Race Begins in Earnest to Succeed Nestande

One candidate rented an apartment in the district and half a dozen others continued lining up support Thursday in their quest to succeed Orange County Supervisor Bruce Nestande, who is resigning part way through his second four-year term.

Nestande took notice of the swarm of candidates to fill his 3rd District seat during remarks Wednesday night to nearly 1,000 people at a fund-raising dinner for Supervisor Don R. Roth.

“Maybe I ought to have a final fund-raiser and invite everyone who wants my job,” he told laughing listeners. “I’d fill this room three times over.”

Nestande, 48, is leaving the $55,000-a-year post to seek an unspecified job in the private sector. A former Republican assemblyman, he was badly beaten last November in his bid to oust incumbent Secretary of State March Fong Eu in his first bid for statewide office.

Former Orange Mayor Jim Beam, who lost a bitter, expensive race for the 4th District seat in November to Roth by only 1,000 votes, said Thursday that he “put a check in and rented a place” in the 3rd District.

But Beam said he has not sold his home in the 4th District, only a few blocks away. He said he had not planned to move until he “heard the rumors” that Nestande would step down and “thought about it.”

“The minute I heard” the resignation was announced, “we got in our cars and started driving around” to seek an apartment still in the City of Orange but in Nestande’s district, Beam said.

Supervisor Roger R. Stanton said he had received messages from seven people who wanted to succeed Nestande, but he declined to identify them.

Stanton, who will be the new chairman of the Board of Supervisors when Nestande’s retirement becomes effective Tuesday, said he wants to contact Gov. George Deukmejian to discuss the importance of filling the vacancy as soon as possible.

Stresses County’s Importance

Although there are vacancies on supervisorial boards in three other counties, Stanton said that “others through the state pale in comparison to the importance of Orange County having a full Board of Supervisors.”

He and others said Deukmejian’s appointment of a new supervisor could take from two to four months or more.

County officials and others willing to comment anonymously speculated that Beam’s chances could be hurt by his loss in the November election and the ill feelings that Roth still holds for Beam as a result of their bitter battle.

Candidates high on most early lists included Fullerton Mayor Richard C. Ackerman, former Assemblyman Ron Cordova, state Transportation Department Deputy Director Carolyn E. Ewing, Brea Councilman Ron Isles and one-time Nestande aides Ron Rogers and Gaddi H. Vasquez.

Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder said thatshe had been contacted by candidates even before Nestande resigned and that she ran into several of them at Roth’s fund-raiser Wednesday night at the Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach.

Ray Chandos, an official of a residents’ group in Nestande’s district that has battled against the increased development in the area in recent years, said he believed that Nestande’s resignation would let the governor appoint “a pro-growth type.”

Chandos said that if Nestande had served out his term but not run for reelection, it could have let candidates compete on a more equal basis and perhaps increase the possibility of electing someone favoring slower growth in the district.

Sore Spot With Board

“I’ve always felt the development industry calls the shots on the Board of Supervisors,” Chandos said, reflecting a widely held view that is consistently and angrily denied by the supervisors.

A Deukmejian appointee running for election next year presumably would have the benefits of incumbency, primarily the ability to more easily raise the money needed to run.

However, Nestande in 1980 beat Supervisor Edison W. Miller, who was appointed to the seat the previous year by then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. Miller, a former prisoner of war in North Vietnam, was accused by some U.S. servicemen of collaborating with his Communist captors--an allegation he denied. Miller was a controversial appointee from his first day and lost by a landslide to Nestande.