ELECTIONS / BOARD OF SUPERVISORS : Historic Change Seen as Filing Begins Today : Politics: The first black is expected to win election to the county panel. There are races in three of the five districts.

A campaign season expected to culminate in the election of the first black to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors officially opens today.

Filing begins today for three seats on the five-member board--an all-male, all-white enclave until it was shaken up last year by Gloria Molina’s election as the first Latino supervisor this century.

Further change is likely as a crowded field, led by former Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), lines up to run for the seat being vacated by Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, who is retiring after nearly four decades.

Because of the demographics and voting patterns of Hahn’s South Los Angeles 2nd District, it is likely that the race will produce the county’s first elected black supervisor. Burke was appointed to the board in 1979 but lost a 1980 election to Supervisor Deane Dana.

Also on the June 2 primary ballot will be Dana and Supervisor Mike Antonovich. The incumbents are likely to enjoy substantial fund-raising advantages over their challengers, but are expected to face criticism because the board spent tax dollars for bulletproof cars and gourmet lunches, and supported a losing fight against a federal voting rights lawsuit, which cost taxpayers $12 million.

Most attention during the 114-day campaign is expected to be focused on Burke and Watson, who are among about a dozen people who have expressed interest in running for Hahn’s seat. Others who have declared that they will run include Compton Treasurer Wesley Sanders Jr. and former Carson Mayor Gil Smith.

Burke and Watson, both pioneering black women in California Democratic politics, enter the race as front-runners because they are well known. They also have proven that they can raise the large sums of money required to reach a 1.9 million-resident supervisorial district, bigger than the population of San Francisco.

Commenting on the difficulty of running in the huge supervisorial districts, the California Commission on Campaign Financing said in a 1989 report: “If a candidate for supervisor wanted to walk door to door and spend 10 minutes with each constituent it would take him or her over 50 years.”

In the first campaign financing reports filed last week, Burke had raised $78,250 through the end of 1991, while Watson had raised $44,210.

If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote in the June primary, the top two vote-getters will face off in November.

Watson, employing the shake-up-the-bureaucracy theme that Molina successfully used in her campaign, has pledged to bring the Sheriff’s Department under greater scrutiny and to vote to fire Chief Administrative Officer Richard B. Dixon, whose wide-ranging authority is expected to be a theme in all of the supervisorial campaigns. She also has called for a state audit of the $12-billion county budget.

Burke, expected to win Hahn’s endorsement, has been more conciliatory in her comments about county government. Asked about Dixon, she said: “If he’s carrying out the authority they gave him, you can’t tell someone to do something and then fire him for doing it.” She said that, if elected, she would push for supervisors to take back power they have delegated to Dixon.

In the other board races, William Paparian, a Pasadena city councilman, said he plans to challenge Antonovich in the north county 5th District. Gordana Swanson, a Rolling Hills councilwoman and Southern California Rapid Transit District board member, has taken out petitions to run against Dana in the coastal 4th District. “I am planning to run,” said Swanson. “I think we need to have a choice.”

Paparian, a Republican, attracted widespread attention last year after he suggested that members of a white supremacist clique allegedly operating out of a sheriff’s substation be barred from policing the Rose Parade. Other challengers in the nonpartisan races are expected to emerge before the filing period closes March 6.

To qualify for the ballot, a candidate must collect 20 signatures and pay $992.97, or, in lieu of the fee, gather 3,972 signatures.

Incumbents Antonovich and Dana must run in new districts, but this may not present a significant obstacle. While the conservative supervisors were assigned thousands of new constituents in the 1990 court-ordered redistricting, their new districts have more registered Republicans than their old ones.

“It is a much better district for him than ever,” said Ron Smith, Dana’s political consultant.

Antonovich and Dana in the next 10 days are also scheduled to hold $500-a-person fund-raisers that are likely to push the campaign funds for each to nearly $1 million. Antonovich was forced into a runoff four years ago because of his pro-development policies. But redistricting excised from Antonovich’s 5th District many of the west San Fernando Valley neighborhoods that caused him political trouble.

At least one challenger--Paparian--has promised to make a campaign issue of county spending practices.

Dana has sought to minimize possible political fallout from the spending controversies. He sent a letter to supporters defending his use of a $74,000 bulletproof car, noting that even Molina, who has criticized county officials’ perks, drives one.

According to Smith, Dana’s strategy will be to assure voters that he has taken steps to prevent a repeat of other controversial spending practices, such as a $3.4-million remodeling of Dixon’s suite of offices. And last month, a day after he voted for a $3,000-a-year increase in benefits for supervisors, Dana pledged to donate his increase to charity.

Antonovich has taken a different tack in responding to the spending controversies, complaining that reports of the expenditures have been distorted.

Antonovich said that the refurbishment project in the chief administrative officer’s suite was not Dixon’s own office but involved 91,000 square feet of space for Dixon’s staff, and, through computerization, “eliminated 200 jobs and saved millions of dollars.”

“Thanks, in part, to Richard Dixon, Los Angeles County is nationally recognized as a pioneer among local governments in the use of modern management and budget techniques such as contracting out (to private industry), which saves taxpayers more than $50 million annually,” Antonovich said.

Paparian, an attorney, said that he would join Molina in pushing for reforms of county government, including a campaign contribution limits. “My first job as a supervisor would be to fire the current chief administrative officer, Richard B. Dixon,” he said. He also pledged not to serve more than two four-year terms.