Ehrle Beats La Claire by 2-1 to Fill Vacancy on Anaheim Council

At the end of a bitter campaign, businessman William D. Ehrle handily defeated Planning Commissioner Charlene La Claire to win Anaheim’s fifth City Council seat in a special election Tuesday night.

“It’s over. We’ve won it. We ran a positive campaign on the issues and the voters have spoken,” Ehrle said in an interview.

According to final, unofficial vote counts, Ehrle claimed nearly 60% of the vote, contrasted with 32.6% for La Claire. Not counting absentee ballots, 12,482 residents--or 12.5% of the registered voters--cast ballots.

In a prepared statement, Ehrle said the issues that should have been prominent in the campaign were lost in the final weeks.

“They are still vital issues, but redevelopment, city spending, and the performance of the city manager have given way to name-calling and character assassination,” he said. “I am happy to see that the voters have indeed turned down this kind of campaign.”

Party to Continue

He told his supporters at a victory celebration: “The party’s not over; it’s going to go on for 10 or 12 more years. . . . All of you who are clapping are clapping for yourselves. We the people have come back to City Hall.”

The returns were greeted with cheers, and even firefighters driving past the Ehrle party, on their way to a call, honked to show support.

At La Claire’s gathering, the defeated candidate told supporters she was planning to run again for the council in 18 months.

“I think we have to start the campaign right now,” she said. “We’ll meet next week. We’ll be meeting and planning a little better and organizing.”

Although there were 12 candidates on Tuesday’s ballot for the special election, the hard-fought race had narrowed to Ehrle, who was the top runner-up in last November’s council election, garnering 21,662 votes, and La Claire, who had finished sixth (behind ousted Councilman E. Llewelyn Overholt Jr.) in that election with 10,228 votes.

Before the vote tally began Tuesday night, both Ehrle and La Claire were saying that their own polls showed them winning. Ehrle’s campaign, managed by Lois Lundberg, had conducted a telephone survey of 300 “high propensity” voters on Election Day and predicted a 2-1 victory margin over La Claire.

La Claire said her people polled the central city area Monday and found residents favoring her 7 to 5. In another recent poll--in the Anaheim Hills area, which La Claire considered her stronghold--only one person was opposed to her, she said.

The council seat was left vacant by last November’s election of Mayor Don R. Roth to the Orange County Board of Supervisors. The remaining four council members voted more than 20 times on proposed appointees to fill the position but deadlocked 2 to 2 each time, with Mayor Ben Bay and Councilman Fred Hunter on one side and Mayor Pro Tem Miriam Kaywood and Councilman Irv Pickler on the other.

The campaign preceding Tuesday’s special election was no less divisive. Kaywood and Pickler teamed up behind La Claire; Bay and Hunter backed Ehrle.

Ehrle supporters gathered for election night festivities at Hunter’s law offices, which served as Ehrle’s campaign headquarters. Many of the campaign workers wore labels that proclaimed them to be “city workers for Ehrle” as they milled about the restored California bungalow, bordered by a virtual fence of blue, orange and white Ehrle campaign signs.

Bob Balgenorth of Irvine, glaziers union local executive secretary, said many union members live in Anaheim and were concerned about the election. Balgenorth said he walked precincts Tuesday to help get out the vote.

“Voters in the precincts seemed to know there was an election today . . . but many resented it,” he said. “They felt they should not have had to pay for one.”

According to city officials, the special election cost $75,000.

Ehrle, dressed in a blue Oxford work shirt, said he had heard similar reactions from voters and believed that would be a factor in the outcome of the election.

“People were incensed that I was not just appointed to fill Don Roth’s vacancy after finishing 12,000 votes ahead (of La Claire) in the last election,” he said.

La Claire’s supporters gathered in a ballroom at the Grand Hotel that was filled with red, white and blue balloons and, as they waited for election returns, predicted a close victory.

Earlier, La Claire, dressed in a blue and white pinstriped suit, had said she was troubled by the city’s decision to combine precincts for the election, saying it created confusion among the voters.

“It’s important to get those votes,” she said of her workers’ efforts to direct residents to their polling places. “People are too tired to drive around looking for it (the polling place) after work.”

She was also upset by the disappearance of campaign signs and by a spurt of “harassing” phone calls to her home. Two Ehrle supporters were arrested for removing a couple of La Claire’s signs last week.

La Claire spent Tuesday thanking her campaign volunteers and reflecting on her candidacy.

