Recall election underway for Pacific mayor

Pacific Mayor Cy Sun has stormed out of meetings. He’s fired several police chiefs and nearly every department head. He nearly cost his city its insurance policy after former employees filed $11 million worth of lawsuits against him.

Voters will get a chance to decide whether to keep him around in a special recall election being held Tuesday.

Cy Sun, 83, became mayor in November of 2011 as a write-in candidate, promising to root-out corruption in the town of 6,600 people that sits on both sides of the King County-Pierce County line.

All he needed to win the election in 2011 was 464 votes – as less than half the registered voters cast a ballot.

Recall organizer Tracey Apata still can’t believe that so few people decided to get involved. “I was not aware of the numbers of people that are eligible to vote that don’t go and register themselves and then don’t exercise their right,” she said. “You can’t complain about what we have if you’re not willing to step out there and at least be a part of making those decisions.”

There are a few more registered voters in Pacific for this recall election, and so far about a third of them have cast ballots. “I can’t believe that people aren’t seeing what’s going on and not ready to start over and have something new in place to clean up the mess that we’re in because we’re still in dire straits,” said Apata.

Kim Van Eckstrom with King County Elections said they have more than a thousand ballots in hand, and the first results should be available around 10 p.m. Tuesday. “Because it is such a small election, we’re actually going to hand count these ballots,” she said.

Recall elections don’t happen very often. Van Eckstrom said the last recall in King County was in March of 2004.

Should Mayor Sun be recalled, his last day on the job would be July 9. The city council would appoint a new mayor to serve out his term.

Don’t expect this to be a slam dunk: Mayor Sun has plenty of supporters.