Christian Right Soldiers On in O.C. School Board Races

Cliff Berning is a rarity in modern politics. A candidate for a hotly contested school board race in Fullerton, he takes pride in calling himself an “onward soldier” of the Christian right.

He favors school prayer--with a passion.

He also believes in creationism, and though he teaches elementary school in the Los Angeles Unified School District, he contends the story of Adam, Eve and Genesis ought to be taught in all public schools as the literal and indisputable start of human life.

“I am pro-life, I am pro-creation,” said Berning, 42. “I believe in the Bible and in prayer.”

After a pause, he asked and answered his own question.

“Am I a member of the Christian right?” he said, laughing uproariously. “You better believe it, pal!”

Despite being more nakedly open than many who share his beliefs, Berning is hardly alone. He’s one of several candidates running for various school board seats at a time when the Christian right is once again making inroads nationally.

In Orange County, Christian right candidates are seeking seats not only in Fullerton but also in Garden Grove and the Saddleback Valley of South County.

Jean Hessburg, a spokeswoman for People for the American Way, a Los Angeles-based liberal lobbying group that monitors the activities of the Christian right and closely watches Southern California school board races, says such candidates--when elected--”blur the line between church and state.”

Said Michael Hudson of the same organization: “In the 1992 elections, the nation became awakened to the religious right’s takeover attempt of school boards.”

Hudson says school districts should “fear” a takeover by the Christian right, which he argues will push its own ideological agenda, at the risk of polarizing parents, teachers and students and stretching the limits of what can be legally taught in California classrooms.

In Orange County, incumbent Karen M.B. Chavez, 33, and former business owner Kim Ann Guth, 41, are seeking seats on the five-member Fullerton School District Board--which oversees the city’s elementary schools--under the backing of the conservative Orange County Education Alliance.

Like Berning, a politician seeking seats on both the Fullerton City Council and the Fullerton Joint Union High School District--which oversees secondary schools--Chavez and Guth favor an aggressive “back-to-basics” curriculum.

Berning has the open support of the National Rifle Assn. and bitterly opposes Goals 2000, a controversial education agenda supported by the Clinton administration. For that matter, most Christian right candidates in Orange County oppose Goals 2000, and in Berning’s words, view President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton as “the enemy. . . . They’re definitely not in our camp.”

An advocate of Bible studies in the classrooms and libraries of all public schools, Berning declined to say whether his own classes in the Los Angeles district discuss creationism as well as chapter and verse of the Old and New Testament.

This year, he has plenty of company, even if his own Christian-right profile veers a bit higher than most of his cautious counterparts, who favor a more guarded approach.

As with the race in Fullerton, an equally fierce struggle is being waged in the Saddleback Valley Unified School District of south Orange County, where seven candidates--four challengers and three incumbents--are vying for three open seats on a five-member board.

Debbie Hughes, 43, and Frank L. Ury, 32, are each campaigning for a second term in office under what many perceive as the banner of the Christian right, though both have sought to distance themselves from such labels in the past.

Ury, Hughes and challenger David C. Greene, 61, are running as a three-member alliance, hoping to oust two-term Trustee Marcia L. Birch, 46, in an effort to swing the balance of power to more conservative--and more openly Christian--members like themselves.

Hughes has been an outspoken critic of federal grants, saying district “control” is stymied by accepting such funds. But in 1992, both Ury and Hughes challenged criticisms that they were part of a right-wing push to elect fundamentalist Christians to local education boards, whether through “stealth” campaigns or other maneuvers.

Nevertheless, the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon of Anaheim, the patriarch of the Traditional Values Coalition, endorsed both candidates in 1992 and has again this year.

The Saddleback Valley Education Assn., which represents the district’s teachers, has endorsed those who oppose the Ury-Hughes-Greene triumvirate--challengers Wayne R. Hogrefe, 45, Sandie Franklin Gonzales, 51, and Don Sedgwick, 31.

With a budget of $140 million, the Saddleback district is one of the fastest growing in the county with an enrollment of 31,854. It has four high schools, four intermediate schools and 25 elementary schools.