“We all want the same thing--a forward-looking city with a good cooperative feeling, a united one. That’s really why I ran in the first place,” she said. “I think it would be sweet to win tonight for a lot of reasons. It’s going to be terribly devastating to the city if there are the three of them (Ehrle, Bay and Hunter) because they truly want to take over the city, and I truly am independent.”

Some observers called the campaign between La Claire and Ehrle the dirtiest politicking in Anaheim’s history; at the same time, the election was seen as one of the most important in the city’s recent past, with the future direction of the City Council at stake. Each candidate called the other a “puppet” of a City Council faction.

The city manager’s job became a major issue during the campaign, with Ehrle calling for the firing of William O. Talley. Hunter supported that position, and Bay has criticized Talley but would not say whether he would vote to oust him.

Talley said Tuesday that he had researched the matter and learned that he could not be fired immediately, regardless of the election results. The council must wait 90 days after an election before taking action on the city’s top managerial post, he said.

La Claire, backed by many in the business community, charged during the campaign that Ehrle was a candidate of “special interests,” specifically organized bingo. She cited Ehrle’s longtime friendship with former Anaheim Mayor Bill Thom, who is associated with the Cooper Fellowship, an alcohol recovery program supported by one of the biggest bingo operations in the state. The group is under investigation by the Orange County Grand Jury.

Labor’s Support

She also charged that Ehrle had the support of organized labor--especially the unionized City Hall workers--because he had made them promises, and she contended he would be unduly obligated to the employees if elected.

She also questioned Ehrle’s ability to handle the stress of the council post, citing a 1984 workers’ compensation claim for a “permanent psychiatric disability.” La Claire sent out 15,000 mailers last week that quoted a psychiatric report Ehrle had submitted in connection with his claim. That report said Ehrle “. . . has difficulty in decision-making and withdrawal from administrative type of functions.”

People deserve to know the truth, La Claire said in defense of her pamphlet. People should know what is in the public record “before they put someone in office who is easily manipulated,” she said.

But Ehrle denied the charges. Although he conceded that he ran Thom’s mayoral campaign in the early 1970s and has remained a friend of the former mayor, Ehrle said he has no affiliation with the Cooper Fellowship.

Position Explained

Ehrle once was quoted as saying he would endorse changing the law that limits bingo games by charitable organizations to once a week and would favor increasing that number to twice a week. But last week he said he supports no change in the city’s bingo ordinance.

He labeled La Claire’s mailer regarding his psychiatric disability a smear tactic. He did resign from a high-pressure job with the Santa Ana Unified School District in 1982, on his cardiologist’s advice, and later submitted a workers’ compensation claim, he said. But he added that in 1984, when he was seen by a psychiatrist in connection with his claim, his 7-year-old son had just died as a result of a freak swing-set accident and he was especially distraught.

Ehrle’s main campaign issue was the city manager. He charged that Talley had taken over policy-making from a split City Council and had mishandled several costly lawsuits for the city.

“This man has led the city into multimillion-dollar lawsuits,” Ehrle said. “He is the city’s designated negotiator, and he has failed to resolve these lawsuits (involving the Angels, municipal employees and the Hilton Towers) . . . which are all directly related to Bill Talley.”

To Delay Verdict

La Claire said she believes that Talley has been responsible for many of the city’s major accomplishments but added that she also believes that he has caused problems. She said that, if elected, she would wait to work with the city manager before deciding whether he should be fired.

Ehrle was endorsed by 17 organizations, among them the city employees’ union, which has been battling Talley. Charging that Talley’s management style has contributed to record low morale at City Hall, the president of the employees’ group, Sharon Ericson, said the group poured “our heart and soul into this campaign.” The employees also put some $6,000 into Ehrle’s effort.

Even the city manager--who usually stays out of City Council elections--got into the campaign fracas.

Referring to the involvement of the city employees’ union in the campaign, Talley charged that it was “dangerous” for municipal employees to take such an active role in an attempt to control the City Council.

Times staff writers Jeffrey Perlman, La Mont Jones Jr. and Mary Gilstrap contributed to this story.

Unofficial Results 73 of 73 precincts reporting

Anaheim City Council, Short Term (1 to be elected)

Votes % William D. Ehrle 7272 58.8 Charlene La Claire 4025 32.5 Roger M. Emard 405 3.2 Gustave (Gus) Bode 171 1.3 Manuel R. Hernandez 87 .7 W.R. (Bob) Baker 78 .6 Bill G. Burnett 72 .5 Rosamond C. Fergen 65 .5 Karl Law Waterman 60 .4 Andy Deneau 56 .4 Rick F. Vaught 40 .3 Jim Grover 32 .2