Grabinski Dumps Sato, Braude Defeats Batson, Hall Reelected in L.B.

Community activist Ray Grabinski routed three-term Councilwoman Eunice Sato on Tuesday to demonstrate that a candidate short of funds but backed by dozens of precinct-walking volunteers can defeat an odds-on favorite.

Grabinski won by a 3-to-2 margin, but voters made it close in the other two races--returning Jan Hall to the council for a third term and electing Evan Anderson Braude, a Long Beach congressman’s stepson, to his first term. It was the second time Hall had defeated challenger Jim Serles.

Indirectly, the election also seemed to guarantee Ernie Kell another term as the city’s mayor since Grabinski appears to be Kell’s fifth vote on the nine-member council. Kell attended Grabinski’s victory celebration.

“I like Ernie, he’s really been a supporter of mine over the years,” Grabinski said.

Nearly 51% of registered voters turned out for the citywide election, which was also a state and federal primary. Of the three districts with contested council races, turnout was strongest in District 3 in the city’s affluent southeast, where 53.8% voted and a slender majority, 51.7%, handed Hall another four-year term.

In District 7 on the westside, where only a third of registered voters cast ballots in the April primary, 48.9% voted in the Grabinski landslide. About 40% of District 1 voters turned out to decide that Braude would replace retiring downtown-area Councilman Marc A. Wilder.

New Terms for Harwood, Kell

In the April primary, District 9 Councilman Warren Harwood won reelection. Kell, the District 5 councilman, was unopposed in the primary and reappointed to a fourth council term. Members from even-numbered districts will be chosen in 1988.

Grabinski, a 42-year-old delicatessen owner who had campaigned nonstop for 14 months, walking his district four times, said extraordinary grass-roots support from 20 community and special-interest groups gave him the win.

He said that the contest with Sato--who had sailed through three previous races--was a clear test of whether such groups can influence a Long Beach election.

Grabinski supporters included the liberal 580-member Long Beach Area Citizens Involved, which staked its reputation as the city’s most politically active community group on defeating Sato. Other supporters were two city labor unions, the local teachers’ union, a labor coalition, a gay political group, the local chapter of the National Organization for Women, a Latino political group and the Gray Panthers.

At the core of Grabinski’s campaign were about 35 workers from a California Heights group he helped found six years ago when fighting construction of an oil refinery in that neighborhood. Over the years, he has been spokesman for that group on several issues at City Hall.

Grabinski, who had challenged Sato as a reluctant leader who had sidestepped her district’s most pressing problems, said, “I have nothing bad to say about Eunice.”

He spent only about $25,000, compared to more than $40,000 for Sato, but “we had more dedicated, busy volunteers than any other campaign,” he said.

“That litmus test (of community-group influence) certainly must have been passed tonight,” Grabinski said. “There had been this perception that Eunice couldn’t be beat.”

Bitter in Defeat

Sato, 64, a former schoolteacher and missionary, who had worked virtually full time at the $12,600-a-year, part-time council post since 1975, was bitter in defeat.

“There was a lot of misinformation, distortion and innuendo. I just came out with the truth and hoped that people would see through the muck,” she said.

Then, gathered with a handful of supporters at her Easy Avenue home, an emotional but low-key Sato pointed to them and said: “These people know what I stand for. They know the good Christian ethics . . . honesty and integrity.”

Sato, who’d said she expected to win the primary 2-to-1 and expressed shock when she didn’t, said she would run her campaign the same way if she had it to do again. “I’m me and the other guy is the other guy, and there’s a difference.”

After 11 years of public service and a tough campaign, Sato said she now plans a rest.

While the Grabinski-Sato race was decided early Tuesday evening, the other two hinged upon a final vote count that was not announced until 12:54 a.m., after an agonizing 1-hour, 38-minute delay.

Lynda Burgess, city election coordinator, said the final tally was held up because four large boxes of ballots had been dropped off at a county registrar of voters check-in point at Wilson High School and held there until nearly 12:30. “They were waiting to get everything in so they’d only have to make one delivery,” said Burgess.

Hall, 43, waited for the vote to come in with about 100 supporters at the packed Captain’s Quarters Restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway. “It’s doing exactly what it always does,” said Hall before the final returns. “We start slow and end up speedy.”

A late-closing Hall edged Serles, a former Chamber of Commerce president, by 386 votes in 1982 and had won her first term against a strong incumbent the same way in 1978.

Mandate ‘for Honesty’

When the long wait was finally over, Hall, a homemaker and community activist since the early 1970s, was surrounded by her husband and four children. Hall said her victory is a mandate “for honesty and integrity and (shows) the ability of voters to tell the difference between that and lies.”

Serles had challenged Hall on her record, saying she had left crime, traffic and other problems unresolved for eight years, and insisting that she was an ineffective legislator because she could not get along with her council colleagues. Hall had said that Serles had no real issues and chose to misrepresent her record and attack her personally.

Hall said the win shows that voters do not like “outside influences” such as Kell and Councilman Wallace Edgerton, who supported Serles, meddling in 3rd District elections.

Her victory, Hall said, reinforces her belief that the majority of residents of Belmont Shore and Naples want a two-story height limit on dwellings, rather than the three-story limit favored by Serles. Several voters from those two communities told The Times in random exit interviews at the polls Tuesday that Hall’s stand on that issue determined their vote.

Serles, who had been running against Hall virtually since he lost in 1982 and who had been walking districts since last summer, declined an interview early Wednesday morning.

Both Hall and Serles have said they each had expected to spend about $80,000, easily making theirs the most expensive race in city history.

Braude, meanwhile, did not even arrive at his election-night party until after 10 p.m. because he and his stepfather, Rep. Glenn Anderson (D-Harbor City) had been chauffeuring disabled voters to the polls until they closed at 8 p.m.

‘We Really Worked’

“We really worked to get out the vote,” said Braude, 39.

Batson had called Braude a political opportunist who had moved into the city last summer only to seek office and then ran on his stepfather’s coattails.

“We ran a clean campaign and an honest campaign, and we can sleep at night,” Braude said, as his mother and wife stood nearby. Anderson, who had cruised through his own primary election, had caught a plane to Washington.

Partisan politics had entered the campaign for the nonpartisan seat. Batson, 46, a conservative Republican, had repeatedly noted his support from Gov. George Deukmejian and other Republican officeholders. Braude, a member of the Democratic Party committee in the 57th Assembly District, touted his bipartisan support.

In exit interviews at the polls, several voters told the Times that Braude’s relationship to Anderson was a chief reason they voted for him. Others said Batson had run a dirty campaign.

Batson said later that a mailer in the final days of the campaign that attempted to tie Braude with liberal Democrats, including actress Jane Fonda and her husband, Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) might have backfired.

‘My Hat’s Off to Him’

Batson, though, said that there probably was no way he could have beaten Braude. “The numbers were all on his side,” Batson said. “He began with at least a 2-to-1 Democratic registration. And he did an effective job of indicating I was trying to make it a partisan race, which was ridiculous. He had the endorsements of (Joy) Melton and (Jenny) Oropeza, the third and fourth vote-getters in the primary. And add . . . Glenn Anderson, who is respected in the district and has been a good representative, and you’ve got a formidable array of numbers. But my hat’s off to him. He worked hard.”

Braude said he spent about $70,000 in his campaign. Batson, who loaned himself about $25,000, said he will have spent more than $50,000.

Tuesday’s results capped campaigns that have been the most costly in city history. The six runoff candidates spent at least $350,000 among them. And it ends a political season of municipal elections notable for their intensity.

Times staff writers David Haldane and Julie Suhr contributed to this story.