Bill Emmerson

10:00 PM PST on Monday, March 8, 2010

By DUANE W. GANG and JULISSA McKINNON
The Press-Enterprise

A Val Verde Unified School District board member who had hoped to run for the state Senate in the 37th District special election next month is accusing Riverside County officials of giving another candidate special treatment.

Shelly Yarbrough, who wanted to get on the April 13 ballot as a Democrat, said she wasn’t notified until after the March 1 filing deadline that she came up seven signatures short of qualifying.

Meanwhile, Inland Assemblyman Bill Emmerson, R-Hemet, failed to include his signature on his paperwork, and elections officials allowed him to sign the documents nearly two hours after the registrar’s advertised 6 p.m. closing time.
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“I don’t want to make this sour grapes, but I wanted the same courtesy that the other gentleman had been given,” Yarbrough said.

“If the doors close at 6 p.m., why are they allowed to come in and complete their paperwork?” she said.

Yarbrough said if she had received a phone call informing her that she was short of signatures, she would have driven back to the registrar’s office and turned in an extra page of names that she had inadvertently left in a business folder.

But the issue appears more complicated.

Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore said it is the office’s practice to notify all candidates when there are deficiencies in campaign paperwork.
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But files are reviewed in the order in which they are received, Dunmore said.

Emmerson turned his paperwork in at 8:30 a.m. March 1 and it was reviewed about noon, Dunmore said.

But by then, Emmerson had already flown to Sacramento for an Assembly floor session. Dunmore said she was holding a meeting with election observers from 5 to 8 p.m. March 1.

“We were going to be open anyway,” Dunmore said last week. “If he could get here before we closed at 8 o’clock, we would accept his signature. He chartered a plane and he signed that document around 7:50 p.m.”

Yarbrough filed her signatures at 5:19 p.m. March 1, Dunmore said.
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“My front office staff leaves at 6 o’clock,” Dunmore said. “Her file just wasn’t turned in a time of fashion that we could get to it before 6 p.m.”

The signatures were not verified until March 2 when the office notified Yarbrough that she came up short, Dunmore said.

On Monday, Yarbrough asked the county to accept her additional signatures since she believed Emmerson received special treatment. Dunmore said after consulting the county’s lawyers, they could not accept the signatures. Yarbrough said she is writing a letter of complaint to county supervisors.

One of Emmerson’s main opponents, former Assemblyman Russ Bogh, said Monday he believes Emmerson received special treatment. The evening elections meeting wasn’t an advertised public event, Bogh said.

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