COUNTYWIDE : Incumbents Ponder Loss in School Races

On the day after they were ousted from office after years of service, incumbents in three Orange County school districts were grappling to understand their crushing defeats.

Incumbents lost badly in two of the school district races, while a newcomer in the Santa Ana Unified district garnered the most votes in a race for three at-large seats, helping to oust a sitting board member. On Wednesday, they were left scratching their heads, wondering what went wrong.

Developer Tom Williams, who had been on the Newport-Mesa Unified district board for eight years before losing to challenger Martha Fluor, chalked his loss up to a tactical error in his campaign.

“I think my biggest mistake was that I didn’t have a candidate’s statement in the sample ballot. Mine was blank, and that hurt,” said Williams, who managed to get just 29.4% of the vote.

But Russell Barrios, a Trustee Area 6 incumbent in the Orange Unified district, was more confused about the outcome. Challenger Robert H. Viviano trounced Barrios, an aide to County Supervisor Don R. Roth, by a 2-1 margin. Barrios said either his initial support of of a proposed property assessment, which would have imposed a fee on homeowners in the district and was voted down after heated protests, or his incumbency, lowered his standing.

“It may be the healthiest thing for the district,” Barrios said of his defeat. “I think there will be a great lack of experience, but that’s what the public wanted. And you get the government you deserve.”

The result in the district’s other race, in Trustee Area 2, is also expected to have a long-lasting impact on the district. The seat was won by Maureen Aschoff, who was endorsed by Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Santa Ana), but the local teachers union backed Lawrence Labrado, who lost by less than 700 votes. Already, the union is gearing for a series of fights.

“Mickey Conroy has his finger in local politics when he shouldn’t,” said Carole Walters, president of Orange PAC, a local political lobbying group. “I’m very upset.

Orange Unified Education Assn. President Ruby Penner said the union backed Labrado because it feared that Aschoff would be “likely to puppet the ultraconservative people that she was affiliated with.”

But Aschoff dismissed charges that she is politically too close to Conroy.

“I am an adult,” Aschoff said. “They have to give me a little bit of credit for being a fact-finder and dealing with the facts.”

Another dark-horse winner was Rosemarie Avila, who won a seat on the Santa Ana Unified School District board. Avila, the top vote-getter in the district Tuesday, won 24.9% of the ballots, more than incumbents Audrey Yamagata-Noji and Sal Mendoza, who retained their seats with 22.8% and 20.9% of the votes, respectively.

All three far outpaced recently appointed incumbent Gerardo Mouet, who was endorsed by the teachers union but finished last in a field of five, with 14.6% of the vote.

“I’m a little surprised. I felt like it was going to be really hard to unseat the incumbents,” Avila said. “But I think because it was an off-year election, it was to my advantage.”

What also may have helped Avila was her aggressive campaign, which covered Santa Ana with little pink placards and flyers that read, “Rosie.” At community meetings, Avila denounced school-based health care and preschool and after-school programs as “costly social programs.”

Avila also strongly criticized bilingual education as “an experiment that hasn’t worked.”

“I think a multicultural approach is not very popular,” Avila said. “I think it’s time to get back to phonics.”

Incumbent Sal Mendoza, who gained the third seat on the board, said Avila had “several things going for her.”

“She’s female, Hispanic, Republican, and she really beat up on the anti-tax thing,” Mendoza said. “Those four items gave her a lot of credibility.”