The Election’s Loose Ends

Last Tuesday’s primary election has left behind some loose ends that will linger until November’s general election and some repercussions that will last a lot longer.

Voters were unable to make decisive choices in six local races. Their failure to give any one candidate a majority of the votes has set up November runoff elections for the 4th District post on the county Board of Supervisors, for county recorder and for four judicial seats.

But some significant issues were decided.

In Irvine, voters approved measures that will limit the terms of City Council members and require the direct election of the mayor. Irvine voters also elected by a wide margin Councilman Larry Agran to his third term and put Edward Dornan on the council. The two ran as a slate advocating slower growth and opposing Irvine’s participation in a Joint Powers Authority for three controversial freeways. Their election from a field of 10 candidates creates a slow-growth majority on the five-member Irvine City Council.

It also serves as another strong indication of increasing public support in the county for slowing down development.

Irvine Co. President Thomas H. Nielsen said the company read the Irvine election outcome as “an expression of public support for controlled growth.” It certainly was that. The question now is how much control the council is going to apply. An indication of that will come at Tuesday’s council session when the new majority is seated, and it starts pursuing its goals of slowing down growth and increasing the city’s open space.

There is community unrest in Santa Ana, too, where Measure C, which sought to establish ward elections and the direct election of the mayor and to give the mayor veto power, was defeated by the narrow margin of 282 votes, less than 1%. Unfortunately, all the proposals were lumped into the one ballot measure.

The close vote indicates that Santa Ana residents want changes in the government structure that will give them more responsive representation. Mayor Dan Griset is on the right track in his reaction. Griset says he will urge the City Council to put a proposition on the November ballot calling for a directly elected mayor.

That would be the responsive and responsible thing to do, especially if, at the same time, the council puts a separate measure on the ballot to elect the seven Santa Ana City Council members by ward instead of the present system of requiring them to live in the districts they represent but be elected citywide. That’s important in a community that has more minority residents than Anglos but lacks balanced representation. In some elections, minority candidates have carried their wards but lost citywide.

Considering the closeness of last Tuesday’s balloting, the issues deserve another test, but this time standing on their own as separate ballot measures instead of being lumped together in an all-or-nothing approach.

The two other most spirited election contests in the county last Tuesday were in the 40th Congressional District where Bruce W. Sumner, the county Democratic Party chairman, waged a write-in campaign against Art Hoffmann, a follower of right-wing extremist Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr., for the Democratic nomination, and Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach) fought off the toughest primary challenge of his congressional career to win the GOP nomination for a seventh term.

Sumner appeared to be a winner election night, then a loser on Friday as a hand count checking the names of each write-in vote was being tallied. The outcome is still in doubt until final results are certified by the registrar of voters and any recount is completed.

Members of LaRouche’s National Democratic Policy Committee, which has no connection to the Democratic Party, generally file as Democrats. To the surprise and chagrin of county Democrats, one of LaRouche’s followers became the only Democratic candidate on the 40th District ballot. Sumner, a former state assemblyman and judge, took up the gauntlet to wage the rare and difficult write-in campaign.

Anxious Democrats, who have had few victories to rally around in recent years, would find themselves in the embarrassing position of having a LaRouche follower as their standard-bearer in the 40th District if Sumner’s election night totals don’t prevail. LaRouche followers lost all other county races they were involved in to non-LaRouche Democrats.

Badham’s victory over the unexpected and energetic challenge from Nathan Rosenberg, who resigned as president of the Young Republicans to take on the entrenched incumbent, also could turn out to be a victory of sorts for those who backed Rosenberg’s bid to unseat the veteran congressman.

Badham’s attention to his district has been drawing increasing criticism, a point Rosenberg hammered away at during the heated campaign. After the election, one of Badham’s campaign workers said the congressman would be more visible in his district in the future. That’s the very least his constituents should be able to expect. Badham can rejoice in the votes that gave him the nomination for his seventh term, but he should not ignore the 27,310 Republicans who last Tuesday voiced their dissatisfaction with his representation in the strongest terms possible by voting against him.