IRVINE : Gaido Won’t Run as Write-In Candidate

After losing her legal battle to fill an open seat on the City Council, Mary Ann Gaido said this week she will not appeal last week’s court decision or run as a write-in candidate in the Nov. 6 election.

With less than two weeks before the election, Gaido said there wouldn’t be enough time for her to mount an effective publicity campaign to win as a write-in candidate. Instead, she will spend her time speaking out on city issues and preparing for the 1992 council election, she said.

The state Court of Appeal ruled last Thursday that the open City Council seat should be filled by special election, overturning a Superior Court’s decision in August that Gaido had a legal right to the seat.

Gaido, 48, came in third place in the June 5 race for two open council seats. As the runner-up in the race, she was entitled to fill the council seat vacated when Councilwoman Sally Anne Sheridan resigned to become mayor. But the law also allows residents to petition for an election, which a group did immediately after the June election.

After the City Council accepted the petitions and called an election, Gaido sued, saying the petitions probably misled some signers into believing an election was the only way to fill the seat. The petition, using wording required by city law, did not state that the seat automatically would have been filled without an election.

A Superior Court judge agreed with Gaido and ordered her seated. But the appeals court said that an election was the least of two evils. Although the petition language was misleading, the appeals court said, voters probably also didn’t know that Gaido, as the runner-up in the election, would have taken the seat automatically.

On the Nov. 6 ballot will be five candidates who filed to run in the special election. They are Bill Vardoulis, an engineering consultant and former councilman; Carol Yocum, a former planning commissioner and community activist; Michael Tague, an assistant principal in Irvine; Albert E. Nasser, a semi-retired attorney; and Genovica Niculescu-Balteanu, a mechanical engineer.

The winner of that race will fill the seat until its term expires in 1992.