COUNTY ELECTIONS: CITY COUNCILS : 4 Races Among the Most Disputed and Significant : Issues ranging from the environment to sports await voters in Anaheim, Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach and Santa Ana.

Across Orange County, Tuesday’s municipal elections will address a host of compelling issues, from environmental protection along the coast to a major sports arena inland, as well as social welfare programs for illegal immigrants.

Of the 24 city council elections in the county, those in Anaheim, Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach and Santa Ana have emerged as among the most hotly disputed and politically significant.

In Anaheim, a mayor with wind-defying hair and the delivery of an evangelist is up against a plain-talking council veteran who is skeptical of a new sports arena and his opponent’s promise of two professional teams to fill it.

Candidates in Santa Ana have hurled insults at each other, and one campaign manager hired a private investigator to follow an incumbent. Challengers in Costa Mesa say they want to turn around the city’s image after a host of controversial decisions affecting illegal immigrants and the poor.

And for the first time in Huntington Beach, the political perch of the local oil industry, environmental concerns have emerged as an overriding election issue.

Perhaps the most colorful campaign, however, is the mayor’s race in Anaheim, the county’s second largest city. The race is dominated by a clash of personalities over one of the city’s key issues--whether to spend millions of dollars on a 20,000-seat sports arena when no professional team has formally agreed to play in the proposed facility.

The incumbent, Mayor Fred Hunter, is a brash, outspoken politician with a reputation for being his own man. His opponent, Councilman Irv Pickler, is a plain-spoken, unassuming council veteran who supporters describe as a “team player.”

Hunter, a Republican, has said a hockey team and a basketball team are interested in coming to Anaheim, a prospect no one else in city government seems to know about. Some council members and city officials are skeptical of Hunter’s claims and have not been informed of any pending decision by sports teams to locate in Anaheim.

During the campaign, Pickler has questioned the status of the city’s effort to lure sports teams. If professional clubs cannot be found for the arena, he says, the city will have to pay $2.5 million a year for eight years.

Instead of Anaheim’s building the entire facility, Pickler, a Democrat, would like the city to donate the land and have a private developer put up the structure.

Pickler and Hunter both want more firefighters, police, paramedics, and traffic coordination. Both are receptive to developing Gypsum Canyon, but do not want a jail or a landfill there. Pickler is an ardent foe of rent control for mobile home parks, which Hunter supports.

Hunter, who says he is tired of “milquetoast politicians” who aren’t tough on developers, supports downzoning to prevent high-density residential developments.

Early in the campaign, Pickler’s tactics were called into question when his political consultant, Harvey Englander, conducted a 30-question poll which intimated that Hunter had a drinking problem. The mayor denies he has a drinking problem.

In Santa Ana, accusations about illegal gifts, spying on candidates, conflict of interest and misuse of campaign funds have marred three contests in the City Council race.

In the race for the Ward 4 seat, Coween Dickerson, a fiery orator, has alleged that incumbent Councilman Miguel A. Pulido Jr. misused $5,300 in campaign funds to take a government class at prestigious Harvard University.

Pulido has accused Dickerson of not disclosing as campaign contributions payments made by her campaign treasurer to have a private investigator determine whether Pulido lived outside the council district.

Pulido was cleared of any impropriety. Dickerson said no campaign money was used to hire the private investigator, but her campaign manager, Salvador Juarez, resigned amid the controversy.

In the race for the Ward 2 seat, incumbent Councilman Ron May is being challenged by Robert L. Richardson and Robert Banuelos. Richardson has accused May of having a “do-nothing attitude,” while May says Richardson has a conflict of interest because he is an aide to County Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, whose district includes Santa Ana.

In the race for the Ward 6 seat, incumbent Councilman Richards L. Norton is running against real estate attorney Glenn Mondo and Irene Martinez-Griffith, president of the Mexican American Women’s National Assn. Mondo has accused Norton of improperly accepting an airline ticket upgrade for free and wedding gifts worth more than the $25 city limit for gifts. The incumbent returned the wedding gifts and has denied any impropriety.

