10 Jump Into Board Race to Succeed Schabarum : Elections: Candidates include a former congressman and a longtime aide to the supervisor. He is expected to make an endorsement today.

After a last-minute crush of filings on Wednesday, 10 candidates, including a former congressman, a judge and a Latina aide to Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum, are now in the race for the board seat being vacated by Schabarum.

Seven of the candidates filed their declarations of candidacy on Wednesday before the 5 p.m. deadline to qualify for the June 5 election in the 1st District, which encompasses much of the San Gabriel Valley.

Candidates include former U.S. Rep. Jim Lloyd, a Democrat turned Republican; longtime Schabarum aide Sarah Flores; Superior Court Judge Gregory C. O’Brien Jr.; Mayor Robert Bartlett of Monrovia and Gary V. Miller, a former West Covina councilman and 1986 American Independent Party candidate for governor.

Schabarum’s last-minute decision late Friday not to seek reelection--opening up the first seat on the powerful board in 16 years--set off a scramble among possible candidates. They had only until the close of business Wednesday to collect 20 voters’ signatures and pay $898.51 to qualify for the ballot.

Nell Soto, a Pomona City Council member, said friends persuaded her over lunch Wednesday to enter the race. “It’s a surprise for me, too,” Soto said. She picked up her filing forms shortly after 2 p.m., then raced home. “I just called my friends and said I needed them” to sign the nominating petitions, Soto said as she dashed to the county election office in Commerce with the papers just half an hour before the deadline. “It was a chance I just couldn’t pass up,” she said.

All but one of the candidates filed after Schabarum dropped out of the race.

Because of Schabarum’s decision, the candidates enter the race on equal footing, at least from a fund-raising standpoint. As a result, some were courting Schabarum, whose endorsement--and ties to big financial contributors--could be an important factor in the race.

Schabarum scheduled a news conference today to endorse a potential successor.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich, according to a spokesman, will probably back Flores, possibly putting Antonovich at odds with his fellow conservative.

The race could shift the balance of power on the five-member board, now controlled by Republicans. The 656-square-mile 1st District, which encompasses most of the San Gabriel Valley and parts of southeast Los Angeles County, is 41% Republican and 50% Democratic, but “a lot of those folks are conservative Democrats,” said Supervisor Ed Edelman.

Edelman and Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, who form the board’s liberal minority, said they currently have no plans to become involved in the race. Edelman, pointing out that the board is officially nonpartisan, said that the election of the board’s first new supervisor in a decade could lead to changes in county policies.

Lloyd, declaring his candidacy at a press conference outside the County Hall of Administration on Friday, pledged to be “far more compassionate” on social issues than Schabarum.

“I intend to bring a spirit of cooperation, not confrontation, to the board,” he said in an apparent reference to the combative Schabarum. Lloyd has hired Joseph Cerrell, the dean of Democratic political consultants, to run his campaign.

The candidates’ efforts could be for naught, however, because of a redistricting trial in which the plaintiffs are seeking to delay the supervisors’ election until new district boundaries can be drawn. If districts are redrawn, the filing period for candidates is likely to be reopened, the plaintiffs’ attorneys say. The trial is expected to end next week.

The plaintiffs--the U.S. Justice Department, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund--have accused the supervisors of drawing their districts in such a way as to preclude the election of a Latino to the county governing board.

Other candidates for Schabarum’s seat are Jim Mihalka, 31, a Los Angeles paramedic; Joe Chavez, 53, a 16-year county employee in the Department of Internal Services; Louis Chitty, 44, a Los Angeles elementary school teacher, and W. Charles Moore, 40, a business development consultant.

Lloyd, 67, a former mayor of West Covina, was elected to Congress as a Democrat in the Watergate year of 1974. He served in Congress for six years before losing in 1980 to Republican David Dreier when Ronald Reagan was swept into office. Lloyd attempted a political comeback in 1982 in a different congressional district but lost to Rep. Esteban Torres.

Lloyd, who nows works as a government consultant, became a Republican after endorsing George Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign.

O’Brien, 44, is a Republican who was appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian to the Municipal Court in 1984, then to the Superior Court in 1988. Flores, 52, is a 34-year county employee who rose through the bureaucracy from a secretary to become Schabarum’s assistant chief deputy. She is a Republican.

Miller, 47, is a Pasadena schoolteacher and former West Covina city councilman who is president of the Mt. San Antonio Community College governing board.

Bartlett, 50, has been a member of the Monrovia City Council for 16 years.