ABC Teachers Could Be Biggest Election Winners : Schools: Union-backed candidates victorious amid labor dispute. Incumbents in districts throughout area are driven from office.

Teacher-backed candidates swept the field in the ABC school board election Tuesday, tilting the balance of power toward the teachers on the last day of a bitter strike.

Winning board seats in the ABC school system were incumbents David Montgomery and Sally Morales Havice and challenger Howard Kwon. All were endorsed by the ABC Federation of Teachers.

Kwon was the leading vote-getter and will replace board President Catherine Grant, who finished far back of the union-endorsed candidates.

For teachers, the election results were a note of triumph in a labor dispute that cost many striking teachers about $1,800 each in lost wages. The teachers returned to work Wednesday with no assurance that their 11-day strike would win them a better contract.

The ABC contest was among more than 15 school and college district board races in the Southeast area. Many of them were hard-fought campaigns that felled incumbents.

Voters in Norwalk and La Mirada stampeded two incumbents from office, while a third survived a close call.

In the Montebello Unified School District, voters delivered a split decision to the incumbents who stood for reelection just three years after overspending put Montebello Unified on the brink of bankruptcy.

The results in Paramount also were mixed. Voters supported only part of a slate put together by former Supt. Richard B. Caldwell, who was critical of district leadership.

Incumbents tumbled in Downey Unified, Lynwood Unified, El Rancho Unified, South Whittier and the Whittier Union High School District. In the community college races, incumbents lost in the Cerritos and Compton community college districts.

In Compton, the board race drew 20 candidates--even though board members lost their salaries and authority in a state takeover of the financially struggling school system. The winners include Sam Littleton, the only incumbent in the contest.

In ABC Unified, Kwon emerged as the front-runner despite having to fight off allegations that he changed grades for a fee while translating Korean transcripts for the ABC school system.

“I have suffered by the allegations, but I try to tell people that my campaign is for a positive cause--to put my expertise into education,” said Kwon, 56, a retired administrator and teacher. “I feel good. We played fair and I did my best.”

The source of many of the allegations was Charlie Chung, who finished last among six candidates. He also had accused Kwon, who recently moved to Lakewood from Orange County, of being a carpetbagger.

“They are all facts,” Chung said. “Integrity is most important for elected officials.”

The district confirmed that it had investigated Kwon, but would not release the findings.

Chung could not document the grade-changing allegations. Kwon, who said he had a district letter exonerating him, never provided proof either.

Board President Grant, who leaves office after eight years, said her candidacy was a casualty of the teachers’ strike.

“The strike was simply a political ploy,” Grant said. “The intention all along was to get members fired up to work for their slate. To do that, they had to use all the typical tactics: exaggeration, scapegoating, false and misleading statements, rumor and innuendo--to get people to work for their crusade.

“It was all about power. It was all about the election. It was about the union gaining control of the school board.”

But union leaders said the board forced the strike when it voted 4 to 3 earlier this month to impose a contract that included a 1.5% pay cut and larger class sizes. One day before, teachers had overwhelmingly voted to reject the proposed contract.

The teachers’ view prevailed on Election Day because of old-fashioned door-to-door and telephone campaigning by district teachers and their supporters. The administration countered by keeping schools open during the strike and sending letters to parents explaining the district position.

Teachers found support in voters such as 31-year-old Gina Bryant. “Teachers need more support on the board,” said Bryant outside her Cerritos polling place. “This strike shouldn’t have happened.”

With Grant’s loss, four of the seven board members are on record saying that the district can offer more to teachers. If that happens, some district administrators warn that the result could be either painful budget cuts or financial peril for ABC Unified, which serves Cerritos, Artesia, Hawaiian Gardens and parts of surrounding cities.

But reelected incumbent Morales Havice disagreed. “The board could have prevented the (strike) by not being so stubborn,” she said.

Paramount

In the Paramount Unified School District board race, the clear winners are challenger E. Betty Harkema, who finished first, and incumbent Janet Miller, who finished a close second. The other open seat on the five-member board was a tossup.

Wednesday’s unofficial returns showed former Supt. Caldwell just five votes ahead of incumbent Shirley Elliott, who ran on his slate. An undetermined number of votes, including absentee ballots delivered on Election Day, must still be counted.

If Caldwell’s lead holds, he will return as a board member to the same district that forced him into retirement last year following more than a decade as superintendent.

Neither Miller nor Harkema said they look forward to serving with Caldwell, who is suing Miller, two other board members and the Paramount school district.

Caldwell is seeking more than $450,000 in damages on the grounds that he lost his job as superintendent because of his ethnicity--he is Anglo--and his age--he is 68.