In Huntington Beach, a plank of strong environmental candidates is pitted against some of the city’s more conservative stalwarts.

Strongly backed by pro-development forces are Planning Commissioner Ed Mountford; former Police Chief Earle Robitaille and former Mayor Jack Kelly. They face three candidates backed by slow-growth and environmental groups. They are incumbent Grace Winchell, former Planning Commissioner Mark Porter and Linda Moulton-Patterson, president of the Huntington Beach Union High School District Board of Trustees.

The other candidates in the race are Tony Passannante, a pharmacist; Dirk Voss, a marine patrol officer; George Arnold, a self-employed businessman, and Steven J. Roy, a carpenter.

Prompted by the American Trader oil spill last winter, environmental concerns have emerged for the first time as an overriding election issue in a city where the oil industry has had enormous influence in its politics.

Winchell, Porter and Moulton-Patterson oppose the proposed Pierside Village project and other commercial development on the beach. Voss and Arnold also oppose new commercial buildings on the beach and criticize development decisions made in recent years by the council majority.

Kelly, Robitaille, Mountford, and Passannante all support continued downtown redevelopment, including Pierside Village. Kelly said he is concerned about the emergence of slow-growth factions.

Just across the Huntington Beach city line is Costa Mesa, where five candidates are running for two City Council seats in an election many see as a referendum on the city’s often-controversial attempts to deal with its increasingly diverse population.

Within a year, Costa Mesa received national attention with a series of controversial votes, which fostered a perception that its elected officials lacked compassion for the poor and wanted to censure artistic expression.

The City Council passed a measure requiring the recipients of cultural arts grants from engaging in obscene, religious or political activity. It also voted for, and later rescinded, a measure to withhold money from any social service agency that helped illegal immigrants.

The council evicted Share Our Selves, a well-known agency that aids the poor. And, in a decision affecting illegal immigrants, the council passed an ordinance banning job solicitation at certain intersections. The decision was later ruled invalid by a court.

Incumbents Orville Amburgey and Mayor Peter F. Buffa have borne the brunt of the controversy and are being challenged by Karen McGlinn, Jay Humphrey, and Arlene Schafer.

McGlinn and Humphrey, who are running against Buffa and Amburgey, think the council is leading the city in the wrong direction. Schafer, a former mayor and longtime councilwoman, is seen as a likely ally of Amburgey, who sponsored many of the controversial measures. However, Schafer has said that cultural understanding must be promoted.

In other races, almost all 14 candidates running for three council seats in Mission Viejo are calling for peace after 30 months of rancorous policy making and controversy.

Cleaning up the council’s image has dwarfed the other issues to a certain extent, including traffic congestion, a failed effort to recall Councilman Robert A. Curtis, and increasing public disaffection with the city’s sole developer, the Mission Viejo Co.

In San Clemente, the City Council race could determine whether the beach town will remain almost exclusively a bedroom community. Most of the 11 candidates vying for three seats say the city’s deteriorating infrastructure can no longer afford to be dependent on property tax revenues, which were frozen by Proposition 13.

Tuesday’s Election Ballot

Voters face a lengthy ballot, featuring a host of issues and candidates at the state, county and local levels, as they go to the polls in Tuesday’s general election.

In the statewide contests, voters will decide on a governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, controller, treasurer, attorney general and insurance commissioner. In addition, there are 28 ballot initiatives, including the sweeping and controversial Proposition 128, also known as “Big Green,” and Propositions 131 and 140, which seek to set term limits on state legislators.

Locally, Orange County voters will decide on Measure M, a proposed half-cent sales tax increase to fund transportation projects. They will also decide whether to return to office a county supervisor, the district attorney and the county superintendent of schools.

Rounding out local ballots are 24 city council elections, 14 school board elections, 16 special district elections and 14 legislative and congressional elections.

Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m.

For voting information, call the registrar of voters’ office at (714) 567-7600.