A group of residents plans to file paperwork on Wednesday to recall Mayor Fred Jung and Council Member Jamie Valencia. Fullerton resident Elijah Manassero announced that Jung and Valencia were served with intent-to-recall papers during the July 21 Fullerton City Council meeting. Manassero disclosed the effort during the meeting’s public comment period. Many community members also voiced support, each citing their own reasons for backing the recall.

Grievances against the two officials have accumulated in public comment over the past year. Recurring complaints have included: This is not a complete list.

The Les Amis patio: The city removed the beloved downtown restaurant’s patio while political donor Tony Bushala, a campaign donor, leases city-owned property for his own café and pays nothing for its patio space. Jung and Valencia defended that arrangement as open to non-patrons; the patio is fenced and posted with a 45-minute limit. Speakers have characterized the removal as political retaliation.

The 2022 accounting error: Roughly $2.9 million was placed in the General Fund rather than the Successor Agency fund and went undetected until 2025 despite annual audits, meaning the council set policy around money that was not available. An outside review by Grant Thornton concluded that poor governance, lack of oversight and confusing budget presentation limited transparency. People blame a city council for accounting errors because the council holds final legal and political responsibility for the city budget, policy choices, and staff oversight, even if they do not personally enter the data.

The city’s deficit: Staff has projected a shortfall approaching $20 million in 2027, and the same firm delivered a five-year forecast at the July 14 budget session that critics called alarming. Yet, by some magic, the city was able to whittle a 13.7 million deficit this year down to 3.8 million. People blame the city council for a budget deficit because the council holds direct power over spending priorities, labor and salary negotiations, and reserve fund management.

The canceled May 19 meeting. Jung, Valencia and Council Member Nick Dunlap canceled a session at which auditors were scheduled to present preliminary findings. More than 50 residents gathered outside City Hall instead. Critics connected the cancellation to Jung’s campaign for county supervisor, noting numerous sightings of Valencia supporting Jung by campaigning.

The immigrant support fund. After the November 18, 2025 vote, the Observer ran a piece specifically headlined on Valencia facing backlash. The sharpest response came from Jody Agius Vallejo, a USC sociology professor and associate director of its Equity Research Institute, who witnessed the meeting and wrote that Valencia made misleading claims about her involvement with community organizations serving Fullerton’s immigrant residents. Vallejo argued organizations had invited Valencia in good faith to educate her about conditions in her own district, and that it was concerning to see community labor erased and recast to place an elected official at the center of work she neither initiated nor supported — calling it revisionism meant to bolster Valencia’s image.

Speakers have pressed Jung, Valencia and Dunlap to explain denying assistance to residents affected by immigration raids, noting that funding was available for other purposes. At that time, the city was boasting of having approximately a $30 million reserve fund. At the February 3, 2026 meeting, more than 40 public comments were given at a standing-room-only session, all but two concerning the January 22 ICE incident at the Highland Pine Tree apartments. Speakers asked for full bodycam footage rather than the short clips the police department released, noted more than 25 residents detained by ICE in Fullerton before that incident, and repeatedly asked Jung, Dunlap and Valencia to re-agendize the Immigration Help Fund they had tabled — which only one of the three can do. 

The mayoral selection. Valencia nominated Jung for another term as mayor, and the three-member majority passed over Mayor Pro Tem Shana Charles. Critics said Jung sought to keep the title during his supervisor campaign. The Observer’s own history of the council notes that the mayor is appointed annually in what is known as fair rotation, which is often supplanted by majority rule. Critics say this undermines the purpose of district-based elections.

Favoring donors over public opinion. Valencia has faced criticism for being perceived as closely aligned with Mayor Jung and her campaign supporter, Tony Bushala. Meanwhile, a significant portion of the community is expressing a desire for change. It is important that the voices of the public are heard and considered in the decision-making process.

Donor influence, specifically Tony Bushala.  Jung, Dunlap and Valencia are referred to locally as “The Bushala Bloc,” named for the developer and major donor to all three campaigns, and the bloc has drawn criticism for creating a climate of distrust. Beyond campaign money, the Observer ran an opinion piece in May 2025 headlined A donor at the table, reporting that Jung nominated Bushala to the Fiscal Sustainability Ad Hoc Committee two weeks after its creation, and that FPPC filings show Bushala has donated over $10,000 across multiple election cycles.

Dismissiveness toward public comment. Related but distinct. The Observer noted that Dunlap characterized constituents as a “small, select group” and dissenters as “pressure groups,” while attendance at meetings rose from around 10 regulars to roughly 40. That quote is Dunlap’s, not Jung’s — don’t misattribute it — but the underlying complaint about how the majority receives public comment is aimed at all three.

