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Date: 1992/03/19 Thursday Page: Section: NEWS Edition: FINAL Size: 0 words

FORMER ORANGE OFFICIAL WON'T CHALLENGE RECALL
KEVIN C. DILWORTH

Former Orange City Councilwoman Louise Corvino yesterday said she does not plan to go to court tomorrow and challenge the merits of the March 9 recall election that ousted her. Corvino, the North Ward representative since 1984, said she plans to focus her attention on running for one of the three at-large seats up for grabs May 12. ''I'm not going to court Friday to challenge the recall because (Mayor Robert L. Brown's) the administration would only spend taxpayers' money needlessly to challenge the effort, whatever the outcome, and I'm convinced I would have come out the victor,'' Corvino said.

North Ward voters recalled Corvino, 492-334, and replaced her with Donald Page, a former school board member who is a civilian employee with the Newark Police Department. The petitions used to remove Corvino from her North Ward council seat cited her for failing to support Police Director Charles Cobbertt's efforts to improve morale problems in the department, for not endorsing a Jan. 22, 1991, city council resolution opposing an amendment to the state's Quality Education Act and for failing to adequately represent the citizens of the North Ward.

''In my heart, I don't feel that this was a defeat, especially because Mr. Page only received 21 more votes more than he did in his last election,'' added Corvino, referring to how Page opposed her in the city's May 1990 council race, and she defeated him, 666-471.

This year, with Mayor Brown supporting the recall drive, along with Councilman-at-large Mims Hackett; Ann Cobbertt, the police director's wife; Gloria Holland, the mayor's mother-in-law, and resident Kevin Hardaway, it did not make sense to spend legal fees to fight for a position that only has two more years to go in the term, Corvino conceded.

''Although I secured affidavits from people who said they were deliberately misled into signing recall petitions seeking my ouster, it does not make sense to fight to keep something for just two more years,'' Corvino continued. Besides that, she noted, ''I did not want to subject my supporters to work in the recall election because of inconsistencies in recent municipal redistricting and because, for the first time in this city and perhaps state, an election was held on a Monday.

That Monday election, in itself, caused complete confusion in the community and chaos at the voting polls.'' Corvino admitted doing little to nothing to halt the recall effort, ''while the recall drive supporters spent an entire year preparing for the effort, and on that election day, Hackett, police director Cobbertt and a host of city employees took the day off and plastered recall signs, that endorsed Page's candidacy, on trees and utility polls throughout the North Ward.'' With such ''an all out effort, Page's victory should have been a landslide win, as opposed to the 559-357 margin that he managed to secure,'' Corvino said. ''What's also remarkable is that the recall drive organizers boasted about getting more than 1,000 people to sign petitions to get me out of office, yet approximately half of that same number even came out to vote in support of their candidate (Page),'' she concluded.

Page, after learning that Corvino does not plan to challenge the recall effort in court tomorrow, responded, ''It means that she's accepted the people's choice, the fighting is over and now we can get on with the business of governing Orange.''