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Total recall: Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign treasurer, Colleen McAndrews, has been a behind-the-scenes force in Republican politics for years

Los Angeles Business Journal, Sept 8, 2003 by Kate Berry

COLLEEN McAndrews, who describes herself as a moderate Republican and "political junkie," has been a behind-the-scenes player in GOP politics and election law for more than 25 years. These days, the Santa Monica attorney has defended 11 challenges to the recall effort and just recently signed on as treasurer of Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign. McAndrews, whose specialty is election compliance, served a six-year stint on the state Fair Political Practices Commission (as an appointee of Democrat and then-Gov. Jerry Brown) and was an observer of the Russian constitutional and parliamentary elections in Moscow in 1993. More recently, she served on the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, which made recommendations in the wake of the Florida presidential recount.

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Question: You were about to file papers for longime client Richard Riordan to run for governor. What happened?

Answer: I was all set to file. The day after the Jay Lena show, the Schwarzenegger people called and said, "Help!" Dick said, "Fine, go help them." I started as treasurer for Schwarzenegger. I met him the day "after the Lena show. I actually heard him speak at the 25th Anniversary Dinner for Proposition 13 and that was the first time I realized this guy had it. He can give a political speech. I came away thinking: "Wow."

Q: What do you do as treasurer of a campaign?

A: The new rules under Proposition 34 require reporting of every $1,000 contribution received within 24 hours electronically. So, my staff and 1 make sure they get the data in and don't have any violations. We have to be ready for wire transfers on an hour's notice. We write all the checks and do all the expenditures of the campaign, including managing the cash flow.

Q. What do you think of a gubernatorial campaign with 135 candidates?

A: I think probably we'll look back and say that the Secretary of State didn't pick the right qualification standards for candidates. The 65 signatures and $3,500 is probably too low a threshold. But the law is silent and they picked what is operative for a primary election. That's what has created this ballot with a bunch of gadflies who want to tell their grandchildren they were on the ballot. I think that will change in the future and there will probably a lot of legislation proposed by the recall process.

Q: What about the overall impact of the recall?

A: I think this is great fun. The last time I saw this same rejection of the elites was when Prop 13 was passed in 1978. And I think this recall election is a similar grass-roots movement where the people have said enough is enough, we just don't like how Sacramento is run.

Q: How did you end up litigating the recall issues?

A: Ours was the first firm contacted by Ted Costa (who filed the original petitions to recall Davis) when the glint of the recall was in his eye. So we have represented him since January or February and have litigated the 11 lawsuits that the Democrats have thrown at the recall, with an 11-0 win record so far.

Q: How did you get involved in the Florida recount?

A: I wasn't involved in Florida at first. In February 2001, I got a call from the Miller Center at the University of Virginia and was asked to be on the National Commission on Federal Election Reform. We had an intense six months of hearings all over the country and on July 31, 2001 we presented our report to President Bush in the Rose Garden. And he embraced our suggestions and sent the signal that he would sign any kind of bill that would solve the election issues that had come out of Florida. Our report became the basis of the Help America Vote Act in 2002. That law is now going a long way towards nationalizing the California system.

Q: Why California?

A: I had on-the-ground experience and California has a pretty good system, so I took provisional ballots back to (the commission) and said, "This is a solution." I took some of our absentee ballot practices and I took our post-election recount practices back, saying there have to be standards. California has standards so that every vote is treated equally and you don't have a Bush vs. Gore problem. So I think I had a significant impact on the deliberations of the commission and I'm very proud of the bill that emerged.

Q: What role will technology play?

A: The technology has not caught up with everyone's demand for faster, speedier, error-less voting. And elections are messy. That's the big secret of election officials--they all go to bed the night before elections and pray for wide margins. The minute you scratch below the surface you find a lot of error because humans are marking the ballot and running the elections and polling places and they're often elderly volunteers. You need to have a better-trained poll-worker force and you need to solve access to polling places and then you need to have machines that are effective. When we go to touch-screen machines in the next decade, we're going to have to have more sophisticated poll workers.

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Total recall: Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign treasurer, Colleen McAndrews, has been a behind-the-scenes force in Republican politics for years

Los Angeles Business Journal, Sept 8, 2003 by Kate Berry

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