Challengers Seek 3 Seats on Board

Three Los Angeles County supervisors are up for reelection on Tuesday: Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, Don Knabe and Michael D. Antonovich.

Burke, whose 2nd District includes South Los Angeles, Culver City, Inglewood and Compton, is facing a challenge from former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy Guy Mato.

Mato, who now works in real estate, was implicated in a police brutality case while working in Lynwood for the Sheriff’s Department in 1990.

A federal jury ordered him to pay $40,826 to a man who said that Mato had beaten him and knocked out his front teeth.

Mato’s candidacy is backed by the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, the union representing deputies. The union targeted Burke after a labor dispute in which Burke -- along with her colleagues on the board -- refused to support a retirement package that the organization had proposed.

Burke, who has also served in Congress and the state Assembly, is seeking a fourth term.

Her district includes the troubled Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center.

Some critics have accused her of failing to step forward to fix the decades-long problems at the medical center in an effort to avoid stirring up ethnic politics among supporters of the facility, which was founded in the 1970s to improve health care in what was then a mostly black community in South Los Angeles.

Don Knabe, who has represented Long Beach, San Pedro and other South Bay communities in the 4th District since his election in 1996, has two opponents: physician Jayendra Arvindlal Shah and business planning consultant Joan Hillary McDermott. As of two weeks ago, neither had reported significant fundraising success: Shah had loaned his own campaign $7,671 and McDermott had not reported raising any money.

Shah is suing the county, including Knabe, because of a rule requiring a candidate to pay a fee to include a personal statement in the sample ballot sent to registered voters before the election. In his campaign materials, Shah calls Knabe and the current supervisors “the root causes of our misery.”

Antonovich, a 24-year incumbent in the 5th District, which stretches from the high desert to the San Gabriel Valley, is opposed by Santa Clarita environmentalist Lynne Plambeck, and Pasadena resident Linda Jordan, who describes herself as a foster mother and caregiver.

Plambeck, who owns a film recycling business in Burbank, has been active in several major environmental issues in the Santa Clarita Valley.

They include opposition to the massive Newhall Ranch development project and expansion of a landfill. She is working to preserve the Santa Clara River.

Plambeck is a third-term member and president of the Newhall County Water District.