Union Elects Insurgent Officials to Lead Local : Labor: Recently fired challengers win vote to govern troubled hotel and restaurant group.

Three hotel and restaurant union officials were overwhelmingly elected Saturday to lead the local that fired them last month.

And the union official who led the revolt, 29-year-old organizer Angela Keefe, was ahead in a fairly close race for president. She led by 43 votes, 588 to 545.

But perhaps as many as 49 of those votes have been contested.

And, her opponent said, there may be enough mail ballots still lying uncounted in a union post office box to change the outcome.

The union’s election committee will likely have the final results sorted out after the post office opens on Monday, a union official said.

Meanwhile, Keefe said Saturday that “they had better not discover any more ballots in that post office box, or there are going to be a lot of problems on Monday.”

If Keefe wins, she will have wrested control of one of Orange County’s largest unions from a man who just a month ago seemed to have a bright career as a labor leader ahead of him.

That man, Steven A. Beyer, 39, had been handpicked to run the union by the former president, David L. Schultz, who ran it for years.

Beyer is finishing his first three-year term, and the local is not in good shape.

The union has failed to get contracts for its members at the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach and the big Inn at the Park hotel in Anaheim.

Beyer blames Keefe, his former director of organizing, for the mess; she says it is his fault.

Beyer fired her and three other officials for insubordination in late May shortly after he learned they had been secretly planning to run against him.

The union represents 5,000 full-time members in Orange County and Long Beach, including workers at Disneyland and some of the county’s biggest hotels. Nearly half the local’s members are Latino, a fact that became an issue in the campaign.

Like most unions, the restaurant and hotel workers have fallen on hard times. Developers built too many hotels across the nation in the mid-1980s; the competition was so fierce that the hotels had to hold down wages and other costs just to pay the mortgage.

Then the recession began in 1990 and put a dent in restaurant sales when people stopped eating out as much.

Beyer, who had been a field representative for the local, as president brought a hipper, more liberal image to the union: He hired women as field representatives and his administrative assistant is one of the county’s most prominent gay activists.

But he was also, says Keefe, secretive and dictatorial; he earned a salary of $60,000 and--with his suits and ties--looked more like a hotel manager than a former restaurant worker; he didn’t speak Spanish and had no Latino candidates on his election slate.

Keefe repeatedly stressed these matters during the campaign. A liberal activist who is also white, she speaks fluent Spanish.

For their part, Beyer and his allies at the union accused Keefe of exploiting the race issue simply to save her own job; she was also, they said, a liar and too young and inexperienced to lead the big local.

The campaign was a bitter, personal affair. While the national union leadership promised to stay out, Keefe charges that it raised campaign money for Beyer and his candidates.

Nevertheless, most of those candidates lost overwhelmingly. In the top three posts below president, the insurgents’ candidate for vice president--Carlos Proa--got 54% of the vote; Mary Ann Mahoney, running for financial secretary-treasurer, won 63%; and Janine Licausi, candidate for recording secretary, got 56%.

Turnout was about 22%, or 1,100 of 5,000 members, which Keefe says is a good showing for a union election, especially for a local that hasn’t had a contested election in recent memory.

Those results weren’t tallied until 1:30 a.m. Saturday, making Friday--election day--a long one for the candidates.

“I don’t know what’ll happen on Monday,” a tired Beyer said Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, the union has crucial contract negotiations set for September with the Ralphs grocery store chain and Disneyland.