Field Grows to 8 in Race for Carson City Council : Politics: The June 8 special election will fill a vacancy created when Juanita McDonald won a seat in the state Assembly.

Two more candidates have joined the race to fill the open seat on Carson’s City Council, bringing their number to a record-tying eight in the city’s special election.

Political newcomers Gayle L. Konig, an outspoken advocate for the formation of Carson’s own school district, and Lorelie S. Olaes, a youth issues activist, submitted nominating papers Thursday, along with six other candidates in the June 8 special election.

The eight-candidate lineup does not come close to the 38-way field in the city’s first council election 25 years ago. But it matches the record for a special election, which was set in 1980 when eight people ran for a vacant seat.

The upcoming special election will fill the vacancy created when Juanita McDonald resigned her council seat after winning election to the state Assembly in November.

Besides Konig and Olaes, the other candidates are: Coni Hathaway, a mobile- home parks activist; Victoria McKinney, a Democratic Party activist and behavioral scientist; Keith McDonald, a former professional football player who managed his mother’s successful Assembly campaign; James H. Peoples, a council watchdog and retired museum administrator; Carl E. Robinson, a field representative for Rep. Walter R. Tucker and advocate of city parks; and Harold C. Williams, an engineer and former public works director.

So far, Hathaway, Robinson, Williams and Konig have qualified for the ballot by having at least 20 registered voters sign a nominating petition. The others have submitted their petitions, but they did so too close to the April 1 deadline for City Clerk Helen S. Kawagoe to immediately verify the signatures. Kawagoe said she expected the rest of the field to qualify early this week.

Konig, 41, ran for a council seat last year, coming in last in a field of 10 who vied for three council seats. Last year, he filed papers pledging to neither raise nor spend more than $1,000. This year, she said she would do likewise.

Still, Konig said she is a serious candidate who will benefit from the name recognition she has acquired as a strong advocate of Carson seceding from the Los Angeles and Compton unified school districts to form its own school system. A Carson school district would give the city’s parents a greater say in their children’s education, she said.

A blue ribbon committee appointed by the city’s Human Relations Commission is studying the issue.

Olaes, 30, who manages a scholarship program for the UCLA Alumni Foundation, said she is running partly as a role model for the city’s youth. She wants to show that young people can get involved in city affairs even if they are not part of the political establishment.

“I hope to be a lightning rod that shows younger people that it can be done,” Olaes said. “Even if you are not part of the mainstream or not connected to the established committees, you can make a difference.”

Olaes, a Filipina-American, also said she has worked with various groups at UCLA seeking to improve racial and ethnic relations. That experience and her ethnic background, she said, will be helpful in ethnically diverse Carson.

In fact, an underlying issue in the election is ethnic representation on the council.

Carson, a city of 83,995, is 26% African-American, 25% Asian and Pacific Islander and 27% Latino, according to the 1990 U.S. Census. The City Council has a Japanese-American, a Filipino-American and two whites.

Five of the eight candidates are African-American, and some have raised the concern that there is no African-American on the council, now that McDonald has left.

“I think that’s a key issue,” Olaes said, but “I believe that whichever candidate who can address all the communities and can convince people that he or she will be the best representative, should be on the council.”

The other non-African-American candidates also have said race or ethnic background should not matter when voters choose the next council member.