Hotel Workers Elect Woman to Head Local : Labor: In tight vote, Angela Keefe, at 29, becomes youngest union president in Southland and one of the few women.

At the age of 29, Angela Keefe on Tuesday became what local labor leaders say is the youngest person in Southern California and one of the few women to head a large union local.

In a close election, Keefe beat a respected local labor leader by 43 votes, 588 to 545, to gain control of Local 681 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union.

The local has 5,000 full-time members in Orange County and Long Beach who work at Disneyland and some of the area’s largest hotels.

“The members have spoken,” said Steven A. Beyer, 39, who had just finished his first three-year term as president of the local. Until just a month ago, he seemed to have a bright career as a labor leader ahead of him.

“I’m done,” he said. “But I know I did good stuff here, and that’s all that matters.”

Keefe could not be reached for comment.

One reason Beyer may have lost the election is because the local--like the hotel and restaurant industry--fell on hard times during the recession.

The union hasn’t been able to negotiate a contract for hundreds of members at the posh Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach and the big Inn at the Park hotel in Anaheim. And it has important negotiations coming up in September with Disneyland and Ralph’s supermarket chain.

The election campaign was a nasty, personal struggle.

Beyer blamed the local’s woes on Keefe, whom he had hired a few years earlier as director of organizing. He said he was about to fire her when he learned in May that she and three other union employees were secretly planning to run against him and his candidates for the local’s top offices.

Keefe blamed the problems at the Balboa Bay Club and Inn at the Park on what she said was Beyer’s too-cozy relations with the hotels. She said she would bring a more militant approach to getting contracts from the hotels. Beyer, a liberal, said he favored a more moderate approach to labor relations.

Keefe also attacked Beyer because he doesn’t speak Spanish; a majority of the union’s members are now Latino. Keefe, an Anglo, speaks fluent Spanish.

When the votes were counted early Saturday, Keefe’s three running mates beat Beyer’s candidates decisively. Keefe had a 43-vote lead, but an argument broke out with the union’s election committee over whether mail ballots that arrived at the post office over the weekend should be counted.

Those ballots were counted Tuesday morning and were evenly split, 59 to 59, Beyer said. Keefe, already holding the lead, was pronounced the winner.

Despite the rancorous campaign, Beyer said he called Keefe Tuesday morning and offered to help her get started running the union. She’ll be sworn in July 8 at the union’s general membership meeting.

Keefe is the second woman to depose a white male as head of a local restaurant workers’ union. The president of the 11,000-member Los Angeles local is Maria Elena Durazo, a Latina who beat a white male incumbent three years ago. The head of the union’s Bay Area local is also a woman.

Women have always headed unions in jobs that were traditionally theirs, such as stewardesses or nurses. But as they entered the work force in increasing numbers, more women have been elected to lead union locals.