New Faces : And . . . ‘It’s Time for a Change’

A few months ago, most of them were all but unknown to most county residents. But when the votes were tallied early Wednesday, they had marched into the limelight.

John F. Dean, a Whittier College professor of education; Joy L. Neugebauer, a veteran of the Westminster City Council, and James G. Enright, chief deputy district attorney, stunned incumbents by winning enough votes to force November runoffs. None captured a post outright, and two, Neugebauer and Enright, face uphill struggles. But these three will be among Orange County’s most talked-about and debated public figures in the next few months.

In 1969, John F. Dean was appointed dean of the evening college at Orange Coast College. Thus, the rather confusing title of Dean Dean.

In 1990, Dean hopes he’ll attain a longer, albeit less confusing, title--County Supt. of Schools Dean.

If he is elected in November, the new title would be just one more in a series of executive labels Dean has attained in his 40 years as an educator.

Among them: principal of Harbor View Elementary School in Newport Beach; director of curriculum for the Newport Beach School District; curriculum administrator for the Newport-Mesa Unified School District; chairman of the education department at Whittier College.

For now, Dean, 63, who is on sabbatical from Whittier, is executive secretary of the California Reading Assn. Inc., a nonprofit group which aims to improve literacy among children and adults. And while all of those titles are respected and recognized in the education community, Dean has earned a sobriquet that no one else can claim: The Man Who Beat Robert Peterson.

In Tuesday’s primary, Dean eked out a scant 0.3% margin of victory over incumbent Supt. Peterson, a feat no other candidate has matched in Peterson’s 24-year tenure. Peterson, who will turn 70 in October, will face Dean in a runoff election in November.

While Dean has focused most of his campaign on detailing Peterson’s shortcomings, much of his personal life was summed up in a spring campaign mailing which included a brief profile and curriculum vitae. The mailing, he wrote, “shows what I believe are my qualifications to provide new leadership to the Orange County Department of Education.”

“In essence, I have been in public and private education for 40 years, have taught or served as an administrator at virtually every grade, and I have directed teacher education at Whittier College for the past two decades,” the mailing said.

It adds that he and his wife, Katherine, have lived in Newport Beach for 30 years and have two children--Brian, a California Highway Patrol officer, and Karol Hicks, a teacher in Irvine--and three grandchildren.

But if the primary campaign and comments made in interviews before and after the election are any indication, the runoff will likely avoid insights into Dean’s personal life and focus more on why Peterson should not be county superintendent than why Dean should.