County Vote Shows Some Surprises : Elections: A 15-year incumbent is defeated in countywide education race. Also, a well-known political name is no help to another candidate.

A 15-year incumbent who never had been challenged lost a countywide education race this week, as did the son of a Ventura County supervisor. Local school board contests in Moorpark and the Conejo Valley, as well as a special election to replace a longtime Thousand Oaks City Council member also were decided.

Timothy B. Flynn, the son of County Supervisor John Flynn, lost his bid for a seat on the board of the Ventura County Community College District, to Pete Tafoya, an Oxnard engineer, by just 274 votes.

Flynn garnered 2,298 votes or 46.9%, compared to Tafoya’s 2,572 votes or 52.5%. Tafoya, 40, had accused the 30-year-old Flynn, an account executive, of using his father’s name to help him win a seat. The junior Flynn, meanwhile, described Tafoya’s charges as “a desperate measure by a dying campaign.”

Both men sought to represent Oxnard and Port Hueneme on the college board. The incumbent, Julian Tarleton, did not seek reelection.

In the race for the college board’s Thousand Oaks seat, dentist Gregory Cole, 38, of Newbury Park, handily defeated attorney Joel Bryan, 36, of Thousand Oaks, with 6,889 votes and 61% of the vote over Bryan’s 4,342 votes or 38.7%.

The college board oversees three campuses in Ventura, Oxnard and Moorpark that serve 33,000 students.

In the county board of education race, a retired teacher from Simi Valley, Albert Rosen, defeated veteran incumbent Fauvette Bean Rollyson 3,092 to 2,829 votes, for a 51.9% to 47.5% margin. Rollyson was challenged for the first time in 15 years.

Incumbents Robert Viles and Doylenne Johnson ran unopposed. The county school board oversees 1,400 students with a budget of $34 million.

In Thousand Oaks, Planning Commissioner Bob Lewis won 38.4% of the vote to win the seat vacated when former Councilman Lee Laxdal resigned to take a job in Australia. Lewis, an attorney, beat out former Planning Commissioner K. Reed Harrison, also an attorney, and six other contenders in Tuesday’s special Thousand Oaks City Council election.

The other six candidates were Ellis Zeanah, Phyllis L. Ells, Gregory L. Spencer, Jim Donovan, Grant W. Peterson and Norm Jackson.

In the Conejo Valley school board race, incumbents Mildred Lynch, William Henry Jr. and Dorothy Beaubien were reelected, with Richard (Dick) Newman, a Conejo Recreation and Parks commissioner, capturing a fourth opening on the five-member board.

Ten candidates vied for four four-year terms on the board, and two competed for an unexpired term vacated last year. The district serves Thousand Oaks, Newbury Park and the Ventura County portion of Westlake Village.

Those challenging incumbents for the full-time seats were: Newman, a retired police lieutenant; contractor Vance (Skip) Rodgers; engineer Charles Rittenburg; dental supply salesman Chuck Castaing; mother and computer programmer Jeanie Mortensen Savage; mother Martha deBurgh; Compton police detective Michael Sean Markey and computer programmer Ken Penchos.

Retired teacher Beaubien and small-business owner Thomas Murphy vied separately for an unexpired term that ends in 1991.

Moorpark school board incumbent Lynda Kira was upset in her reelection bid, as the two seats in the six-person race went to city parks Commissioner Sam K. Nainoa and Pamela Castro, a former City Council contender.

In an election season generally lacking in controversy, the Moorpark school board race pitted Kira against Castro, who used a 1988 recall movement as a springboard for her own campaign. Kira was one of the four school board members that Castro, a day-care center owner, tried to recall.

The other candidates were: construction supervisor John G. Roberts, college professor Thomas Bryan and finance executive James D. Stueck.