ELECTIONS : Most School Incumbents Win; Mayor’s Race Close : Education: The heated Centinela Valley race ends in landslide reelections. The only upset is in the peninsula district, where fallout over school consolidation helps two challengers win.

Voters in the racially troubled Centinela Valley Union High School District gave the predominantly Latino school board a resounding vote of confidence Tuesday by returning two veteran trustees to office by landslide margins.

The reelection of incumbents Michael Escalante, 69, and Ruth Morales, 67, despite heated campaigns by challengers who accused them of exacerbating the district’s racial tensions, shows that “the people are behind us,” a buoyant Escalante said Tuesday.

“It is telling (critics of the board): ‘Hands off. Let them (the trustees) proceed and do their job, but don’t exploit the problems,’ ” Escalante said. “Yes, there are problems in this district, but help solve them.”

The power of incumbency proved formidable in almost all of the South Bay school districts in which elections were held Tuesday. The only upset occurred in Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District, where controversy over the consolidation of the district’s schools propelled two challengers to victory over two incumbents.

One of the South Bay’s most closely watched races was in the Centinela Valley district, which has been shaken in the past two years by student walkouts, stormy board meetings and more than a dozen complaints alleging that the school board has discriminated against black employees.

Throughout the campaign, Escalante and Morales insisted that the district’s children and employees have been getting along. They said the district’s problems were created by former administrators who were transferred or fired because of their performances.

But challengers Virginia Rhodes, 56, and Debra Wong, 36, said the employee shake-up only made the district’s racial tensions worse.

Wong largely blamed low voter turnout for the challengers’ defeat and angrily predicted that the district’s racial unrest will continue.

“It’s a sad day for our schools because the district is going to be continually led by incompetent people who don’t care about our children,” Wong charged Wednesday.

Although Escalante and Morales both expressed hope that their victories would bring an end to the charges and countercharges that have plagued the district, there were other signs of further turmoil. Both Wong and Rhodes said they received an upsetting, racially offensive mailer over the weekend that depicted them being lynched by school board members dressed in white-hooded capes. The source of the flyer was not known.

The election that bucked the trend among South Bay school districts was in Palos Verdes Peninsula, where voters decided to hold two incumbents accountable for their support of a disputed, cost-saving plan to consolidate the peninsula’s three high schools into one.

In those races, incumbents Jack Bagdasar, 68, and Joseph Sanford, 54, lost their seats to challengers Joan Davidson, 44, and Barry Hildebrand, 58. The winners cited public unease with the board’s unanimous but controversial decision last year for consolidation.

“The way they did it played a role,” said Davidson, a part-time teacher from Palos Verdes Estates who led the four-candidate field. “There was not enough public input. Such an important decision should have been handled more openly.”

Bagdasar, an eight-year board member and the panel’s current president, agreed that the consolidation issue was the most important issue in the election. “I truly think it was a backlash, . . . but if we hadn’t consolidated, we would have been on the verge of bankruptcy,” Bagdasar said. “You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”

The new board members both said they have no plans to reverse the consolidation, which created a single, 3,000-student high school that opened in September. But neither would rule out the possibility of opening at least one more high school in the future if, as some expect, the district’s long-sagging enrollment begins to climb.

In most of the other South Bay school board races, voters favored incumbents in elections that suggested satisfaction with the status quo.

At El Camino Community College, where no incumbent trustee has ever lost a race in the college’s 45-year history, tradition reigned: The two incumbents were victorious.

In a bitter race for the college board’s Inglewood seat, incumbent Patrick W. Scott, 63, beat off challenges from retired college dean Nathaniel Jackson, 61, and Inglewood activist Mildred McNair, 49.

The Centinela Valley seat went to incumbent Delmer L. Fox, 69, who was opposed by Mali Currington, 21, and John A. Porter, 63.

During the campaign for the Inglewood seat, Jackson argued that the current all-Anglo school board did not adequately represent the growing diversity of the El Camino campus. But that issue was clouded in the campaign’s final days by confusion over whether McNair had agreed to pull out of the race and support Jackson.

Jackson sent out a mailer announcing that McNair was withdrawing from the race and endorsing his election. But as soon as the flyers went out, McNair denied she ever told him she would withdraw.

Although Scott, a retired YMCA executive, emerged victorious, he could not resist some jabs at Jackson.

“It’s politics at its worst,” Scott said Wednesday. “Whatever it takes to win something. . . . In other words, it’s win at all costs.”

In the Lawndale School District, results were mixed. Voters there returned two longtime school board members to office, but ousted a third incumbent who was appointed to the board 16 months ago.

Incumbent Diane Bollinger, 54, whose 20-year tenure on the board has earned her the nickname “the first lady of Lawndale,” was elected to her sixth term on the school board, and Patsy A. Roth, 49, was returned to office for a fourth term.

The two veteran board members beat challengers Jerry Finley, 39, and Celia Barrios-Jenkins, 48, who had criticized them for being “out of touch” with the district’s problems and growing diversity.

Community activist Shirley Rudolph, 49, defeated incumbent Ann Phillips, 35, who was appointed to the board last year after a board member moved out of the district.

Roth said she and Bollinger were reelected because voters are satisfied with the district’s programs. “I feel they really endorse what we’re doing,” Roth said.

She expressed regret for Phillips’ defeat and blamed it on her lack of name recognition rather than her record or stand on any issue.

Rudolph said she was surprised by her victory because she did not expect to have a chance against what she called the incumbents’ “political machine.” She won, she said, “because I’m out there. When you deal with the community, they know who you are.”

More predictable was the outcome in the race for two seats on the Torrance Unified School District’s Board of Trustees. Incumbents David Sargent, 53, and Owen Griffith, 63, glided to easy victories in the five-way race. Although challengers claimed the district needed an infusion of new ideas, both trustees ran, and won, on their records.

Sargent, who is board president and who was the top vote-getter in the race, said he hopes his strong showing indicates “a vote of confidence for the time I have spent on the school board.”

There were also no surprises in races for six seats in the Hermosa Beach City School District, the Manhattan Beach City School District and the South Bay Union High School District. Incumbents and favored candidates won easily in all three districts, which have been relatively free of controversy.

Kathy Campbell, 49, a Manhattan Beach trustee, emerged as a victor in a seven-way contest for two seats on the South Bay Union High School District. Incumbent Joseph Mark, 53, who was appointed in June, will fill the second seat.

In the Manhattan Beach district, Mary A. Rogers, 48, outpolled incumbent Barbara Dunsmoor, 47, in a four-way race. Both women will take seats on the board.

Two seats on the Hermosa Beach school board went to Vicki S. Garcia, 44, and Catherine McCurdy, 40, both of whom outpolled Bob McEachen, 46.

McCurdy, a businesswoman and political newcomer, said she is excited about her first stint as a trustee. “I know it isn’t so much slings and arrows that I face as much as trying to come up with the right answers,” McCurdy said. “But I’m ready to give it a try.”

Times staff writers Kenneth J. Garcia, George Hatch, Marc Lacey and Deborah Schoch contributed to this story.