discount a small group of determined individuals with a truckload of money and a maniacal lust for power.

The execution of the whole petition drive was brilliant. Almost any 20 boobs can organize a recall petition but Marshall’s opponents knew what had to be done, how to do it and how to get the special election held over the summer when most of the Marshall-supporting college students would be out of town.

Granted, these guys had some pretty significant obstacles to overcome, like small numbers and an unpopular cause. These challenges were met, however, with mercenary petition collectors, using liberal-sounding petitions as a bait-and-switch, and ethics usually found only in sociopaths and diseased wharf rats. It was a remarkable display of what hardball politicking and money can accomplish.

At the $1-3 Marshall’s foes paid their hired petitioners per signature, they would have had to shell out $8,894 to $26,682 for the 8,914 signatures (minus the 20 original, and presumably free, signatures). Buying an election, or at least its timing, doesn’t come cheap.

Marshall was completely and utterly outmaneuvered – it was like watching a pack of German shepherds separate the fifth-grade class president from her schoolmates for a mauling. That things might be a little stickier as the election draws closer and the stench of the recall campaign reaches 3rd District nostrils in no way diminishes the accomplishment.

This small band of plucky citizens is using a little bit of lying and a whole lot of money to overturn a legitimately elected official and install a pro-development majority on the board of supervisors.

Shit-heels of Santa Barbara County, we salute you.