A longtime agitator in Long Beach politics, who recently burst back onto the scene with an attempt to recall Mayor Robert Garcia, is now under investigation by state regulators and local prosecutors after complaints that he broke election laws.

A former supporter of the recall says he blew the whistle on the campaign organizer, Franklin Sims, after becoming uncomfortable with Sims’ emphasis on fundraising and lack of quality controls around signature gathering—accusations Sims denies.

“Franklin was never there getting signatures, he was trying to get money,” said Lee Richmond Charley, who was an early, high-profile backer before he felt overwhelmed by concerns about possibly illegal activity.

“I still believe in the recall,” Charley said, but, “I had to leave.”

Charley said he emailed the mayor’s office to alert them about his concerns, and, soon after, he got a call from the Long Beach City Prosecutor’s office.

Now, City Prosecutor Doug Haubert says his office has opened an inquiry into the campaign based on accusations of potentially “felony-level violations of the California Elections Code.” Because of that, Haubert said he’s asked for help from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office.

Haubert also said he’s partnered with the state’s political watchdog, the Fair Political Practices Commission, which already has two open investigations into Sims—one of which was sparked by complaints from Garcia’s staff.

“Although we are independent agencies, it only makes sense that we coordinate in a case like this where there are multiple and serious accusations,” Haubert said in an email.

Sims discounted the accusations, saying they’re motivated by political opponents with ties to the mayor and a former recall supporter with an ax to grind.

“If the basis of the allegation is Charley, then both the FPPC and the prosecutor’s office, should be as skeptical as I am,” he said.

Charley is also at the center of another political scandal. He recently defected from a city council campaign in the 2nd District and accused it of spying on and harassing an opposing candidate.

In an interview with the Post, Charley laid out a series of concerns he said he also brought to investigators about Sims’ recall drive.

  • Charley said Sims was distributing the petition online so backers could sign it and return it to the campaign. Charley said he believes there were times staffers would falsely sign affidavits swearing they’d personally witnessed backers sign it—something that’s required to submit the signatures.
  • He also worried about tactics used to sign up voters. Charley accused Sims of pressuring volunteers to register new voters so they could sign the petition even when the potential voters had felonies on their records or were otherwise ineligible.
  • Charley also accused Sims of creating a confusing situation for voters. He said some backers believed they were signing a recall petition when they were actually signing up for a volunteer list.

Eventually, Charley said, he also became annoyed with the amount of time Sims spent asking for money and producing videos for social media, which often featured Sims advocating for the recall before sometimes cutting to music videos of Sims singing about corruption in Long Beach.

“He is scamming Long Beach Residents,” Charley wrote in an email to an investigator that he later provided to the Post. “I was volunteering and was in full support for three weeks. I started noticing inconsistencies, lies, he posts videos everyday trying to see what gets ‘traction’.”

Sims dismissed Charley’s accusations, saying the volunteer lashed out after becoming frustrated with Sims’ campaign strategy. Sims said he collected extra signatures on a volunteer sign-up sheet to help verify people were signing the petition correctly. He also denied falsely signing any affidavits or improperly registering voters.

“None of that stuff is going to stick,” he said.

But now, Sims says, his recall effort is flagging, with a collapse in volunteers and lack of fundraising. He says it probably won’t meet the threshold of more than 25,000 signatures needed before a December deadline.

“The math just doesn’t look good,” Sims said.

A history of accusations

This isn’t the first time Sims has come under scrutiny from campaign regulators. He’s been under FPPC investigation since 2016 when he took on Garcia in a campaign against Measure A, a sales tax measure the mayor backed.

According to FPPC documents, investigators found Sims likely didn’t provide proper disclosures on a host of advertisements and failed to disclose complete contributor information on 78% of the donations he received.

Similar to now, Sims targeted the mayor in that campaign—at one point producing a video of him carrying a fake, oversized check made out to Garcia from taxpayers for $48 million. Sims is still contesting the FPPC’s accusations, and Ian Patton, the campaign consultant who complained to the FPPC in 2016, has asked the commission to drop the issue.

Patton—who now works for the Robert Fox City Council campaign, which is also facing accusations from Charley—previously said he viewed Sims as an unhelpful competitor four years ago, but now appreciates his activism.

Franklin Sims in 2016. Photo from FPPC documents.

After Measure A passed in 2016, Sims wasn’t as visible in Long Beach politics, but he renewed his activism over the summer by launching his recall campaign in the wake of anti-police brutality protests that overtook Long Beach at the end of May. Sims again railed against Garcia, calling him a “steward of systemic racism,” in part because of backing he’s received from the local police union.

The recall drew attention through Sims’ videos and popup events like a punk show at City Hall.

But within weeks of Sims setting up a political committee to support the recall in July, the mayor’s allies began accusing him of breaking election laws.

Richard Rios, an election lawyer for Garcia, submitted an FPPC complaint saying Sims wasn’t including proper disclaimers at the beginning of his videos. Rios also pointed to Sims accepting several anonymous donations of $100, $200 and $500 on a Gofundme page supporting the recall. The Political Reform Act bans committees from accepting anonymous donations of $100 or more.

Anonymous donations listed on a Gofundme page supporting the mayoral recall. Photo from an FPPC complaint.

Later the same month, longtime Garcia aide Justin Ramirez submitted another complaint to the FPPC pointing to more examples of videos, social media posts and websites without political disclaimers.

Ramirez, Rios and Garcia did not answer questions about whether the mayor directed the FPPC complaints. Rios said the mayor’s office had no involvement in the City Prosecutor’s investigation beyond forwarding along the email Charley sent them.

Sims denies he violated any campaign rules, saying any anonymous donations or lack of disclosures happened before his activism shifted from a general message of racial equity to a specific political goal of recalling the mayor.

“A lot of this has been intimidation,” he said.

Editor’s note: This article was updated to clarify Charley’s accusation that some of Sims tactics were confusing to voters who, he says, thought they’d signed a recall petition when they’d really signed a volunteer list.

Jeremiah Dobruck is managing editor of the Long Beach Post. Reach him at [email protected] or @jeremiahdobruck on Twitter.