SCHOOL BOARD RACES : Gains for Christian-Backed Candidates Modest : Success of those backed by the religious right, Rev. Louis Sheldon was most dramatic in Saddleback Valley Unified.

Conservative Christian groups seemed headed toward some modest successes late Tuesday in their drive to elect favored candidates to seats on local school boards, although nowhere were their expected victories likely to change school board majorities.

All told, seven of the 23 candidates endorsed by the Pro-Family Coalition and the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition seemed headed for victory. The groups endorsed candidates who they said espoused conservative causes and who were opposed to unrestricted abortion.

The move by the Christian groups was to capture as many seats as possible of the 41 openings in 17 Orange County school districts. In community college districts, 37 candidates sought 14 available seats.

The most dramatic victory seemed to be shaping up in the Saddleback Valley Unified School District where two of the three Christian-backed candidates--Frank L. Ury and Raghu P. Mathur--seemed headed for election to the five-member board.

Mathur, for one, downplayed the role of the Christian endorsements in his apparent victory. “I received no support of any kind--money or volunteers,” he said after viewing early returns.

A third endorsed candidate, Debbie J. Hughes, was running a close fourth in the race to fill the board’s three vacant seats.

There were two other school districts--Capistrano Unified and Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified--in which enough Christian-backed candidates were running to create new majorities. In the Capistrano Unified race, however, none of those candidates appeared headed toward victory and in the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified race only one, Craig T. Olson, appeared to be winning.

James Ball, a Christian-backed candidate in the Huntington Beach Union High School district who late Tuesday was running neck-and-neck with Michael H. Simons to win one of the two available seats, also downplayed the value of the Christian endorsement. “They did absolutely nothing for us that I know of,” Ball said. “I don’t think it was a big determinant.”

Other winning candidates endorsed by the Christian organizations included Sally Burrage in Tustin Unified, Lou Lopez in Anaheim Union High School District, Dirk Voss in Huntington Beach Union High School District, Donna Erickson in Cypress, Jay Gray in Fullerton, Barbara J. Clendineng in Magnolia and Roger Harvey in Ocean View.

Robert Simonds, the leader of the Santa Ana-based Citizens for Excellence in Education, a group favoring a return to biblical values in the schools, had proclaimed a “spiritual battle” to get Christians elected to office.

“We need strong school board members who know right from wrong,” he wrote in a pamphlet offering Christian candidates advice on how to win. “The Bible, being the only true source on right and wrong, should be the guide of board members.”

In deciding which candidates to endorse, however, the two other Orange County-based Christian coalitions used broader criteria. Questionnaires distributed by those groups to the candidates asked, among other things, whether they opposed sex-education programs that portray premarital sex and abortion as “responsible and acceptable choices,” and whether they opposed school-based health clinics and the distribution of condoms on campus.

While the endorsed candidates come from a variety of religious backgrounds, they virtually all shared at least two positions: opposition to abortion and a belief that sexual abstinence should be stressed in responding to various societal ills.

In throwing its support behind the 23 candidates, the Orange County Pro-Family Coalition distributed about 100,000 flyers, many of which were placed under windshield wipers of cars in church parking lots. In addition, the Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition--which endorsed the same candidates--donated money to one of them: Lopez, running in the Anaheim Union High School District. For the others, coalition members offered to walk precincts, make phone calls and make endorsements at public appearances.