Just a few miles down Interstate 5 from South County, the issue of the Christian right and how it affects public education drew national attention to north San Diego County in 1993, when the community of Vista elected a Christian right majority to its five-member board.

After rancorous debates over school prayer, federally and state-funded “free breakfast” programs some construed as welfare, and, of course, abortion and creationism, the citizens of Vista took the unusual step of throwing the Christian right members out of office.

A recall election unseated two of the three, while a third member chose to step down. In its wake lay a community so divided over educational policies that many say the wounds have yet to heal three years later.

Some local critics are openly fearful that the lessons of Vista may be lost on Orange County and that such a scenario may be playing itself out in Fullerton, the Saddleback Valley and Garden Grove.

In Garden Grove, seven candidates are vying for three vacant seats in a campaign in which the menu of issues has ranged from abortion to physician-assisted suicide, angering a bevy of parents and teachers, who question what either really has to do with the public education of minors.

Both the Pro-Life Political Action Committee and the Orange County Christian Coalition have immersed themselves in the race, polling each and every candidate on all of their views regarding, among other things, abortion, homosexuality and curfews for teenagers. The Garden Grove teachers’ association, meanwhile, has endorsed those who oppose the Christian right.

A flock of right-leaning Republicans, including state Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) and state Sen. Rob Hurtt (R-Garden Grove), are endorsing 36-year-old Kerri Weisenberger and 43-year-old Linda Paulsen.

Conservative board members Terry Cantrell and Bob Harden also have endorsed the two newcomers, as has the Education Alliance of Orange County. Cantrell is an administrator of a private school belonging to Bethel Baptist Church of Santa Ana that includes Hardin’s children as students and where Paulsen’s children were enrolled until recently. Weisenberger has “home-schooled” two of her own children, in what’s becoming a popular trend among many Christian parents who want to avoid public schools.

Paulsen’s and Weisenberger’s opponents argue that the pair’s religious ideology will act as a hindrance to the board’s efforts to address educational policy. With Harden and Cantrell already seated, a Christian-right majority could immediately transform Garden Grove, as it did Vista, should either newcomer be elected.

“I’m not worried about people finding out I’m a Christian, but what’s the parallel?” Paulsen said. “I don’t advocate religion in school. I am a conservative educator, but I don’t consider myself far right. I am not a right-wing wacko fanatic.”

Paulsen said she even takes issue with some of the planks in the platform of the Tustin-based Education Alliance, which promotes a back-to-basics curriculum tinged with “Americanism.”

Suzanne SooHoo, an assistant professor of education at Chapman University, said the religious right--as well as the liberal left--have a place on school boards. But they should not use their elected office as a bully pulpit.

The problem is, as SooHoo sees it, that “impassioned advocacy is not necessarily an informed advocacy.”

“The conflict is the right to be who they are and what is right for children,” SooHoo said. “Schools are a very complex institution with multiple pieces that need to be looked at holistically. You can’t take one thing out of context and crusade it, with a blind allegiance to a larger cause.”

SooHoo said school board members must not forget their charge, to represent students who often come from differing ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds.

Garden Grove school board incumbents warn that if the conservative candidates win a majority in their city, almost $20 million in federally funded programs, including free breakfast and lunch programs and counseling services, could be eliminated, just as they were temporarily in Vista.

“I’m afraid they’ll begin to micro-manage and target and intimidate selected teachers for resignations and removal,” said John Holm, who’s running on a three-person ticket with the two incumbents in an effort to take votes from Weisenberger and Paulsen. “I think that will be anybody that doesn’t agree with them.”

Holm said that he and other candidates have even been called “un-Christian” by Paulsen and Weisenberger supporters.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “We’re all Christians. . . . We’re just not Christian enough for them.”

Times staff writer Rene Lynch and correspondents Kimberly Brower and Mimi Ko Cruz contributed to this report.

* SADDLEBACK VALLEY UNIFIED: Seven candidates are campaigning for three seats. B3