Accuracy of his own claims. This one has a court record behind it. In a ballot statement challenge brought by former council member Jan Flory, a judge ruled that Jung had to change his ballot designation from “Fullerton Mayor/Business owner” to “Fullerton Mayor/Businessman,” and had to remove claims about opening nine new parks and balancing a budget left unbalanced by predecessors.

Neither Jung nor Valencia responded to the announcement during the meeting.

How the process works

Because Jung and Valencia are city officers, the City Clerk — not the county Registrar of Voters — serves as the elections official for every stage of the recall.

Organizers begin by serving each official with a notice of intention, either in person or by certified mail, and filing the original with the Clerk within seven days along with proof of service. A separate notice is required for each official. The notice must name the officer and the office held, state the grounds for the recall in 200 words or less and carry the printed names, signatures and residence addresses of at least 30 proponents. Every proponent must be a registered voter qualified to vote for that particular officer, which means Jung’s notice requires District 1 residents and Valencia’s requires District 4 residents.

Each official then has seven days from the filing to submit a written answer of no more than 200 words and to serve a copy on one of the proponents. The answer is optional, but if the recall reaches the ballot, the proponents’ grounds and the official’s answer are printed together for voters.

Organizers must publish the notice at their own expense in a newspaper of general circulation, or post it in at least three public places if no such newspaper exists. Within 10 days after an answer is filed — or after the seven-day answer window closes, if none is filed — they must submit two blank copies of the proposed petition to the Clerk along with proof of publication.

The Clerk then has 10 days to review the petition’s form and wording, and during that same period the proposed petition is open to public examination. Any voter in the jurisdiction or the Clerk may seek a court order requiring language in the proponents’ statement or the official’s answer to be amended or deleted, but only on clear and convincing proof that the material is false, misleading or inconsistent with the Elections Code.

If the Clerk finds problems, organizers have 10 days to correct and refile, and the exchange repeats until the petition conforms. The notice, the published version and the petition are compared closely, and any discrepancy in text, punctuation, capitalization or format can void the effort. No signatures may be gathered until the Clerk approves the form.

The number of signatures required depends on how many voters are registered in each district: 25 percent where registration is between 1,000 and 10,000, and 20 percent where it is between 10,000 and 50,000. The circulation window follows the same bands — 90 days in the smaller range, 120 days in the larger. Neither figure is fixed until the Clerk approves the petition, because the count is drawn from the last report of registration filed before that approval.

Jung won District 1 in 2024 with 7,432 votes, or 72.10 percent, against Matt Truxaw — after squeaking in during 2020 with 51.27 percent. A recall has to move a district that just re-elected him by nearly three to one. Also, he re-registered as no party preference around October 2025 during the supervisor run. Depending on who you ask, that’s independence or opportunism.

Valencia won District 4 by 53 votes. The certified result gave her roughly 36 percent in a four-way race — about 3,452 votes to Jaramillo’s 3,402 — after a two-week count in which the lead flipped repeatedly and at one point stood at six votes. District 4 also has 15,593 registered voters. That puts it in the 10,000-to-50,000 band, which means the signature threshold is 20 percent — roughly 3,100 signatures — with a 120-day circulation window. Recalling Valencia requires gathering about as many signatures as the number of people who voted for her, in a district she carried by 53 votes.

If petitions are paid for by a political committee rather than circulated by volunteers, they must carry an “Official Top Funders” disclosure naming the committee and listing its largest contributors in descending order, either printed on the petition itself or shown to each signer on a separate sheet.

After signatures are filed, the Clerk verifies them, using a random sample if more than 500 are submitted. Certification of a sufficient petition goes to the council at its next regular meeting, and the council must order an election within 14 days. If it does not, the county elections official sets the date instead. The election follows 88 to 125 days after the order, or up to 180 days if consolidated with a regularly scheduled election.

Voters see only one question: whether the officer should be removed. State law eliminated replacement candidates from local recall ballots in 2023, so no successor appears alongside the recall question. If half or more of the votes are “no,” the officer stays. If a majority are “yes,” the officer is removed, and the seat becomes vacant. Under a law that took effect this year, a recalled officer cannot be appointed to fill the vacancy.

The council then has 60 days to either appoint a replacement or call a special election. If the vacancy falls in the second half of a term, an appointee serves the entire remainder of the term. Jung and Valencia were elected in November 2024 to terms running through 2028, and the statutory timeline suggests any recall election would likely fall in 2027 — after that midpoint.

Because a separate petition is required for each official, the two efforts proceed independently and draw signatures from different pools of voters. If both qualify, however, state law allows them to be decided at a single election.