Absentees Put Lopez on Top in Tight Race

After a cliffhanging week of tallying absentee ballots, controversial incumbent Nativo V. Lopez on Wednesday appeared to edge out another longtime trustee for a seat on the Santa Ana Unified School District’s Board of Education, according to the Orange County registrar of voters.

Lopez got 10,542 votes to 13-year veteran Audrey Yamagata-Noji’s 10,337 votes, making him the third-highest vote-getter in the Nov. 7 election. Santa Ana teacher Sal Tinajero and incumbent Rosemarie Avila also were elected to the governing board of Orange County’s largest school district. After regular ballots were counted last week, Lopez trailed Yamagata-Noji by 131 votes.

A final count of absentee and provisional ballots is expected next week, registrar of voters officials said. Lopez said Wednesday he feels confident of victory.

“It puts me in third-place positioning, but I overcame a [131]-vote” deficit, he said at a news conference Wednesday at his legal clinic in Santa Ana, Hermandad Mexicana Nacional.

“There’s a trend, and quite frankly, we’re expecting the provisional ballots will be solidly in our favor,” Lopez said.

With the apparent reelections of Lopez and Avila, and the victory of newcomer Sal Tinajero, the district could have an all-Latino board of trustees in a district where Latinos make up 92% of the student population. Board President John Palacio and member Nadia Maria Davis, who were elected two years ago, also are Latino. Avila, who was born in Guatemala to parents of German descent and lived there until she was 6, also considers herself a Latina.

The ethnic makeup of the board of trustees is just another sign of changing times in the community, which has had a Latino majority population for many years.

“It’s . . . a well-worn trend that we’ve seen with the Italians, the Irish, the Germans and the Jews,” said Fred Smoller, chairman of Chapman University’s political science department and a member of the county’s Human Relations Commission. “In a democracy, people eventually move into elected offices as the culture’s numbers in the community increase.”

Smoller said the reverse is true in school districts where ethnic minorities make up a majority of students. “For example, why, as in Orange Unified, where half the kids are Latino, are all the board members white?” Smoller asked. “Yet when Latinos take political power, it’s noteworthy.”

A Latino majority first emerged on the Santa Ana school board in 1996, when Lopez and former board member Aida Espinoza were elected.

But the cultural unification on the board may not end the infighting between board members. Lopez and Palacio often are critical of Avila. On Wednesday, they questioned her characterization of herself as a Latina.

“I don’t see her in that vein,” Lopez said. “But latecomers [arrive] as they will; we’ll accept them.”

Avila, who is married to a Latino, said her years as a child in Guatemala give her insight into the Latino culture and the ability to “plant my feet on both sides.”

While there may be divisiveness, Avila said there are many issues that all board members agree on.

“I think Nativo and I have agreed on things in the past and have voted together on some issues,” Avila said. “They are more into facilities, and because I’m a schoolteacher and have an educational background, I think they still tend to listen to me on some educational issues. . . . With [Tinajero] and I having teaching backgrounds, we will have something in common there.”

Lopez’s third-place showing came as a surprise to some. Lopez had raised the most money and had won support from local Latino groups and union. He blamed the closeness of the race on what he said was an effort by conservatives to question and discredit him during his first term in office.

Hermandad was accused of election violations four years ago in the aftermath of the rancorous defeat of U.S. Rep. Robert K. Dornan. That election was marred by charges that ineligible Latinos voted for the winner, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove). But after a yearlong inquiry, the county grand jury declined to indict the organization.

Hermandad and other Latino rights groups have since formed a legal team to investigate allegations that poll workers turned away some Latino voters during the Nov. 7 election.

“No other Latino elected official has ever been the target of sustained and aggressive vilification and demonization during the course of my first term in office,” Lopez said Wednesday, reading from a prepared statement.