Elections ’94 : SCHOOL BOARDS : Most Incumbents, a Few Challengers Lead

Incumbents were ahead in many Orange County school board races Tuesday night, with a handful of conservative challengers holding leads in early election returns.

With more than a third of the precincts counted in many districts, Newport-Mesa Unified School District candidate Wendy Leece--who ran unsuccessfully four years ago by blasting the district’s sex-education program--was leading write-in candidate Oscar Santoyo and longtime incumbent Roderick H. MacMillian, whose name remained on the ballot though he recently withdrew from the race.

But in the Saddleback Valley Unified School District, where the election of a conservative challenger would change the balance of power on a bitterly divided school board, moderate incumbents Bobbee Cline and Dore J. Gilbert retained strong leads in early election returns, despite strong campaigns waged by conservatives Dave Schultz and Pat Soriano.

Schultz blamed his likely defeat on rumors about his connections to the religious right, saying: “When somebody labels you . . . it’s difficult to shake that label off.”

Incumbents were leading in all four community college districts, the Laguna Beach, Los Alamitos and Tustin unified school districts and most of the small elementary districts in northern and western Orange County. Two of three incumbents in the Anaheim Union High School District were also among the top three vote-getters.

In the Garden Grove Unified School District, the largest local district with seats up for grabs this year, conservatives Terry Cantrell and Bob Harden were leading incumbents Dick Hain and Frank E. Noe with one-third of the precincts counted. In the Irvine Unified School District, early returns showed Hank Adler ahead of incumbent Steve McArthur.

Garden Grove front-runner Cantrell said he would try to raise academic standards in his district. “The reason I ran is that I was tired of griping,” he said.

Adler, who was running second behind incumbent Margie Wakeham, promised to reduce class sizes and said: “Public education has to reinvent itself.”

In the Capistrano Unified School District, absentee voters favored Dorsey Brause--vice president of a local Christian college and head of the South County chapter of the right-wing California Republican Assembly--over incumbent Annette B. Gude.

“It’s the first time the conservatives have really come together in these school board races. The support that we’ve gotten is phenomenal,” said Mark Bucher, leader of the Education Alliance, a countywide group formed this year to elect conservatives to school boards.

“The groundswell has just been incredible,” Bucher said. “We’re certainly not planning on winning all of our races by any stretch of the imagination, but this movement is growing in strength everywhere.”

Conservative and religious groups had targeted Orange County school board races during this campaign season.

Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition held an organizational meeting in Orange County this fall to help mobilize voters. And the Education Alliance--a political action committee that sprang from last year’s failed statewide campaign to provide parents with educational vouchers--helped finance about 30 candidates in 15 districts.

Also, for the first time, members of Orange County’s largest church, Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, produced their own voter’s guide, which listed local candidates’ views on issues such as homosexuality, abortion and euthanasia.

Leece, Cantrell, Harden and Adler were all backed by the Education Alliance, as were Schultz and Soriano. Several of them were also endorsed by the California Republican Assembly, which represents the far-right faction of the Republican Party.

“It’s been a very hard race for me,” Leece said Tuesday night. “I’ve been attacked and criticized. . . . I hope this vindicates me and what I stand for.”

The Education Alliance spent about $36,000 in October buying spots on conservative slate mailers and helping candidates contact absentee voters.