Orange County Teachers Score Big at Polls

Teacher unions scored smashing victories Tuesday in four focal Orange County races.

The surprisingly strong union wins came in elections marked by a sparse voter turnout and scattered problems with a new balloting system.

In the most heated campaign, the faculty union in south Orange County’s Saddleback Community College District ousted two incumbents and elected two union-endorsed candidates. The union candidate also was leading in a third race in that district in which no incumbent was running.

In the Tustin Unified School District, where teachers in October staged a six-day strike, union-backed candidates defeated two incumbent board members.

In Coast Community College District, in the Costa Mesa-Huntington Beach area, two union-backed candidates swept to easy victories.

Voting Majority

And in Huntington Beach Union High School District, three candidates endorsed by the teacher unions also won overwhelmingly, and thus gained a voting majority on the five-member school board.

The union’s triumph in the Coast Community College District completed a dumping of the old board. The union in 1983 was successful in electing three candidates to the five-member board.

According to the registrar’s office, only about 11% of the county’s registered voters went to the polls. And some of those who did vote faced problems in some precincts. About 150 of the county’s new devices for marking election choices failed to operate correctly in various precincts.

“Probably a few number of people didn’t get to vote that wanted to,” said county Registrar of Voters Al Olson.

In other election results Tuesday:

Mission Viejo voters approved their own community services district, the first move toward possible cityhood.

Santa Ana voters reelected two school board incumbents, Mary J. Pryer and James A. Richards. Latino groups’ hopes of electing the school board’s first Latino member since 1978 were crushed as their candidates fared poorly at the polls.

Fundamentalist-endorsed school board candidates in Capistrano Unified and Saddleback Valley Unified failed to oust incumbent board members.

Placentia voters approved a charter amendment to make city elections coincide with state and federal elections.

In Brea, voters informed the City Council, by an advisory vote, that they want fireworks to be banned in the city.

Husband-wife teams of candidates failed to win election in four Orange County school board races.

Incumbents Shirley A. Ralston and Carol Enos won reelection in Rancho Santiago Community College District.

North Orange County Community College District voters elected veteran Cypress Councilman Otto J. Lacayo and Barry J. Wishart, an attorney, as new trustees. Incumbents weren’t seeking reelection in those races.

The union-versus-incumbents battles had sparked the most political interest in the off-year election. In most elections in conservative Orange County, union strength is not formidable. But in recent school board elections, teacher unions have been showing increasing power to get rid of board members they don’t like and replace them with their own candidates.

This trend took giant steps forward in Tuesday’s races. The teacher unions’ showing in south Orange County, which surveys have shown to be the county’s most wealthy and politically conservative area, was particularly surprising.

Saddleback Community College District, which governs Saddleback College in Mission Viejo and Irvine Valley College in Irvine, has been torn apart for more than two years by a faculty union dispute with the incumbent seven-member board of trustees. A key issue has been the district’s chief executive, Chancellor Larry Stevens. The union has accused Stevens of wasting money on “administrative frills” and of being dictatorial. The union sought his firing, but the incumbent board stoutly defended Stevens.

Union Endorsement

After unsuccessfully seeking to recall three of the incumbent trustees earlier this year, the union this fall endorsed Joan J. Hueter against incumbent William Watts and Marcia Milchiker against incumbent Robert L. Price. In a third race, incumbent Eugene McKnight didn’t run for reelection. The union backed Iris Swanson for McKnight’s seat; Mike Eggers, an aide to U. S. Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad) criticized the union’s tactics and ran as a pro-administration candidate.

Hueter, who is an athletic director in Anaheim’s Katella High, defeated Watts. Milchiker, a research biologist, defeated Price. Swanson held a consistent lead Tuesday night over Eggers. Other candidates in those races trailed the leaders.

In the Coast Community College District race, Walter Howald, an attorney who won the faculty union’s endorsement, easily won election in a race in which the incumbent didn’t seek reelection. In the other trustee race at Coast, incumbent Richard E. Olson was defeated by Sherry L. Baum, who had the union’s backing.

In Tustin, the teachers’ union, during their October strike, said they hoped to elect two sympathetic candidates and to oust appointed incumbent Dorothy T. Ralston and incumbent Dr. Edward H. Boseker. In Tuesday’s election, Jane Bauer, an attorney, and Gloria Tuchman, who teaches in Santa Ana, were backed by the union. Bauer and Tuchman held small but consistent leads throughout the night and apparently defeated Ralston and Boseker.

Incumbent Seeks Election

In Huntington Beach Union High School District, the three candidates backed by the union, the District Educators Assn., won overwhelmingly. Those candidates were Jerry L. Sullivan, a Cal State Long Beach English professor; David K. Warfield, a businessman, and Bonnie P. Castrey, a labor negotiator and businesswoman.

The union was successful in ousting Stephen H. Smith, the only incumbent seeking reelection in the high school district. The district governs Edison High, Huntington Beach High, Marina High, Ocean View High, Fountain Valley High and Westminster High.

A key issue in the race was the teachers’ lack of a contract since last January. The teachers’ union, after failing to negotiate a 5% pay raise for the past school year, staged a sickout and walkout last spring. The union then decided its best course of action was to seek a new board majority.

Two incumbents in the high school district did not seek reelection. Smith took the union issue head-on, saying that he viewed with alarm what he called a “special interest” trying to take control of the school board. Sullivan and the other candidates, however, said that they would be independent of the union.

Union Coup

Unlike the Huntington Beach Union High School District coup, the union in Tustin did not have the opportunity to elect a majority in Tuesday’s election.

Sandy Banis, president of the Tustin Educators Assn., said Tuesday night that the teacher morale in the district will soar because of the victory at the polls. But she noted that three incumbents still will remain on the five-member board. She said it hasn’t been decided yet whether a parents’ group will lead a future effort to recall the three remaining incumbents.

“Although there are two new board members, the problems aren’t just going to go away,” Banis said. She said that the Tustin teachers’ 18-month battle to get a new contract with pay raises they have demanded will not change immediately because of the election.

But the teachers nonetheless were jubilant in Tustin. Tustin schools Supt. Maurice Ross had predicted that voters would strongly support the incumbent board. Ross has been bitterly criticized by the teachers’ union, and during the strike many of the picket signs called for his firing.

System Operated Well

Although Orange County’s new election system had scattered problems, election officials Tuesday night said the system had operated well.

“It’s running real good,” Chief Deputy Registrar Shirley Deaton said of the new, $2-million vote-counting system that was being tested in real election for the first time Tuesday night.

According to Deaton, the new computer equipment was performing flawlessly, without any mid-course fixes caused by even temporary failures.

At least for early returns, this represented a major change compared to the June, 1980, election, when the county’s previous computerized vote-tabulation system rejected key data stored on magnetic tape cassettes and experienced other major problems. The result was a four-day delay in the official tally.

“We’re quite pleased tonight,” Deaton said.

Contributing to the Orange County election coverage were Times staff writers Mark Landsbaun, Sybil Jefferson, Robert Schwartz, Greg Lucas, Jeffrey A. Perlman, Andy Rose, Roxana Kopetman, Amalia Duarte and research assistant Lorelei Ryan.