Harkema, whose husband, Henry, is a Paramount City Council member, Miller and their supporters gathered Tuesday night in the Paramount Elk’s Lodge, where they tabulated election results on a chalkboard. Next to Caldwell’s name, someone had drawn a hand with the thumb pointed decidedly down.

“I could work with him, of course,” Miller said halfheartedly. “I could work with anyone if I had to.”

Caldwell said his lawsuit would continue, but that he would not participate in board deliberations on it. “Now it’s really Richard Caldwell’s attorney against the insurance company’s attorney,” he said. “I’m not involved.”

During the campaign, Caldwell said that the district had declined since his departure, which he blamed on the school board and new Supt. Michele Lawrence.

Montebello

Voters in the Montebello Unified School District had the choice of blaming two incumbents for financial problems that nearly bankrupted the district or crediting them for a fledgling turnaround.

Incumbent Darrell H. Heacock survived. But Paul A. Lopez, a board member since 1989, lost. “I’m appreciative of the confidence the community has in me,” said Heacock, 60, a board member since 1979. “I’ll try to be worthy of it.”

Challengers Hector A. Chacon and Thomas M. Calderon were elected to fill the other two seats on the five-member board.

The leading vote-getter, Chacon, is a 26-year-old job-training administrator at Cerritos College. “In talking to the voters, they said: ‘You’re young. And we want to see some new blood that’s going to do some positive change in this district,’ ” Chacon said.

Norwalk-La Mirada

In the Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District, two of the three incumbents took a pounding. Lupe Flores-McClintock and Armando Moreno Jr., both one-term board members, finished seventh and eighth in an eight-person race for four seats.

The top finishers were Pat Ruiz, a retired elementary teacher, Darryl Rodney Adams, a teacher in a neighboring district, and Gabriel (Gabe) Garcia, community services administrator for the city of Orange.

Incumbent Jesse M. Luera squeaked past challenger Sandra (Sandy) J. Thorn to win the fourth seat on the seven-member board.

All the incumbents said they were victims of dirty politics and anti-incumbency sentiment.

“With the economy the way it is, people are looking for answers, and they think a change will provide the answers,” Moreno said.

Flores-McClintock said she was damaged by a cartoon in a local newspaper that portrayed her as a pig feeding at the public trough. She has three relatives who work for the district. All were district employees before she joined the board.

“Don’t feel bad for me,” she told well-wishers. “I’m still going to be out there pushing for kids.”

Luera, a board member since 1975, received more votes than anyone the last time he ran for office. This time, he barely finished ahead of a relatively unknown challenger. The difference was probably publicity over a lawsuit against Luera, 61. Norwalk officials fired Luera on May 5 as social services director after at least two women workers complained of sexual harassment. City officials would not say why Luera was fired.

“I was fortunate to survive,” Luera said. But “people are fair. They evaluate you for what you’ve done. I think people saw through a lot of that stuff.”

Compton

In the Compton Unified School District, having a familiar name probably helped incumbent Sam Littleton, who finished second in a race for four seats. He was the only incumbent who sought another term as trustee on the seven-member board.

The other winners are top vote-getter Toi Jackson, a trainer for a computer marketing company, and Michael L. Hopwood, a teacher in the Pomona Unified School District, who finished third.

The fourth board seat remains unsettled. Challengers Gorgonio Sanchez Jr. and Mae Thomas finished in a dead heat. Each received 2,281 votes, 8.3% of the total. Uncounted ballots will probably break the tie, but if not, the registrar will recount the results. A tie has not happened for years, said spokeswoman Grace Romero. She added that office veterans remember that long ago, a tie was once settled by a coin toss.

Littleton rarely speaks at board meetings, but he sticks around. The retired social worker, who never tells his age, won his fourth term.

Like other board members, Littleton lost his authority and his $1,000 a month stipend when the state took over management of the struggling school system in July. Littleton said the fact that he still wants the job proves that he cares about children.

Nineteen other candidates also wanted the job, although fewer than half attended the last two candidate forums. The audience wasn’t much larger. Official figures were unavailable Wednesday, but poll workers said voter turnout was low.

Many voters saw the board race as irrelevant, said Margie Garrett, president of the Compton Education Assn.

Compton College

In the race for two seats on the board of the troubled Compton Community College District, incumbent Trustee James E. Carter lost to longtime rival Carl E. Robinson Sr. This was the fifth time the two men had faced each other in a college board election.

A board trustee from 1980 to 1985, Robinson lost his seat to Carter by one vote during his final term and has been trying to regain it ever since.

In Area 1, college speech professor Melanie Andrews won the seat vacated when Legrand H. Clegg II became Compton city attorney.

Times community correspondents Emily Adams, Psyche Pascual, John Pope, Phillip Garcia, Suzan Schill and Times staff writer Brian Ray Ballou contributed to this report.