Elections ’92 : Women May Gain Board Majority : Supervisors: If she wins runoff with Deane Dana, Gordana Swanson would join Gloria Molina and the winner of the Diane Watson-Yvonne Brathwaite Burke contest.

Last year, women and minorities cracked open the door of the all-white, all-male club known as the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

They knocked again Wednesday after Gordana Swanson forced Supervisor Deane Dana into a runoff, and Diane Watson and Yvonne Brathwaite Burke headed for a showdown to become the first elected black supervisor.

Tuesday’s elections raised the prospect of women becoming a majority on the governing board of the nation’s most populous county. For that reason, leaders of women’s groups said they probably will pour money and volunteers into the campaign of Swanson, the mayor of Rolling Hills.

“We’re very excited about the idea that there might be a third woman there,” said Peg Yorkin, chair of the Fund for the Feminist Majority, who recently met Swanson, a Republican, at a rally for Democratic U.S. Senate candidates Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. “Women, even if they’re conservative, still vote better on women’s issues.”

Yorkin, a multimillionaire who gave $10 million to her foundation in October, said she will probably contribute to Swanson’s campaign but did not say how much.

On the day after the election, candidates in the 2nd District and 4th District races were courting the also-rans for endorsements and assessing their political strategies for what worked--and what didn’t.

“My problem is that I am an incumbent,” said Dana, who added that he is re-evaluating his campaign strategy. He dismissed gender as a factor in the upcoming runoff, but noted that he favors abortion rights and that half of his office employees are women.

Dana, a 12-year board veteran, was held to 42% of the vote by Swanson and five other challengers. Swanson finished second with 25%. The horseshoe-shaped 4th District extends along the coast from Marina del Rey to Long Beach, then inland along the Orange County line to Diamond Bar.

In the primary campaign, Swanson targeted women voters with a mailer that said: “An L.A. County supervisor is responsible for a total constituency larger than that of two of the three women governors in the United States, bigger than the constituencies of the two women U.S. senators. . . .

“Women voters in L.A. County also have a particularly exciting prospect this year: We can place a majority of three women on the Board of Supervisors for the first time in history.”

Until Gloria Molina was elected last year as the first Latino supervisor this century, only one woman had ever served on the county board: Burke, who was appointed in 1979 but lost the election in 1980 to Dana.

Molina already has brought women’s issues to the fore. At her urging, supervisors last year voted to seek gender balance on county boards and commissions, which Molina said were less than one-third female even though more than half of the county’s residents are women.

Such appointments are considered essential steppingstones for women interested in running for political office. Representatives of women’s groups said Swanson would no doubt recognize the importance of appointing women because she is an appointee to the Southern California Rapid Transit District Board of Directors.

Molina also has pushed for steering more of the county’s billions of dollars in contracts to businesses owned by women or minorities.

Whether Molina will play a role in the 4th District election was unclear Wednesday. Molina said, “I haven’t decided what to do in the 2nd or 4th District races.”

Swanson, who poured nearly $100,000 of her own money into the primary campaign, drew support from only a smattering of women’s organizations, including Women For: and the local chapter of the National Women’s Political Caucus.

Women’s groups that supported Swanson in the primary said they would throw more of their resources her way in the runoff, particularly now that the field of women candidates for various offices has narrowed through losses.

“I think this will become a priority race because of the possibility for a majority on the board,” said Nancy Zamora, head of the Los Angeles County Coordinating Council of the caucus. “Unfortunately, some of the women we supported lost in the primaries . . . but Gordana will benefit from that smaller universe.”

Swanson, in seeking the caucus’ endorsement, said that she supports ratification of the equal rights amendment, affirmative action, protection from domestic violence, comparable worth and quality and affordable child care. Swanson, like Dana, supports abortion rights.

Dana has women supporters, too. June Dunbar, a Dana appointee to the County Commission for Women, said Dana has been “excellent on women’s issues,” citing his work addressing gender inequities in National Guard entrance policies, his support for testing of the French abortion pill RU-486 and his efforts to improve county collection of child support payments.

In the primary campaign, Swanson hammered hard at Dana for what she said were the excessive perks enjoyed by the many of the supervisors: chauffeur-driven bulletproof cars and controversial county pension increases that will cost taxpayers more than $265 million.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, senior associate with the Center for Politics and Policy at Claremont Graduate School, said anti-incumbent and pro-woman voting trends hurt Dana, but his performance on the job also cost him support. “He’s been asleep at the wheel,” she said.

Regardless of the outcome of the Dana-Swanson race, the board is assured of gaining a second woman member in the November election, when Burke and Watson square off for the 2nd District seat being vacated by retiring Supervisor Kenneth Hahn.

As pioneering black women in Democratic Party politics, they have similar sources of support. On Wednesday they were carrying on their efforts to highlight their differences.

Burke attacked Watson for a last-minute mailer sent to the riot-battered district, which extends from Koreatown to Watts. “In her campaign literature, she showed a picture of burned-out buildings and said, ‘If there had been leadership, this wouldn’t have happened.’ That’s very interesting since she has been the leader for 14 years.” Watson is a state senator.

Watson responded that she will concentrate her efforts on rebuilding the district. “I’m not going to be distracted with attacks,” she said.

Watson and Burke finished the 13-candidate race with 44.7% and 40.5% of the vote, respectively, falling short of the 50% plus one vote required to win outright.

Watson led Burke in the three Los Angeles City Council districts represented by African-Americans and in Compton and Inglewood. Burke fared better in Culver City, Gardena, Hawthorne, Ladera Heights and Lawndale, according to a community breakdown of the results.

In the other supervisorial race on Tuesday’s ballot, Supervisor Mike Antonovich was reelected to a fourth four-year term.