Awaiting a Winner : Board of Supervisors: Yvonne Brathwaite Burke leads Diane Watson by 775 votes with uncounted absentee ballots to determine the outcome.

With more than 100,000 absentee ballots still to be counted and Yvonne Brathwaite Burke leading Diane Watson by 775 votes, the historic race to elect a black to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors remained too close to call Wednesday.

Updated results from the hard-fought campaign will not be available until Monday at the earliest, officials said. But election workers on Wednesday began the laborious process of verifying signatures on the absentee ballots.

Watson dispatched aides to the elections office in Commerce early Wednesday to monitor the ballot count--and Burke quickly followed suit and sent her own team.

Like the results of the Burke-Watson race, there remained much uncertainty about the overall message voters sent Tuesday and about what it means for a county board that is facing tough economic times.

On Wednesday, candidates, pundits and political scientists sifted through the ashes of the campaigns, trying to explain why voters seemed to back away from the national trends of political change and the inclusion of women as they moved down their ballots to county measures and races.

Observers were also trying to sort out the campaign rhetoric from the political realities in determining just what direction the county board will take.

Though voters approved term limits for the state’s congressional delegation, they soundly rejected the county’s reform measures--Propositions B and C--to elect a county mayor and enlarge the Board of Supervisors to nine members.

And three-term incumbent Supervisor Deane Dana convincingly turned back a strong challenge by Rolling Hills Mayor Gordana Swanson by a 56% to 44% margin.

Proposition A, a property tax assessment to pay for county park projects, was approved. The measure will fund $540 million in improvements to parks, beaches, the Hollywood Bowl, the Los Angeles Zoo and other recreational facilities.

Political scientists and consultants said the reform measures failed because they were complex and needed a vigorous campaign to sell them to voters. Supervisor Mike Antonovich, an opponent of the measures, called their defeat “a grand slam for taxpayers” who made it clear “they don’t want more bureaucrats, gridlock or waste.”

Other messages were more difficult to decipher.

“Are we going to see a reformed Deane Dana or the old Deane Dana?,” asked Robert Alaniz, a spokesman for Supervisor Gloria Molina.

Dana, despite 12 years on the board, portrayed himself as an agent of change who was “leading the fight” against scandal and abuse of power.

Molina said she is waiting to see how Dana will vote in the wake of his reelection. “I hope it’s not a lot of rhetoric,” said Molina, who had objected to Dana’s including her name in his campaign literature. “Because I’ll be the first to call him on it.” Dana did not return calls for comment on his election victory or on his plans for his next term in office.

Campaign consultants said that Dana ran a well-organized campaign. But political scientists said that, in the end, it was the incumbent’s ability to raise more funds that made the difference.

“Money is still the mother’s milk of politics,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffee, senior associate at the Center for Politics & Policy at Claremont College. “It astounds me that (Dana) was able to convince people he was an agent of change.”

“Money made the difference,” agreed Swanson.

Campaign disclosure reports show that Dana outspent Swanson by about four-to-one to win the 4th District seat. The district extends along the coast from Marina del Rey to Long Beach and then inland to Diamond Bar.

“That’s a humongous spending advantage,” said Garry South, Swanson’s campaign manager. “The reality is that on Election Day, one-half of the voters knew very little about Gordana Swanson.”

But Dana’s advisers said that Swanson made tactical mistakes and ran an overly negative campaign that failed to provide voters with an alternative.

“She never defined herself,” said H. Eric Schockman, professor of political science at USC.

“Nothing positive was ever presented” by Swanson, said Harvey Englander, Dana’s campaign consultant, noting that in the final weeks of the campaign he began to emphasize a positive message about Dana.

Money and power of incumbency also may have tipped the balance in the Burke-Watson race. Burke was backed by retiring Supervisor Kenneth Hahn and much of the county’s political establishment. Hahn alone gave Burke $80,000 from his own campaign fund. Burke and Watson each spent more than $1 million in the campaign.

Some consultants said the national anti-incumbency and women’s trends had faded by Election Day, which may explain why they did not have as great an impact on the down-the-ballot races.

“Change was just a gimmick” for many candidates, said pollster Arnold Steinberg, who worked for Dana and several other candidates.

“The anti-incumbency (movement) was not as strong in November as it was in June,” when Dana failed to garner the 50%-plus-one majority in the primary necessary to avoid a runoff, said Englander.

Don Knabe, Dana’s campaign manager said the twin issues of change and women got Swanson as far as she came in Tuesday’s balloting.

In the Burke-Watson race, it was style rather than substance that defined the two candidates, Schockman and others said--because their beliefs on the major issues are so similar. Burke was expected to bring a businesslike conciliatory approach to the board, whereas Watson is known for her confrontational style.

The two were running in the 2nd District, which includes South-Central Los Angeles and part of the Westside.

Burke insisted that her election would further shake up the board, a previously all-white, all-male enclave that last year gained its first Latino supervisor this century. “There definitely will be change,” Burke said Wednesday. “There will be a greater sensitivity to minorities.”

Burke has promised to join Molina in steering more of the county’s $1 billion in contracts to minority- and women-owned businesses and in backing campaign contribution limits for supervisorial candidates. She also has pledged to push for term limits for supervisors and for promoting more African-Americans to top county jobs. The county now has only one black department head. Burke would be certain to be more outspoken and aggressive than Hahn, who has been weakened in recent years by a stroke.

Watson, who based her campaign on shaking up county government, would be even more likely to rock the boat.

On Wednesday, Watson said she is waiting for the final ballot results before deciding whether to ask for a recount.

“It’s not over yet,” Watson said. “I owe it to the people in this community to wait the process out.” She said she will not concede defeat until the final tally is available.

Watson said she called Charles Weissburd, the county registrar-recorder, and asked for an investigation of what she termed “irregularities,” including reports of ballots that did not include her name and precincts in which no votes were recorded.

“We think something happened in the polling places that shorted us on the vote,” Watson said late Wednesday before about 100 somber supporters at her Crenshaw campaign offices. “We feel our votes should have come in stronger from the kind of feedback we were getting on the phones, my precinct walking and our own polling.”

Weissburd said that he would look into any complaints by Watson. But as of late Wednesday, he said, he had received no specifics. Nor had his office independently received any reports of irregularities, he said.

Burke’s two most important backers--U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters and Hahn--declared Burke the winner. They noted that Burke led Watson in the absentee ballots that had been counted as of Tuesday--and they predicted the trend would continue.

“I’m not worried,” Burke campaign manager Herb Wesson said.

But Burke was more cautious. When Hahn asked her at her campaign headquarters Wednesday morning, “Isn’t victory sweet?” she responded: “When this is over, it will be sweeter.”

With all 1,087 precincts in the district reporting, Burke clung to a 775-vote lead over Watson out of nearly 400,000 ballots cast. Both campaigns estimated that about 20,000 of the 100,000 absentee ballots to be counted are from the 2nd District.

“Last night was probably a night that I wouldn’t want anyone to go through,” Burke told the crowd of supporters Wednesday, noting that her husband, Bill Burke, was hospitalized briefly with the flu during the long night but was back at work Wednesday.

She said her 18-year-old daughter broke the tension about 3 a.m. by saying: “I don’t know what you’re going through inside, but your hair’s holding up.”