Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS. : CITIES : Losers Say They’ll Try Again on Ward Plan

A move to reorganize Santa Ana city government may have lost narrowly at the polls last week, but its proponents vowed to resurrect, for the third time, a plan to elect council members by wards.

And Santa Ana Latino activists, protesting what they described as “racist campaign literature” mailed before last Tuesday’s election, said they will try to place a carbon copy Measure C on the November ballot.

Speaking at a luncheon last Friday of the Hispanic Affairs Council of the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce, Amin David, president of Los Amigos of Orange County, said the mailer was intended to portray backers of the unsuccessful Measure C as “swarming multitudes about to occupy” the city. Measure C--which called for ward elections, a directly elected mayor and elimination of the powerful city manager’s post--lost in last week’s balloting by a single percentage point after a divisive campaign fueled by dissatisfaction among city firefighters and various community groups unhappy with council actions.

The mailer was written and paid for by a group called the Good Government Committee, of which many members also belong to the chamber. The mailer warned that “a small group of extremists from outside our city are trying to seize control,” and that their goal was to strike down the city’s aggressive code enforcement which keeps “our city from becoming an overcrowded East Coast slum.”

Immigrant activist Nativo Lopez said the “racist” mailer was intended “to whip up hysteria among the Anglo population to defeat a measure that would have given Latinos more representation on the City Council.”

Robert Miranda, an officer of the chamber and of the Good Government Committee, noting that his father came to the United States as an undocumented worker, countered: “The issue here is Measure C. . . . It was never considered a Hispanic or non-Hispanic issue. I personally don’t believe the mailer was racist.” Lopez vowed that he and other members of Santa Ana Merged Society of Neighbors--the coalition of groups behind Measure C--will put the measure on the November ballot, “and this time, we will win.”