Fullerton residents divided as City Council recall election nears Among the sidewalk cafes, bars and art galleries of downtown Fullerton, banners that hang from light poles proclaim "We love Fullerton." The flags depict iconic local scenes - a popular hiking trail, a nighttime streetscape, the downtown train station - and favorite sons guitar maker Leo Fender and former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda. Off the main drag, though, the signs posted in yards and on street corners tell a more conflicted story. "Fullerton recall - failure to lead," proclaims a sign in front of Grace O'Malley's home. Like others in town, she said she had paid little attention to local politics until a local homeless man, Kelly Thomas, died last July after a beating at the hands of Fullerton police officers. "It just really made me angry and embarrassed for my city," she said. We need people who know right from wrong. On the opposite corner, a sign in the neighbor's yard counters, "Reject the recall. Fullerton is not for sale! And down the street, yard signs on either side of a duplex support two rival candidates running to replace one of three council members facing recall in Tuesday's election. The fatal encounter between the mentally ill homeless man and six police officers, captured on a surveillance video that is now a centerpiece of the criminal case against two of the policemen, has thrown a long shadow over the town's leadership and polarized residents. There have been protests, public memorials, and long and angry council meetings at which activists wear T-shirts emblazoned with Thomas' image. "The whole town, there will be days where everyone's talking about it," said Shannon LeClair, 33, a bartender at Mulberry Street Ristorante, a downtown establishment popular with both the town's old-school political players - many of whom oppose the recall - and the younger, hipper crowd who live downtown and largely support a City Hall house-cleaning. Fullerton's downtown is a bustling, close-knit place that, at once, has a small-town feel and a metropolitan sensibility fueled by public transit, jazz bars and art walks. Many downtown locals remember seeing Thomas, a tall, red-haired, bearded homeless man, sleeping in an alcove behind the train station or sitting on a bench at the bus depot or outside the Mulberry Street. He had a long history of mental illness, but most recalled him as a mild-mannered and unobtrusive figure. "I found him to be very sweet, very likable," said Steve Baxter, 47, a local activist who would sometimes let Thomas sit in the shade on the patio of his downtown apartment and listen to music. In the days after Thomas' death, word spread quickly downtown, passed by word of mouth in the local bars and on Facebook posts. A couple weeks after the fatal encounter, downtown resident Andy Anderson, 27, rounded up about a dozen people for what would be the first of many protests outside the police station. Then a local blog, Friends for Fullerton's Future, posted a photo of Thomas' battered, nearly unrecognizable face. Suddenly, Thomas was a national story. City Council meetings drew overflow crowds. People lined up to reprimand or shout at city leaders. Attendance at the weekly protests swelled to the hundreds. The police chief went on medical leave for six months and then retired. If there's to be a climax to the turmoil, it might arrive Tuesday, when council members Dick Jones, Pat McKinley and Don Bankhead face recall in an election that could reshape City Hall. The three council members are under fire for perceptions that they failed to act aggressively or communicate to the public in the aftermath of Thomas' death. Thirteen candidates are running to replace them. The recall opponents characterize the effort as a power grab by Tony Bushala, a politically active, libertarian-leaning local businessman who runs the Fullerton's Future blog and has bankrolled the recall campaign, pouring in more than $200,000 of his own money. McKinley, who served as Fullerton's police chief for 16 years, said the council had done all it could in the aftermath of the Thomas incident, and the officers, "all of them that did anything wrong," have been disciplined. The rest is all just a Bushala thing. He was looking for some incident to take on the City Council and he found his incident," McKinley said. He wants to be king. The recall proponents concede that they wanted to get rid of the council majority long before the Thomas beating, but reject the idea that Bushala is exploiting the homeless man's death. I think the real question is, 'Why didn't the recall targets take a leadership role when a mentally ill homeless man was murdered by members of their police force?' Bushala said in an email response. Ron Thomas, who has been a visible figure in Fullerton since his son's death, said he supports the recall because of the "inappropriate inaction" after his son's death. "All the other things, not my concern - don't care," he said. Despite the rancor, some in Fullerton said they have seen positive changes in the year after Thomas' death: Police are more diplomatic, and people who never paid attention to local politics are now actively involved. The downtown business association launched a "We love Fullerton" campaign this spring. Since then, residents and businesses have signed up to sponsor banners advertising the things they like about their town. Anderson, the protest organizer, joined 10 downtown acquaintances and chipped in for the $310 to put their picture on a banner, with the slogan "Super Friends." "Fullerton's kind of at a crossroads right now," Anderson said. But overall, we really do love it, or we wouldn't be fighting for it.