Haven’t heard from Long Beach Chamber of Commerce CEO Randy Gordon in a bit, but he was the featured speaker at today’s meeting of the East Anaheim Street Business Alliance, held at the tasty Frenchy’s Bistro.

And for a man who literally said he didn’t want to talk about still-embattled Long Beach Unified school board trustee Michael Shane Ellis, Gordon wasted no time doing just that. He called Ellis–again–the worst school board member in district history and praised his own organization for riding to our rescue.

“Because it’s the right thing to do and no one else would do it,” Gordon said of why the Chamber continues working to gather enough signatures in Ellis’s school board region to recall the trustee, who pled guilty in August to a DUI charge.

What we have here, Gordon said, is failure–by Ellis–to communicate.

“Do you know that he does not communicate with his other board members?” Gordon asked the group, which included about 20 business owners plus speakers from the police department and the city, and Fourth District Councilman Patrick O’Donnell and his field deputy. “He refuses to give his mailing address.”

The response to the Chamber’s anti-Ellis stance has been nothing short of heartwarming, Gordon said.

“We’ve gotten a lot more ‘Atta-boys’ from a lot of people,” Gordon said. “It’s brought together people who might not normally work together.”

One of those people is Sachi nightclub owner Josh Lowenthal–whom the Chamber approached in January about running for school board.

And yes, for the record, Gordon said he still thinks Lowenthal would make a fine school board member–if Ellis were eventually removed and if Lowenthal moved into the district, ran for the vacant seat and were elected.

But how’s the recall going?

“We’re about a third of the way there,” Gordon told the crowd. “It’s a tough district because a lot of the people in that district live in gated communities.” Really? In Long Beach?

Gordon said afterwards that the Chamber has gathered about 2,500 signatures on a petition to recall Ellis–approximately one-third of the names it needs.

Tags: California, Long Beach, Long Beach Chamber of Commerce, Long Beach Unified School District, Michael Ellis, Michael Shane Ellis, randy gordon, recall petition, school board recall, Southern California, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas