Orange County Elections : Reid-Benham Loses Santa Ana School Seat

Sadie Reid-Benham, the only black elected official in Orange County, lost her bid for reelection Tuesday to the Santa Ana Unified School District Board of Education. She and another Santa Ana Unified incumbent, James Ward, went down to defeat amid a teachers union effort to oust them.

In Saddleback Valley Unified School District, incumbents Louise Adler and Raghu Mathur were in a close race for reelection. Another incumbent, R. Kent Hann, appeared to have been reelected.

Most other incumbents in the 13 school board elections Tuesday in Orange County survived reelection bids.

In Laguna Beach Unified School District, new incumbent Kathleen Jones, who was elected Sept. 22 in a special recall election, easily won a full four-year term. James Kreder, a leader in the recall effort that ousted three board members, won the other seat up for election in the district.

In Orange Unified, two incumbents, William G. Steiner and Russell Barrios, were reelected, but the race was close for Barrios. Both had feared possible voter backlash because of allegations of bid-rigging in the district that occurred before they took office.

Barrios, however, appeared to have had a rough time in the election, mainly because he was not supported by the teachers’ union. Steiner, a runaway winner, had the union’s endorsement. A third seat in the district was won by Jeff Holstien, a former district administrator.

The main election shock came in Santa Ana Unified, where both incumbents, Reid-Benham and Ward, were defeated. Ward is a former city councilman, and Reid-Benham is a Democrat Party activist with broad community support.

The three winners in Santa Ana Unified were endorsed by the Santa Ana Educators Assn., the union that represents the teachers. Those endorsed candidates, who won by topping the vote in the 10-person field, were Robert L. Richardson, a business-retention specialist with the city; Audrey Yamagata Noji, a teacher at Saddleback College, and Sal Mendoza, an insurance businessman.

Mendoza’s election makes him the first Latino to be elected to the Santa Ana school board since 1979. Although more than 70% of Santa Ana Unified’s enrollment is Latino, all Latino candidates have lost election bids in recent years.

Reid-Benham was stoical Tuesday night about her defeat. In an interview, she said: “I’m disappointed, but I will certainly continue my community involvement. I think I lost because the teachers opposed me. And I think they mainly opposed me because I won’t support agency shop. I don’t think union membership should be mandatory.”

Adler, a prominent education activist in state, as well as local activities, said that a late-in-the-campaign political mailer had targeted her for defeat. The election returns showed her in a close race Tuesday with Marcia Birch, who identified herself on the ballot as “parent/education volunteer.”

Jones, an assistant vice chancellor at UC Irvine, replaced Charlene Ragatz, one of three incumbents, after the September recall. Ragatz was also on Tuesday’s ballot as a candidate, but she lost.

In Orange Unified School Disrict, incumbent trustee Steiner trounced his little-known oppoent, Frank Safarik, a painter. But Barrios wound up in a close race with Robert Viviano, a director of Brunswick Corp. in Costa Mesa. A third candidate in that race, Robert Muffoletto, an education professor at Cal Poly Pomona, was trailing.

The Orange Unified and Laguna Beach Unified elections stood out Tuesday because of controversies that have racked the two districts.

In Orange Unified, a continuing investigation by police and the district attorney’s office has led to indictments and accusations of “willful misconduct” growing out of an alleged bid-rigging scheme in the early 1980s that involved a district employee and more than $3 million in school repair contracts.

Last June, the Orange County Grand Jury accused four incumbent Orange Unified school board members of willful misconduct for not adequately supervising the letting of contracts. The four were Eleanore Pleines, Robert Elliott, Joe Cherry and Ruth Evans.

The grand jury did not allege that the four had any personal role in the bid-rigging scheme, and the allegation of willful misconduct against the board members is not a criminal charge. But it does call for a jury trial and loss of office if the allegation is found to be true.

Charge Was Dropped

Pleines resigned shortly after the grand jury action, and the charge against her was dropped. Elliott, Cherry and Evans face a trial Dec. 2.

The district attorney’s office said three incumbent Orange Unified board members--Steiner, Barrios and Sandy Englander--were blameless in the scandal because they were first elected after the incidents took place.

Nonetheless, Steiner and Barrios said during their campaigns that they were afraid they would be tainted by the grand jury allegations against the other board members.