LOCAL ELECTIONS / CITY COUNCILS : Wins by Latinos, Women Change Political Scene : History is made in Santa Ana, Orange and other races, but many victors downplay the diversity issue.

Just like their counterparts across the nation, voters in many of Orange County’s local elections spelled relief C-H-A-N-G-E.

Women and Latinos made precedent-setting gains on several city councils. Numerous incumbents were turned away. Laguna Beach, the county’s bastion of liberalism, took a decidedly conservative turn. And in the hard-to-figure-category, voters in Fullerton reelected a councilman who was booted out of office just five months ago in a $200,000 recall election.

Even before Tuesday’s balloting, the county’s political landscape was expected to change because of the term limits in force in several cities and the unusual number of veteran politicians who bowed out this year.

But the election results, in some cases, transformed the political terrain more thanexpected and, on the whole, suggest that Orange County, like the rest of the country, will have some hills where there were valleys, and valleys where there were hills.

“We certainly have made history in the city of Santa Ana,” attorney Alfred Amezcua said.

Councilman Miguel A. Pulido Jr. became Santa Ana’s first Latino mayor in a close eight-candidate race. Despite criticism about his seemingly wavering views on Proposition 187, supporters say Pulido’s victory heralds a new era of inclusion for the city’s rapidly growing Latino majority.

Said Amezcua, “The Hispanic community ought to be very proud for the first time to have somebody who is representing our goals and aspirations.”

Pulido, who owns a muffler shop, said, “I see myself as a person who has paid his dues, who cares about this city, and sees that it has a lot of potential--and who happens to be a Hispanic. But that is not my primary credential.”

At a time when tensions on immigration may be boiling over statewide--in the wake of Proposition 187’s passage--voters in Anaheim and San Clemente also elevated Latinos to council seats for the first time.

“This is a real changing of the guard,” Anaheim’s Lou Lopez said Wednesday, after only two hours of sleep.

An Anaheim police officer for 25 years, Lopez will remain on the force for the time being, which may make him ineligible to vote on certain budget matters.

“We made history,” Lopez said. “It’s a big breakthrough and I want to be a positive role model for the entire community.”

In San Clemente, where ethnic relations were strained last year by a clash between white and Latino teen-agers at a beach parking lot that left one youth dead, Steve Apodaca became the city’s first Latino council member.

A 43-year-old insurance agent, Apodaca ran on a platform of retaining businesses in the city and fighting crime and gang violence.

“The votes (I received) didn’t come just from Latinos,” said Apodaca, who vowed to represent all of his constituency. “They came from people across the board who are concerned about the future.”

In another first for diversity, Orange voters got their first female mayor in Joanne Coontz, who in 1986 became that city’s first councilwoman. She, too, sought to downplay the diversity question. “I’m an individual; I don’t worry about the male-female question,” she said.

Voters in Stanton, Buena Park, and Lake Forest also rejected incumbents in favor of new blood.

The newcomers in Stanton, like those from Brea to Boston, ran anti-crime, lower-tax campaigns that struck a responsive chord with the electorate. Challengers David John Shawver, 47, a former city council member, and Brian Donahue, 56, director of a Regional Occupational Program in Whittier, edged out incumbents Don Martinez and Linda Pappas Diaz with promises to rid Beach Boulevard of prostitutes and cut Stanton’s utility tax.

Perhaps most surprising, voters in Laguna Beach rejected Mayor Ann Christoph in what observers there described as a conservative sweep of council seats.

Another newcomer whose message rang true was La Habra’s Dorothy May Rush, a 60-year-old homemaker whose anti-gang rhetoric resulted in her home being firebombed and shot at. She was that city’s top vote-getter.

“I think they made a statement by electing me,” Rush said. “They are fed up with the mess that La Habra is in. The city is full of trash and debris and the gang activity is bad.”

In the most-perplexing category: the Fullerton election results. Don Bankhead, a retired Fullerton police captain, was one of three council members ousted in a June recall election after they voted to impose the city’s first utility tax.

The recall election cost the taxpayers $200,000, but voters apparently thought Bankhead was worth another try.

“I feel somewhat vindicated,” said Bankhead, who said his ouster was “a very sad time in my life. I think that the silent majority finally spoke out.”

Some communities did stick with the tried and true. But even then, some incumbents had a surprisingly tough time of it.

In Westminster, Councilman Tony Lam, the nation’s first Vietnamese American to win an elected office, staved off a challenge and hung on to win by a slim margin.

In Anaheim, Mayor Tom Daly cruised to a decisive victory over challenger Curtis Stricker in a race that proved to be a dramatic contrast to the bitter battle two years ago when Daly upset then-incumbent Mayor Fred Hunter.

Experience won out in Huntington Beach, where a near-record 22 candidates sought four seats, but three of the victors--Shirley S. Dettloff, 59, chair of the planning commission; former Mayor Peter Green, 68, and Councilman Ralph Bauer--support development of a portion of the Bolsa Chica wetlands in exchange for restoration of marshes, a divisive issue in that city.

Times staff writers Lee Romney and Greg Hernandez and correspondents Debra Cano, Leslie Earnest and Tom Ragan contributed to this report.

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