ELECTIONS / REDONDO BEACH : A Surprising Council Result; Incumbents Retain School Posts : Council: White is top vote-getter for District 5 seat; Herman and Unruh battle for second runoff spot. Colin easily retains his District 2 seat.

Until Tuesday’s election, beer wholesaler Michael Herman and property manager Bruce Unruh shared the limelight in the five-way fight for Redondo Beach’s District 5 City Council seat.

Herman had won the endorsement of Mayor Brad Parton. Unruh, son of the late state Treasurer Jesse Unruh, is a close friend of City Clerk John Oliver. Their candidacies fueled well-publicized friction between the mayor and city clerk.

Then came Tuesday’s voting--and the surprise first-place finish of Joseph White, an avuncular retiree who had quietly canvassed his district on foot and with mailings that he and his wife, Marilyn, had hand-addressed. White collected 27.9% of the vote--not enough to win the District 5 seat outright, but sufficient to ensure himself a place in a two-way runoff May 14.

“They were all out trying to beat each other to death, and I surprised ‘em,” White exulted on Wednesday. “I was out there working.”

That leaves Herman and Unruh locked in a tight race for the second runoff spot. Unofficial results Wednesday showed Herman in second place with 21% of the vote and Unruh in third with 19.5%. But the two men were separated by only 18 votes, and 49 ballots remain to be counted today, most of them late-arriving absentee votes.

“Hopefully, I’ll be able to maintain my position,” Herman said Wednesday morning. Unruh, reached late Tuesday night, said: “It’s not over yet. We’ll have to wait and see.”

In a second City Council contest Tuesday, District 2 incumbent Stevan Colin won another four-year term, amassing 68.8% of the vote to crush challengers Gregory Cox, who finished with 26.1%, and Jack Tyler, who placed third with 5.1%.

Meanwhile, Oliver and City Treasurer Alice DeLong, facing no opposition, also won new four-year terms. A proposal to increase the size of the city’s Library Commission from five members to seven was passed, drawing 63.5% of the vote.

Voter turnout citywide was an anemic 12.9%, with only 4,298 of 33,119 registered voters casting ballots, the city clerk’s office said. Turnout amounted to 16.7% in council District 5 and 13.9% in District 3.

The tightest council competition centered on the District 5 seat held by Ron Cawdrey, who was unable to run for reelection after losing a court bid to strike down the city’s two-term limit on the mayor and council members. Trailing White, Herman and Unruh were Mary Ann Rockwell, who finished fourth with 16.3%, and Roberleigh Richester, who brought up the rear with 15.3%.

Rockwell expressed surprise at White’s performance and speculated that he might have received secret campaign help from Cawdrey. She said she feared that Cawdrey might have assisted White in exchange for assurances that White will back causes favored by Cawdrey--such as council approval of a pending exclusive trash collection contract for Western Waste Industries.

Cawdrey said Wednesday that he did not help White’s campaign and that he had supported another candidate, whom he declined to name.

White also denied receiving help from Cawdrey

“I had no support from any elected official,” White said. Asked if he favors granting an exclusive trash collection contract to Western Waste, he said, “Not really, no. I’m for seeing what other companies can do.”

White said his first-place finish was due solely to hard campaigning. As of Feb. 16, he had spent $2,830 of his own money to send out mailings to eligible voters--a tactic made more expensive by his decision to send the letters first class.

“The wife and I sat down and addressed them all by hand and sent them first class so people wouldn’t throw them out with the trash,” White said, estimating that he mailed 3,000 pieces in all. White also spent a good deal of time knocking on doors.

“I saw him a number of times when I was out walking,” Herman acknowledged Wednesday. “He did a great job.”

Herman agrees with White on many issues--that the city should bolster efforts to block gang activity and to solve traffic problems, for instance. But if he makes the runoff, he says, he will stress his business background to differentiate himself from White.

“I know I’ve got quite a bit of experience dealing with budgeting and finance here at the (beer) distributorship,” said Herman. “I’m bottom-line minded.”

White, a retired construction superintendent, says his campaign strategy will remain the same. He says he will keep plugging away at issues such as crime, traffic and the proposed Aviation Park recreation complex, which he asserts is “pure folly” because it includes an outdoor pool that might be unusable in cold weather.

In the District 3 contest, Colin said he was surprised that he was able to avoid a runoff, particularly since Cox sent off a last-minute mailer titled “Greg Cox Announces Endorsement of City Clerk and City Treasurer.”

Cox argued that the mailer, which contained a recommended slate of candidates, was intended to announce his support for DeLong and Oliver. But DeLong protested that it appeared to suggest that she and Oliver had endorsed Cox when, in fact, they had not.

According to Colin, the result was confusion: “When it came out, we got all sorts of calls.”

But the Cox mailing didn’t appear to hurt the incumbent on Election Day. Colin attributed his strong showing to constituent service, particularly his role in arranging city development of Lilienthal and Dominguez parks.

“It boils down to the fact that people care about what happens in their district,” Colin said Wednesday. “Nobody (else) had worked to get a park, and all of a sudden one was sitting in their neighborhood. . . . I think people were saying, ‘We like what you’re doing.’ ”