Local Elections Decide Range of Offices, Issues : Voting: Long Beach mayor is headed for defeat while smoking ban leads. Elsewhere, ethnic groups make strong gains and many incumbents fare poorly.

Long Beach Mayor Ernie Kell was headed for defeat Tuesday in one of 50 local elections where voters turned out many incumbents, making some dramatic changes in the ethnic makeups of several city councils but forestalling other chances at historic shifts in political power.

In Maywood, where more than 93% of the population is Latino, voters installed the city’s first Latino-majority council. Tomas Martin and Elvira Moreno ousted longtime incumbents Mayor Thomas Engle and Councilwoman Rose Marie Busciglio.

The city of South Gate, where 83% of residents are Latino, also elected its first Latino majority.

In Beverly Hills, incumbent Councilman Robert K. Tanenbaum, the top vote-getter in two previous elections, lost after drawing fire from critics including the Beverly Hills Police Officers Assn. He finished third in an eight-way race, beaten in the contest for two seats by MeraLee Goldman and Les Bronte, both supported by the police union.

In West Hollywood, a sweep of the three seats at stake would have given gays a majority on the five-person council for the first time since 1986.

The winners of two seats were gay men--challenger Steve Martin and incumbent John Heilman. But incumbent Sal Guarriello, a heterosexual, held onto his office.

And in Monterey Park, final unofficial returns showed that voters decided not to make their city the first in California to have an Asian American majority on its council.

Long Beach’s elections loomed significant because of what the results could say about the city’s direction and because of the latest debate on smoking in public places.

In the race for the city’s top post, Kell, 65, was bidding to remain the only mayor Long Beach has known since voters began electing their top official in 1988. However, with more than 50% of the vote counted late Tuesday, Kell was running fifth in a field of 13.

“We’ve had six good years. It’s not the end of the world if we don’t win,” he told a supporter as the early returns were announced.

Kell’s well-financed challengers--those raising more than $100,000--were council members Ray Grabinski and Jeffrey A. Kellogg; former Long Beach City College President Beverly O’Neill; redevelopment board member Don Westerland and Belmont Shore businessman Frank Colonna.

If no candidate won more than 50% of the vote, which given initial returns seemed almost certain, the two top finishers will meet in a runoff.

As of late Tuesday, O’Neill and Grabinski were leading the vote.

Much of the campaign centered on the need to stem crime, create jobs, unite the city’s increasingly diverse neighborhoods and establish an international image for the city, which has seen its economy tumble as the Navy and defense contractors have scaled back or closed.

In other Long Beach elections, two Latinas were making strong bids to become the council’s first Latino members. In the 1st District, Jenny Oropeza, the first Latino elected to the Long Beach school board, waged a well-financed effort. In the 7th District, Tonia Reyes Uranga was considered a leading contender to succeed Grabinski, who is giving up his council seat to run for mayor.

As of late Tuesday, both appeared to have secured positions in runoffs for the council seats.

In the 3rd District, incumbent Douglas S. Drummond faced three challengers, two of whom decided to run after Drummond made anti-gay remarks during a conservative forum last fall. Drummond said gays did not concern him because they were dying from AIDS, and he supported Cuba’s policy of quarantining people with the disease. Drummond later voted with the council majority to censure himself and offered an apology.

Drummond took an early lead in the race.

Long Beach voters also were deciding whether to ban smoking in all businesses used by the public, except in patio restaurant areas and in bars where up to a third of the seating could be set aside for smokers.

As of late Tuesday, it appeared Measure K would be victorious.

Surprisingly, the measure received little attention in a city where wars over proposed smoking bans have generated big news in years past. The council backed down from a 1991 ordinance to outlaw smoking in restaurants after a petition drive financed by the tobacco industry collected enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot. Last July, the council passed a less sweeping ordinance. Once again, a coalition of smoking interests launched a petition drive. So council members, all nonsmokers, decided to put the issue before voters.

In nearby Lomita, voters ousted council incumbents Robert Hargrave, Peter J. Rossick and Chuck Taylor. Their challengers, David Albert, Lawson Pedigo and Ben Traina, said the city needed new leadership because of continued problems with crime and graffiti.

Elsewhere in the South Bay, Carson voters were directly electing a mayor for the first time. The vote followed a bitter campaign pitting Michael I. Mitoma, 50, the city’s appointed mayor, against retired economist James Peoples, 60. Each accused the other of playing racial politics.

With most precincts reporting, Peoples and Mitoma were locked in a close race.

In Monterey Park, where a majority of residents are of Asian descent, the state’s first City Council with an Asian American majority had seemed a possibility. But with all of the city’s 19 precincts reporting, incumbents Fred Balderrama and Marie T. Purvis and challenger Francisco Alonso were victorious.

The losers in the race for three council seats included incumbent Sam Kiang.

Councilwoman Judy Chu is already on the five-member council, and Kiang and two other Chinese Americans--Peter Chan and Mitchell Ing--were among the six candidates.

Nowhere in the San Gabriel Valley was the fight for political clout more bitter than in El Monte, where police officers went door to door trying to oust Mayor Patricia A. Wallach.

The unofficial final vote, however, showed Wallach winning.

The El Monte Police Officers Assn.’s campaign to remove Wallach stemmed from the mayor’s refusal last year to support the hiring of 10 more officers in the city, which ranks near the bottom of the county’s cities in the number of officers per 1,000 residents.

With three candidates for mayor and six for two council seats, the association spent nearly $13,000 on a slate made up of mayoral challenger Terry Keenan, a sheriff’s deputy, and incumbent council members Jack Thurston and Maria F. Avila. Wallach fought back with her own slate, which included Gregory B. Griffith and Planning Commission Chairman George Williams.

Times staff writers Ted Johnson and Ken Ellingwood contributed to this story.