Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS. : POLITICS : Running Against the Boss Can Be a Difficult Job

To hear David J. Holbert, an Orange County deputy assessor, tell the story, he first thought of running for county assessor when he heard rumors that his boss, Assessor Bradley L. Jacobs, was going to run for the state Board of Equalization.

But when Jacobs filed for reelection, Holbert thought he might like to run anyway.

“I asked (Jacobs) more or less casually if he would take it personally if I ran against him,” Holbert recalled. “I think he said ‘yes’ and walked away.”

Still, Holbert expected Jacobs to approve his application for unpaid leave so that he could campaign. “I thought he would write down at the bottom, ‘Good luck.’ ”

Wrong again. Jacobs denied the application, as did the county director of employee relations.

Last week, Holbert took his request to the county Board of Supervisors, who appointed a committee of aides to consider the matter.

But on Friday, Jacobs relented and granted Holbert a leave.

“I’m high as a kite now,” Holbert said. “I can finally get some work done.”

If things are chilly at the assessor’s office, they’re getting hotter at the Sheriff’s Department. There, Sgt. Linda Lea Calligan also is running against her boss, Sheriff Brad Gates, and their fight went all the way up the judicial ladder.

Calligan wanted to say in literature sent to voters with the sample ballots that Gates has been convicted of a federal crime and acted to cover up a drunk-driving arrest of one of his officers.

Gates got a Superior Court order forbidding publication of the statements under an Election Code provision banning “false” or “misleading” statements accompanying sample ballots.

Calligan appealed and won. Then Gates appealed and won.

In the legal scramble, the 4th District Court of Appeal set a hearing date for June 18--15 days after the election. Nonetheless, such a hearing could subject the Election Code provision to its first constitutional challenge on grounds of illegal prior restraint of free expression.

Registrar Al Olson ordered the presses to begin rolling Friday and expected the sample ballot booklets, minus the offending material, to be completed by Saturday.