LOCAL RACES : Vote May Be Sign of Discontent : Incumbents are losing in three of four board races for Orange and Santa Ana school districts.

In what appeared to be a message of discontent with the leadership in their school districts, incumbents were losing to challengers in three of four school board races in the Orange and Santa Ana Unified school districts, according to early election returns Tuesday night.

But voters in Irvine appeared to be delivering a more predictable result, as Greg Smith--a local school board member who outspent his two opponents and gained endorsements from a majority of the City Council--held a strong lead over engineer Marc Goldstone in the race for a vacant seat on the council.

“I think my experience as an elected official was a very important factor,” Smith said. “I think we are in a transitional stage in the city, and we face new problems. Perhaps the electorate was more comfortable with someone with experience.”

In the school board races, Martin Jacobson, 40, an accountant, was beating incumbent John Hurley convincingly for a seat on the Orange Unified School District, with about a fifth of the votes counted. Incumbent Alan E. Irish was losing to 31-year-old accountant Rick Ledesma. Probation officer James H. Fearns, 63, and Max Reissmueller, a 25-year-old electronics supervisor, were also leading their races for two open seats on the Orange school board.

In a campaign marked by its vitriol, Fearns credited his victory Tuesday night to running a “clean campaign.”

“I’m very pleased, very pleased,” said Fearns, who lost in a bid for a board seat in 1989. “I didn’t do any bashing or anything within the race, in spite of the propaganda that was put out.”

In the race for two seats on the Santa Ana Unified School District, incumbent Rob Balen, 40, a partner in an environmental consulting firm, and Tom Chaffee, 41, an industrial building engineer, won by narrow margins over five contenders.

Balen said his own victory was tempered by the voters’ rejection of fellow incumbent Richard C. Hernandez, who lost his seat to Chaffee. “I’m sad we’re losing a real valuable school board member,” he said.

In Irvine, the campaign to replace former Councilman William A. (Art) Bloomer was most notable for its low-key tone--a sharp contrast with the divisiveness of past city campaigns.

Campaign placards for the four candidates did not even begin showing up on many of Irvine’s wide parkways until October, and the candidates found themselves in general agreement on two points: that the city needs to lure more jobs and make public safety a top priority.

One reason the Irvine campaign has been so quiet may be that there is simply not as much at stake for the winner as in past council races. Instead of the normal four-year seat, the top vote-getter will serve out only the one year remaining on the council seat held by Bloomer, a retired Marine Corps general who resigned to accept a promotion in Virginia at a security firm.

Meanwhile, in Orange, voters saw a far more wide-open race, complete with angry accusations and jarring disagreements on school policy, as 11 candidates vied for four seats on the school board.

In the past two years, the district has witnessed teacher layoffs, a recall movement targeting five trustees, and a controversial dismissal of a school superintendent. During this year’s campaign, some candidates argued that the very image of the tarnished district was at stake, as the board seeks to restore public confidence in one of the county’s largest districts.

At a series of public forums during the campaign, candidates clashed on everything from campus safety and mechanical violations in an aging 74-bus fleet to employee health benefits and the statewide school voucher initiative that went before voters Tuesday.

Outgoing board member Barry Resnick summed up a feeling of widespread disenchantment when he said: “I am so glad not to have to deal with those people (on the board) again. I have never been involved with such gross incompetence as with this school board.”

In Santa Ana, two incumbents seeking reelection to the Santa Ana Unified School District Board of Education asserted during the campaign that their schools have done an admirable job, graduating more students in the district even as state funding levels dropped.

But five challengers vying for the two seats attacked the board on several fronts. They maintained that many students were not learning English quickly enough under the bilingual education program and that the district had ignored parents’ concerns about swelling class sizes and reduced athletic and elective programs in the schools.

Times correspondents Shelby Grad, Martin Miller and Jon Nalick contributed to this report.