Ballpark Plan, Live-In Partner Law Trail in S.F. : Elections: Political aftershocks put both ballot proposals in doubt. Owner has threatened to move the baseball Giants.

More aftershocks--this time the political kind--rumbled through San Francisco on Tuesday, but incomplete election returns made it unclear whether earthquake-weary residents were in a mood to authorize construction of a new baseball park or grant live-in lovers some rights enjoyed by married couples.

With many precincts still to report--and thousands of absentee ballots yet to be counted--both measures were losing but only slightly late Tuesday.

“We want to stay in San Francisco,” Bob Lurie, owner of the National League Champion San Francisco Giants said Tuesday night as the nerve-wracking vote count continued. But “if this measure goes down, there is really no place to play” in San Francisco, he said.

San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos--a leading stadium backer--refused to concede defeat but acknowledged that “there’s no question that the earthquake affected the emotions of the community.”

Also too close to call was a controversial proposal in San Francisco to approve a so-called domestic partners ordinance, which sought to grant official recognition to relationships among gays and unmarried heterosexuals but was fought doggedly by religious leaders.

Elsewhere in California, a proposal to raise the sales tax by a half-cent to pay for transportation improvements was leading in San Bernardino County with about one-fifth of the vote counted. But a similar measure was trailing in traffic-clogged Orange County, incomplete returns showed.

Two measures fought bitterly by homosexuals--a proposal to deny gays protections under a civil rights law in Irvine and an effort to repeal an ordinance banning discrimination against AIDS victims in Contra Costa County--were winning by narrow margins, early returns indicated.

In the days after the Oct. 17 quake, Northern California campaign workers focused their efforts on relief. But no 7.1 temblor could put politics on hold for long. Although voter interest and fund-raising lagged, campaigns were kick-started back to life within a week.

Giants owner Lurie, advocating the new $115-million baseball stadium, renewed his statement that he would sell or move the franchise rather than continue to field the team at Candlestick.

A day before the election, Mayor Agnos angrily attacked a last-minute mailer critical of the stadium, charging that the financing came from Sacramento Kings owner Gregg Luckenbill and represented an attempt to lure the Giants away. San Francisco Dist. Atty. Arlo Smith vowed to investigate.

Maurice Read, Luckenbill’s spokesman, insisted that no money came from Luckenbill “directly or indirectly,” and said Agnos’ claim was part of a ploy to increase voter interest.

Backers said a vote for a new stadium would prove to outsiders that San Franciscans remain committed to the city. For a small investment, they argued, the public could reap several million dollars a year from the stadium’s operation.

Opponents claimed the city could not afford a new ballpark in the light of quake-related damage and more pressing needs, such as caring for AIDS victims and homeless people. Foes also emphasized that the stadium would be built in China Basin, an area of landfill near downtown, and thus might be damaged in an earthquake.

Political consultants said the earthquake also shifted attention away from San Francisco’s other pressing issue this fall--whether live-in lovers should have some of the rights afforded to married couples.

In May, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors adopted a so-called domestic partners ordinance, making the city one of only a handful to recognize relationships among gays and unmarried heterosexuals.

But religious fundamentalists gathered 27,000 signatures, thereby forcing a vote on the ordinance before couples could pay $35 and register themselves as being part of an “intimate and committed” relationship.

Telephone Appeals

Louis Sheldon, director of the Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition, revealed Tuesday that he took a role in challenging the ordinance, “doing a lot by telephone” to direct strategy for the San Francisco pastor and rabbi who spearheaded the petition drive.

Echoing arguments put forth by the Anaheim group, San Francisco Catholic Archbishop John R. Quinn said the domestic partners measure would undermine family and marriage and give live-in lovers rights associated with marriage without the obligations.

The ordinance sought to allow unmarried couples to register with the County Clerk as domestic partners and obtain certificates similar to marriage certificates. City employees could get bereavement leaves upon the deaths of their lovers, and would be assured the same visitation rights in hospitals as married couples when their lovers were near death.

“It simply allows us to identify who we are. That seems very modest to me,” said San Francisco Supervisor Harry Britt, who is gay and sponsored the ordinance.

The measure at issue Tuesday did not address a separate action taken by the San Francisco supervisors that directs the mayor to study the possibility of giving domestic partners the same health benefits as married couples. A task force is studying that idea.

In the waning days of the campaign, supporters of the handful of money measures around California feared a statewide quarter-cent sales tax increase for earthquake victims--signed by Gov. George Deukmejian Saturday--could doom their chances at the polls. A statewide gasoline tax scheduled for the June, 1990, ballot was also viewed as a threat to the local measures.

San Bernardino and Orange counties were among six counties where voters were asked to open their wallets to pay for highway improvements and transit projects.

Supporters hoped promises of congestion relief would entice disgruntled commuters into agreeing to raise the sales tax one-half cent on the dollar. Opponents, meanwhile, argued that highway improvements are the state’s responsibility, and they predicted the statewide sales tax increase would spark an anti-spending mood among voters.

In Orange County, much of the $3.1 billion to be generated by the tax over its 20-year life was earmarked for the widening of a section of the congested Santa Ana Freeway from six to 12 lanes. The expansion of commuter rail service between Los Angeles and San Diego was among $775 million worth of transit projects planned.

The transportation wish list drawn up in San Bernardino County--where a similar measure was defeated in 1987--included freeway widening and extension projects and the development of rail service to Los Angeles and Orange counties.

In addition to the live-in lover issue in San Francisco, two other local measures pitted California’s gays against religious fundamentalists, and both were backed by Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition.

One--a proposal in Irvine to exclude homosexuals from protection under a municipal civil rights law--was being monitored nationwide as a test of gay political influence. When the ordinance was passed about a year ago, Irvine became one of about 60 cities and towns in the country to forbid discrimination against gays and lesbians in jobs, housing and public services.

But Sheldon and other religious leaders charged the law legitimized an immoral life style and warned it would force schools to recruit gay teachers and make Irvine “another San Francisco.”

Voters in the Contra Costa County city of Concord approved a measure to repeal a local ordinance banning discrimination against people with AIDS.

And at least two communities--Laguna Niguel in Orange County and Temecula in southwestern Riverside County--became cities as voters overwhelmingly approved incorporation proposals.

For leaders of two existing but financially strapped Southern California cities, Tuesday’s results were less encouraging. Imperial Beach, one of San Diego County’s poorest cities, and La Palma in Orange County, had asked voters to approve a utility user tax to help rescue the municipal governments from near bankruptcy. Both measures were defeated.

In Imperial Beach, located near the U.S.-Mexican border, the financial picture is so bleak that Mayor Henry Smith has suggested that his city be adopted by its affluent neighbor, Coronado.