Wife Sold Victor’s Name to Voters : Henry Tops Balloting in Conejo Valley School Race

William H. Henry Jr. had a problem.

Henry was running for a seat on the board of the Conejo Valley Unified School District. But he and his wife, Fran, had moved to Thousand Oaks just two years ago, and they knew only a few people. He didn’t have many volunteers for campaign work, and he worked long hours in Burbank.

So Fran Henry built, painted and implanted more than a dozen signs, and, with the help of her motor scooter, crisscrossed Thousand Oaks, distributing hundreds of campaign flyers to homes.

On Tuesday, William Henry was the top vote-getter among 12 candidates running for three seats on the school board, with 20% of the vote. Other winners in the Ventura County race were Kate Cox with 18% and Mildred C. Lynch with 11%.

The three, all newcomers to elected office, will join Ellyn Wilkins and Dolores Didio on the board at an installation meeting Dec. 4, and begin wrestling with such issues as finding more stable sources of revenue for the district.

In the meantime, the three winners are savoring their victories.

“I’m feeling great,” said Henry, 58, assistant director for human resources development at Lockheed Corp. The first-place finish “came as a bit of a surprise to me. . . . I was thoroughly convinced that I was not going to come in first.”

Tuesday’s election marked the end of a campaign that saw little controversy and few emotional issues, and voter interest appeared low. Of the Conejo Valley’s 57,407 registered voters, only 10.3% cast ballots.

With no stirring issues, voters were left to judge which candidate wrote the best statement for the voter-information pamphlets and which was more impressive at a handful of candidate forums.

In both categories, Henry came off well, observers said. Lynch’s and Cox’s statements and forum performances were also impressive, they said.

“Lacking much more to go on, other than what you read in the newspaper and at the one or two forums they had, the most you could go on were the ballot statements and the endorsements,” said Thousand Oaks City Councilman Alex T. Fiore.

The results are “like a Chinese menu, one from Column A, one from Column B, one from Column C,” said Steve Rubinstein, president and chief executive officer of the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce. He noted that, whereas Cox and Henry had been endorsed by the local teachers’ union, Lynch had no apparent ties to “special interests.”

Henry said he also came out on top because of his experience as an appointed school board member in New Jersey, because his name was listed first on the ballot and because some voters wanted at least one man on the board and found him acceptable.

“I think Henry had an advantage by being a man,” said incumbent Wilkins.

Henry, whose office is at least 30 miles away, in Burbank, left much of his campaign work to his wife.

“My wife did an awful lot of things,” he said. “The signs were made 100% by her. She personally made them, waterproofed them and placed them, and this morning she is out pulling them out of the ground.”

Although distributing 500 flyers around town was a lot of work, the fire-red motor scooter she used made the job more enjoyable, said Fran Henry, 51. “I usually use it to go shopping,” she said.

While the Henrys were running their signs-and-flyers campaign, Cox was thinking in larger terms.

With the aid of 15 ardent supporters, Cox’s campaign erected more than 380 campaign signs and distributed about 10,000 flyers, she said. She also raised and spent at least $1,400 on the effort.

Henry’s and Lynch’s victories “kind of surprised me,” Cox, 42, said Wednesday, realizing that their effort was only a fraction of hers.

Lynch, 68, on Wednesday refused to discuss her winning campaign or her plans on the board.

Henry and Cox said they aren’t planning to push for big changes in district policies. Cox said she wants to immediately work toward implementing a seventh period for high school students, something student representatives recently requested. “I think we should respond to that,” she said.

Henry said he will spend the next few weeks learning more about the district and its operations.