LOCAL ELECTIONS / COUNTY SUPERVISORS : Voting Rights Suit Clouds Balloting for 2 Seats

Ten candidates are campaigning hard to win an election that might not count in Los Angeles County’s 1st Supervisorial District.

A federal judge is expected to rule any day on a voting rights lawsuit that could void the June 5 balloting for two supervisors’ seats. But that possibility has not weakened the candidates’ resolve to win the 1st District seat being vacated by Supervisor Pete Schabarum, who is not running for reelection.

“You’re at risk any time you participate in the political process,” said Jim Lloyd, a former San Gabriel Valley congressman who has poured $50,000 of his own money into the campaign.

The 3rd District supervisor, Ed Edelman, is up for reelection, but he has not bothered to hire a campaign manager or open a campaign office. He faces only one little-known, poorly financed challenger, Gonzalo Molina, in the district that includes East Los Angeles, Hollywood, West Los Angeles and part of the San Fernando Valley.

“We probably will put some ads in some local papers just reminding people of the election,” Edelman said.

But the 1st District race has generated an unusual, behind-the-scenes battle between Schabarum and fellow conservative Supervisors Mike Antonovich and Deane Dana over who should be the first new member of the board in a decade.

Schabarum has thrown his political weight behind Superior Court Judge Greg O’Brien, a Republican Party activist who is waging his first campaign for supervisor, while Antonovich and Dana have steered campaign contributors to Sarah Flores, a Schabarum deputy who is seeking to become the first Latino supervisor.

Other candidates are Lloyd, a former mayor of West Covina whose biography includes his service as “Cold War officer” at Guantanamo Bay during the Cuban missile crisis; Monrovia Mayor Bob Bartlett, a one-time heavyweight boxer, and Nell Soto, a Pomona city councilwoman and wife of a former San Gabriel Valley assemblyman.

Also running are Gary V. Miller, president of the Mt. San Antonio Community College board and the 1986 American Independent Party candidate for governor; Joseph Chavez, an employee in the county Department of Internal Services; W. Charles Moore, a business development consultant; Louis Chitty III, a schoolteacher, and Jim Mihalka, a paramedic.

If no candidate receives a majority of the vote in June, the top two vote-getters will face off in November.

Whether the votes are ever counted, however, will depend on U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon, who presided over the three-month redistricting trial that ended April 11.

The U.S. Justice Department, a plaintiff in the case, has asked the judge to void the supervisors’ election results and schedule another election under a new redistricting plan. The plaintiffs contended in the lawsuit that the county’s current district boundaries dilute the voting strength of Latinos in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act.

The Justice Department wants a new plan to unify the heavily Latino neighborhoods in East Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley, which are now split between the 1st and 3rd districts.

There is precedent for a judge to ignore the results of an election, said political consultant Joseph Cerrell, who is handling Lloyd’s campaign.

The results of two Los Angeles County Municipal Court races in the June, 1988, primary were never made public after the state Court of Appeal ruled that the election should have been scheduled for November rather than June, he said.

The Municipal Court candidates never recovered the money they spent campaigning in that June election. Redistricting attorneys said candidates in the supervisor races would be entitled only to a refund of the $898.51 filing fee.

Candidates also run the risk of being declared ineligible to run after a redrawing of district boundaries. If their homes are placed outside the boundaries of a new 1st District, they would not meet residency requirements.

But many of the candidates and their political advisers said they doubt that the judge will throw out the election results.

“I can’t believe a judge would halt a democratic election process where three Hispanics are running,” said Ron Smith, a political consultant to Flores. He pointed out that the lawsuit seeks to help a Latino win a seat on the county board.

Attorneys in the redistricting case said the judge could allow the election winner to serve until a special election is held under a new redistricting plan.

The existing 656-square-mile district, which encompasses most of the San Gabriel Valley and parts of the southeastern county, was 40% Latino in 1985, county figures show. But only 25% of the 662,000 registered voters are Latino, Smith said.

The lawsuit has kept some Latino political leaders from getting involved in the race, Soto complained. One reason, political analysts say, is that some of these Latino leaders are hoping to run for supervisor themselves in a redrawn, predominantly Latino district.

The race also could end a decade of conservative control of the powerful, five-member Board of Supervisors. Of the candidates running for Schabarum’s seat, seven are Republicans and three are Democrats, but they will be on the ballot without party label.

The district is 50% Democratic and 41% Republican. “But a lot of those folks are conservative Democrats,” said Edelman, a member of the board’s liberal minority. Edelman and fellow liberal Supervisor Kenneth Hahn said they have no plans to become involved in the 1st District race.

Even though Schabarum is retiring after 18 years as a supervisor, his presence looms large in the race--the first supervisors’ election in the county without an incumbent in 16 years.

The redistricting lawsuit, plus Schabarum’s last-minute decision not to seek reelection, caused the campaign to get off to a slow start.

By keeping his intentions a secret until after the March 9 filing deadline, Schabarum shut out a number of well-known politicians who might have run for the seat but had already committed to running for other offices.

Schabarum’s late decision caused a scramble among the candidates, who had to rush to set up campaign organizations.

Schabarum endorsed O’Brien over his longtime deputy Flores. “The fact of the matter is that Sarah does not have the educational background, does not have the organizational talents, nor does she have the personal skills that are simply required to fulfill this job,” Schabarum said.

But Flores, a 34-year county employee who worked her way up from secretary to become Schabarum’s $63,500-a-year assistant chief deputy, has fought back. She hired Smith, who helped a politically unknown Dana defeat Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke in 1980. Antonovich and Dana last week held a $350-a-plate dinner for Flores at the Biltmore hotel that raised $150,000 for a last-minute mail blitz. O’Brien and Bartlett have also sent out mailers and more are planned.

Mailers are considered crucial to the outcome because of the huge size of supervisors’ districts.

As Caltech political science professor J. Morgan Kousser testified during the redistricting trial, “If a candidate campaigned door-to-door talking to each constituent for 10 minutes, it would take him or her over 50 years.”

In an effort to stir interest in the race, the candidates have pledged all sorts of new programs.

Bartlett has promised to hold night meetings of the Board of Supervisors in the districts. Flores, jumping on Hahn’s plan to bring water to California from the Pacific Northwest, called for bringing water from Alaska or Canada. And O’Brien has proposed an “ethics in county government” package that would restrict supervisors’ outside income.