Anaheim’s New Mayor Faces a Big Task: Council Unity

More than $600,000 flooded the campaign coffers of Anaheim city candidates--one of the largest tabs in the history of Orange County city elections.

But it was the campaign foot soldiers--city unionists and homeowner activists--rather than money that apparently put first-term Councilman Fred Hunter into the mayor’s office by a narrow margin of 1,392 votes.

Hunter’s volunteers tramped through all but 17 of the city’s 228 precincts by Election Day, helping to defeat Mayor Pro Tem Irv Pickler’s second bid in as many years for the top job.

Pickler, the leading fund-raiser in the fall campaign, collected more than $170,000; Hunter collected just over $100,000.

In the race for two City Council seats, incumbent William D. Ehrle, a Hunter ally, led the field of 11 candidates with 29.1% of the vote. Tom Daly, an Orange County supervisor’s aide and board president of the Anaheim Union High School District, gained the second seat with 26.7% of the vote.

But after all the dollars had been spent and the dust settled, Anaheim was left with a City Council not markedly different from the body often torn bitterly in the past 2 years by personality conflicts.

Hunter has no apparent working majority. His challenge will be the same faced by outgoing Mayor Ben Bay when he was elected 2 years ago, one that he failed to resolve: how to pull the council together.

“I’m a much more personable person than Bay,” Hunter said Wednesday, buoyant despite almost no sleep the night before. “What we need to do is prioritize. Now that the mayor’s race is over, there’s going to be a much more unified council.”

Pickler, who also lost the mayor’s race to Bay in 1986 by fewer than 1,500 votes, sounded a conciliatory and optimistic note Wednesday.

“I called Fred this morning and congratulated him,” Pickler said. “I said let’s pull together instead of against each other. We’ve been the laughingstock of cities around us, and I don’t want that to happen again.”

But Pickler added: “He didn’t get a mandate, that’s for sure. Fred somehow has to pull a coalition together. If he does for what is best for Anaheim, no problem.