3 of 4 Councilmen Face Challenges in Redrawn Districts

Three of the four city councilmen up for reelection this April face competition from a handful of political hopefuls, while incumbent Jeffrey A. Kellogg will go unchallenged.

Councilman Tom Clark, the council’s senior member, has three opponents in the 4th District, while Clarence Smith will have to beat four rivals to retain his 6th District seat on the west side of Long Beach.

Two contenders will try to dislodge Wallace Edgerton from the council seat he has held since 1975.

The April 14 primary election is the first since last year’s reapportionment redrew council boundaries, leaving incumbents with the task of wooing new constituents in neighborhoods they have represented for only a few months.

Edgerton’s 2nd District, for instance, was radically rearranged. The 58-year-old financial adviser and realtor lost a number of residential areas and picked up downtown and the port area.

He almost lost an opponent as well, but Cal State Long Beach professor Alan Lowenthal was so eager to challenge Edgerton that when Lowenthal’s neighborhood was transferred to the 3rd District, he moved to remain in the 2nd.

That contest promises to be one of the most heated in the election.

Lowenthal, 50, is a former president of Long Beach Area Citizens Involved, a citywide political watchdog group that has jousted with the council on a variety of issues. Daniel Rosenberg, 63, a perennial council critic who has run several times before, is also challenging Edgerton.

In the 6th District, Civil Service Commissioner Doris Topsy-Elvord, 60, is one of several vying for Smith’s position.

Also running are Dan Cangro, 45, a former head of the Wrigley Assn. and an assistant superintendent at the county’s Carson sewage treatment plant; Terry McClure, a 42-year-old Defense Department administrator, and Ronnie L. Barnes, 47, who is studying to be a private detective and who has run for the seat twice before.

Charles G. (Jerry) Westlund, 26, an auctioneer and co-host of a local public affairs cable television show, has his eye on Clark’s seat representing east-central Long Beach. Community activist Sharon Lee Douglass, 41, and refrigeration contractor Donald Pound, 43, are the other contestants who filed nominating papers by the Feb. 6 deadline.

No one filed to run against Kellogg, a 38-year-old commercial real estate broker who was first elected to the 8th District seat in northwest Long Beach four years ago.

Council elections are staggered and the remaining five council members will not be up for reelection for another two years, officials said.