California senator who fought to make vaccines mandatory faces recall efforts

A California senator who successfully fought to make vaccines a mandatory requirement for most school kids is now fighting to keep his job in the face of recall efforts from opponents of the new law.

A petition to recall state senator Richard Pan, a pediatrician, over his support for compulsory shots was approved by the California secretary of state this week.

Pan, a first-term senator, authored and championed SB277, a bill recently signed into law that removes personal belief exemptions, including religious objections, for vaccinations of school kids. It makes it harder for parents to opt out of a list of 10 shots which will be required beginning in 2016 for all students in both public or private school who do not have a medical waiver.

Once the law goes into effect, parents who do not wish to vaccinate must homeschool their children in either individual or group settings.

The law sparked vitriolic controversy for months as it made its way through the legislative process. Opponents regularly flooded the Capitol to protest, and Pan received death threats over the measure.

Now, opponents have begun gathering the 35,926 signatures from voters in Pan’s district needed to qualify for a recall election. The petitioners have until 31 December 2015 to gather the necessary support. If they are successful, an election for Pan’s seat would be held within 180 days after the secretary of state verifies the signatures.

While Pan initially told media he was not concerned about the recall effort, “now we are taking it seriously because the petitions are approved”, said Los Angeles-based political consultant Rose Kapolczynski, who is helping Pan with the anti-recall campaign. Pan is on vacation and not available for comment.

Pan, a pediatrician who represents a district around the state capital of Sacramento, debuted a website and Facebook page on Wednesday to combat the attacks.

“Please help me fend off this recall,” he wrote on Facebook. “Join me to urge our neighbors to not sign their petition, to vote no on any recall ballot.”

Aaron Mills, a volunteer leader of the recall effort in Sacramento, said his group is “just getting started”, but says he is fighting to oust Pan because he is concerned that SB277 is a “bad precedent” that could lead to other medical mandates.

“I just want to make my own decisions for my family,” he said. “I’m just tired of politics as usual catering to special interest groups instead of the constitutional rights of the people who elect them.”

Opponents of the vaccine law are also attacking the measure on other fronts. Former California assembly member Tim Donnelly, a Tea Party activist who now has a radio show, is leading a referendum drive against the law, which is also currently gathering signatures.

If successful, it would nullify the law. But that effort would need about 366,000 signatures in the coming weeks, a much higher threshold than the recall effort. Still, Donnelly said that he has already paid to print 100,000 petitions and has 1,500 volunteers trained to collect signatures in key areas across the state, and 3,500 more who are willing to help. He added that the effort is galvanizing both conservative voters concerned about civil liberties as well as liberal parents doubtful of vaccine safety. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. “We’ve got hardcore Christian conservatives working side by side with people on the far left.”

Anti-vaccine advocates are also pursuing a legal strategy to combat the law in court, according to California Coalition for Health Choice member Rebecca Estepp. She is helping to spearhead an effort to find “what cases would be the best to do a legal challenge as soon as possible”, she said.

But Pan’s supporters are also working to get their message out, and expressed confidence that he will stay in office.

“I think the recall is probably driven by a very small group of people, maybe a lot of them are not even in Senator Pan’s district,” said Amy Alfieri, a Pan constituent and mother of two who was an active supporter of SB277 and is now a committee member on the “Keep Dr Pan” effort. “It’s just a frivolous waste of time for them to target a responsible, ethical person who’s working really hard to protect children. It’s just ridiculous.”