Teachers Union Comes Out Big Winner in School Vote : Campaign: Three UTLA-backed candidates win contests outright. A fourth was the leading vote-getter in a race that will be decided in a runoff.

Even as the ballot count in four Los Angeles Board of Education contests neared completion early Wednesday, it was clear that the teachers union was a big winner.

The two incumbents--both backed by United Teachers-Los Angeles--scored resounding victories, and teacher Jeff Horton, UTLA’s choice to succeed retiring board President Jackie Goldberg, won easily. The union’s fourth candidate, teacher Sterling Delone, was the top vote-getter in the crowded race to replace UTLA’s nemesis, Rita Walters, who decided to run for City Council instead of seeking a fourth term. More than 99% of the votes have been counted.

Delone faces a June 4 runoff with elementary school principal Barbara Boudreaux, a longtime district employee who was strongly backed by administrators and has many ties in city’s black community.

“I’m very relieved,” UTLA President Helen Bernstein said Wednesday, despite the need for a runoff campaign just as the union begins contract negotiations and grapples with fallout from the Los Angeles Unified School District’s severe financial problems.

“We do know how to (turn out voters), I will admit that,” said Bernstein, but she downplayed UTLA’s importance in Tuesday’s municipal primary election. “All the candidates had coalitions of their own,” she said.

The union has been sensitive to criticism that it “owns” a majority on the school board because its support has helped most current members win their seats.

“I can guarantee that we have had and will continue to have very severe differences of opinion with all of them at one time or another. . . . All we ask is for people who are willing to let us present our positions,” Bernstein said.

Veteran Board Member Roberta Weintraub, who has often been on the opposite side of UTLA, said she is not surprised by the union’s strong showing.

With traditionally small voter turnouts--less than 15% this time, according to city elections officials--the union is likely to dominate elections for some time, she said.

“I think it is very important to have a balance of power, but given the low turnout and their understandable interest in the elections, they certainly are not going to stay out, and I cannot blame them,” Weintraub said of UTLA.

The union clashed frequently with Walters, the board’s only black, who has accused its members of caring more about their own salaries and working conditions than about the district’s minority students. Bernstein said she was shocked but pleased that Walters’ choice for her 1st District seat, attorney Charles E. Dickerson III, was out of the race. Dickerson finished third, with 13.8% of the vote.

Dickerson may have been hurt by the lack of an education background and by the fact his daughter is enrolled in a private school, several observers speculated.

Bernstein said the union “now has the opportunity to get rid of the animosity that has existed toward teachers . . . and work on building a coalition.”

Delone, who won 33.7% to Boudreaux’s 29.9% in the almost-completed results, said he was “very encouraged” by finishing first. But because of Boudreaux’s showing, he said, “we’re going to have to do a lot of work. . . . There is a real choice now.”

Boudreaux was at her campaign headquarters by 8:30 Wednesday morning, trying to get endorsements from the other six candidates and launch her runoff campaign.

Goldberg was a winner, too, in that voters favored her choices, longtime friends Horton and Delone.

“Jackie is respected, and she has pursued her goals vigorously. In some ways, this represents (voters’) desire for a continuation of those goals with some new ideas and new people,” Horton said.

He added that he was “excited but not really surprised” by his comfortable margin because of “all the hard work by a lot of people.” He pulled in 59.6% of the vote in the three-way contest for the 3rd District seat, well above the majority needed to avoid a runoff with retired principal Stan Bunyan or former board member Tony Trias.

Horton said his top priority will be to “fight for more funding for schools” while cutting the district’s overhead as much as possible.

The biggest vote-getter was 7th District incumbent Warren Furutani, with 70.6% of the ballots cast. He credited his strong neighborhood organizations as well as his backing from UTLA and employee groups representing administrators and the district’s clerical and blue-collar workers.

Leticia Quezada of the 5th District outpolled former board member Richard Ferraro 63.6% to 36.4%.