Just 1 Riordan Candidate Has Strong Lead

Mayor Richard Riordan’s unprecedented campaign to shake up the Los Angeles school board drew to a close Tuesday with early results showing one of his candidates clearly leading while three others on his slate were locked in close races.

Challenger Caprice Young, who enjoyed substantial financial support from the mayor, was leading Jeff Horton in the 3rd District, which stretches from Silver Lake to North Hollywood.

Scattered early returns showed that incumbents Barbara Boudreaux and George Kiriyama were virtually tied with their Riordan-backed opponents. David Tokofsky, the only incumbent on Riordan’s slate, was also in a tight race.

On the same ballot, voters chose from among 18 candidates seeking four spots on the Los Angeles Community College board of Trustees. Only one candidate, Georgia Mercer, had established a sizable lead.

In the most highly charged school board race since the anti-busing movement of the late 1970s, the slate backed by Riordan sought to ride a wave of public dissatisfaction with the quality of public education, which stands as the No. 1 issue for the state’s voters.

Riordan collected $2 million from many members of the city’s business elite, giving his candidates as much as a 3-1 spending edge, while also churning up bitter accusations that he was trying to take control of the $6.6-billion district budget for his wealthy friends.

The huge expenditures generated a stream of mailers and the first TV ads in the history of school board campaigns here.

By early evening, though, it appeared that voters had not responded enthusiastically to the unusual level of electioneering. Turnout was on pace to fall below 20% of registered voters, which has been typical of non-mayoral primaries.

At many of the candidates’ campaign headquarters, volunteers continued phoning voters until the polls closed at 8 p.m., hoping to catch working people as they arrived home.

Yolie Flores Aguilar, who challenged Tokofsky in the heavily Latino district that arches from Lincoln Heights to San Fernando, remained calm as her opponent jumped to a lead that she attributed to absentee ballots.

“I expected that,” said Aguilar, who soon drew even. “Mine will show later from the late-afternoon votes.”

As polls were closing, Boudreaux lashed out at Riordan for backing her opponent, Genethia Hayes, in the 1st District, which covers southwest L.A. She said the mayor’s involvement had helped her by angering voters.

“I feel the voters understand the issues and the power plays that have taken place as well as the slanderous remarks that have been made about me,” Boudreaux said.

With four candidates in that race, it was possible that none of them would win a majority of the votes, forcing a runoff.

Mike Lansing, Riordan’s pick to challenge Kiriyama in the 7th District, which stretches from Watts to San Pedro, spent election night playing cards with family members.

“There’s only so much you can do on voting day,” Lansing said.

As the first batch of absentee results arrived, 3rd District candidate Young’s staff whooped and hollered on the patio of Sitton’s Restaurant, a 24-hour diner downstairs from her campaign headquarters in North Hollywood.

Virtually all of the 30 or so supporters who turned out were local high school students or people in their 20s.

Yet, as if to underscore the widespread lack of interest in the school board races, customers inside Sitton’s were glued to a Dodgers game on the television behind the counter--all but ignoring the jubilant Young supporters.

Earlier Tuesday, a high-spirited Riordan joined his candidates for some last-minute campaigning. He walked precincts with Lansing and Young and rode a sound truck with Tokofsky, shouting “This is the mayor” in Spanish.

The mayor set the stage for the historic campaign when he announced in September that he would back and finance challengers to unseat all four incumbents. In a district where test scores are in the bottom third nationally, he said the board had failed the children.

Among the “multiple sins” of the district, Riordan cited the board’s unwillingness to let Supt. Ruben Zacarias have freer rein to run the schools, particularly to fire employees.

Riordan and his candidates said they aim to shift the seven-member board toward the business model of management by setting broad goals, demanding accountability and staying out of day-to-day details of running the 700,000-student district.

Riordan’s candidates have a variety of backgrounds. Lansing, 42, operates the Boys & Girls Club of San Pedro; Hayes, 53, heads the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Los Angeles; and Young, 33, is an IBM manager and former assistant deputy in the mayor’s administration.

Unable to field a challenger against Tokofsky, Riordan eventually took him on the slate. Incumbents Boudreaux, 65, and Kiriyama, 67, are former school principals, and Horton, 51, and Tokofsky, 39, are former high school teachers. Tokofsky’s opponent, Aguilar, 36, is a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Education.

The three incumbents whom Riordan hoped to oust strongly rebutted his criticisms. They said they had already initiated significant reforms that are working, as evidenced by a slight rise in test scores last year and continuing improvement in the dropout rate.

They argued that the best way to sustain those reforms, which include the massive program to end the practice of promoting students who are performing below grade level, is to stick with the people who started them.

Far less attention went to the voting for the Los Angeles Community College District board, which oversees nine campuses with a total of about 100,000 students. The district has been beset with financial difficulties in recent years.

Last year, after cutbacks in response to a severe financial shortfall, state auditors faulted the district for poor management, overspending and lack of planning.

Since then, the trustees have been carrying out a plan of reforms, and the district is again running in the black.

But many onlookers complain that the pace of change has been slow. It remains to be seen whether the district will achieve long-term financial stability.

Sixteen challengers and two incumbents ran for four open seats on the board.

The largest campaign contributors in the college trustee elections are the system’s various unions, particularly the American Federation of Teachers College Guild, which represents faculty.

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Times staff writers Duke Helfand, Jill Leovy, Caitlin Liu, Solomon Moore, Louis Sahagun and Joseph Trevino and correspondent Monte Morin contributed to this story.

* OTHER RACES: Councilman Nate Holden may face a runoff, while police and fire bond issue trails. A20

* ELECTION TABLES: A20

* ON THE WEB

Final unofficial results from Tuesday’s Los Angeles City Council, school board and community college district elections will be available on The Times’ Web site today at: https://www.latimes.com/results.