Group Launches Drive to Recall Wieder : Politics: Spokeswoman for 100 Huntington Beach-area residents calls supervisor’s recent stances ‘an embarrassment.’ Wieder says she’s not worried.

SANTA ANA —  A group claiming to represent 100 dissatisfied Huntington Beach-area residents said Wednesday that it is launching a recall campaign against Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, the chairman of the county board who has irked fellow Republicans in recent months.

Group spokeswoman Kimberly Hahn put out a statement calling Wieder “an embarrassment to the people of Orange County” because of her support for new environmental regulations on businesses, her recent stances on the county budget, her reference last month to a fellow supervisor as “a Hitler” and a host of other issues that Hahn said warrant Wieder’s recall.

Wieder, a 14-year veteran of the Board of Supervisors who plans to retire in 1995, has come under increased fire from fellow Republicans since she broke ranks last year to endorse Democrat Bill Clinton for President.

But she said Wednesday that she is not bothered by any threat of a recall effort.

“I checked it out. It’s nothing,” she said.

While some politicians agreed that the chances of mounting a serious recall campaign against any top countywide official are slim, Wieder apparently was concerned enough about the issue that she called Orange County Republican Party Chairman Thomas A. Fuentes on it earlier this week.

Wieder said in a written statement Wednesday that she had heard “a rumor” that Fuentes and the Republican Central Committee “were exploring efforts to recall me.”

“So in my best interests and those of the Republican Party, I called Mr. Fuentes to determine if there was any fact to the rumor. He unequivocally stated that it was untrue,” Wieder said. “That information from Mr. Fuentes satisfied me, and it is a closed issue.”

Wieder’s office suggested that some individual Republican activists may be trying to get “bad press” for Wieder to hurt her chances in any future run against Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach.) But officials on Wieder’s staff said they were unclear who was behind the movement.

Hahn was not saying either.

Even before the issue of Republican involvement was raised in an interview, Hahn stressed “unequivocally” in a prepared statement that the local party was “in no way, shape or form associated with this movement.”

But she said that no other names of group members would be released until the group serves Wieder within the next few weeks with a “notice of intent” to recall her. That step, required under local election codes, sets in motion the process for collecting signatures to demand a recall of an elected official.

It would take 25,544 signatures today from Wieder’s Huntington Beach-based district--or 10% of the total registered voters--to force a recall election, election officials said.

Other people involved in the campaign “don’t want to come forward yet because they don’t want to make this into a Republican vendetta,” said Hahn, a homemaker and a Republican who said she helps her husband run a software company called Intersoft Systems and Programs Inc.

“They don’t want to give (Wieder) the opportunity to make this into a Republican issue,” she said. “When it becomes relevant, the players will become known.”

Fuentes said he has “picked up on rumblings about what I would call political activists dissatisfied (with Wieder) in relation to her support of Clinton.” He emphasized, however, that the party was “distanced” from any recall efforts and that Republican organizers were not behind the campaign.

Wieder, along with Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, was also the target of a recall effort in 1988 by members of the slow-growth movement, who said the two supervisors were too supportive of major developers. That movement died, however, after organizers were unable to get signatures from 10% of the voters in the supervisors’ districts.

The current campaign goes beyond a single issue, however, Hahn said.

Hahn said Wieder’s opponents are bothered by her stances on a range of issues. She maintained that Wieder’s support for new environmental regulations as a member of the Air Quality Management District has helped drive business from Southern California, while her recent opposition to a 10% cut in county administrative costs showed she is “in love with government.”

Hahn also took issue with Wieder’s leadership style, pointing to her recent reference in The Times last month to Supervisor Roger R. Stanton as behaving like “a Hitler” in his harsh treatment of staff members.

“How can she be effective and adequately perform her duties when she makes irresponsible, outrageous and inflammatory statements against her fellow colleagues on the Board of Supervisors?” Hahn asked in a statement. “It is impossible to work with someone when they conduct themselves in such an irrational and combative manner.”

Wieder has defended her aggressive style of politics in the past, but she said she could not discuss specifics of the recall issue and the charges raised because she was ill and had lost her voice.

Hahn said several unnamed local businessmen have pledged several thousand dollars for the recall effort already. But political consultant Dan C. Wooldridge said it would likely take several hundred thousand dollars to mount a serious campaign--at a time when political money is drying up.

“Recall of any incumbent supervisor in Orange County is somewhere between extremely difficult to impossible,” Wooldridge said. And with Wieder planning to leave office in 1995 anyway, he said, “why would you invest that money at this moment?”

Times staff writer Bill Billiter contributed to this story.