HAYWARD — With quiet vows and an eye toward November’s Proposition 8 referendum, Stephanie Sue Spencer and the Rev. Arlene Nehring made their 16-year union a legal California marriage in Hayward’s Eden United Church of Christ, where Nehring presides as pastor.

This “much-awaited day” wasn’t quite the wedding they’d hoped for, but with voters going to the polls in a month in an election that could make their union unconstitutional, the couple felt it was better now than never.

“People are hedging their bets,” said Todd Bove, a member of the church who married his partner of 10 years just a month ago.

Proposition 8 would cement the definition of marriage in California’s constitution as a union between one man and one woman, overturning a state Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex unions earlier this year.

There is reason for gay and lesbian couples to be nervous here: Polls have remained close since Proposition 8 earned its spot on the ballot, and a SurveyUSA poll released last week showed the measure supported by 47 percent of respondents, compared with 42 percent opposing. The ceremony and its participants made no effort to duck the political questions that surround the union.

“Stephanie and Arlene have lived a 16-year loving relationship, a relationship tested by fires many could not survive,” Ann Feaver, a longtime friend of the couple, said from the pulpit.

“Sixteen years ago, Stephanie and Arlene had only pockets of tolerance where their love could flourish. They could share their growing friendship, their growing affection, their love, their devotion with some, but not with others. And yet they prevailed.”

The Rev. Wendy Taylor, who presided over the ceremony, added in her opening homily: “This marriage is being entered into neither as a beginning or an end. It is rather an expression of commitment already begun and will continue into the future.”

In her reception toast, Kate Spencer, Stephanie’s younger sister, recalled sitting in a bar 16 years ago, hearing about her sister’s partner.

“Does this mean I have to become an activist now?” she asked at the time. “Sixteen years later, I am proud to be an activist against Prop. 8.”

Spencer and Nehring met two decades ago while studying in Boston, and four years later made a personal commitment to each other.

“Even though I had married many, many couples, we were not part of a church where I could get married to Stephanie,” Nehring said. “And I don’t know that any of our families would have been there.

“Sixteen years ago there were just the two of us. No family, no church. Just us — and Jesus.”

Saturday, a packed sanctuary welcomed the couple into legal marriage.

Taylor read the final pronouncement of marriage, “By the power vested in me,” pausing, she continued, “and by the state of California,” and a cheer went through the sanctuary as she pronounced the women “spouses for life.”

The day after losing her seat on the Palmdale School Board, Shawny Barcelona was back at work, running her salon, trying not to let the loss get to her.

She was frustrated but hoped to get back on the board when another seat opens up. She says she’ll at least stay active.

“I ran a good, positive campaign, and I’m very happy with that,” she said. “I think everyone else is more sad than me.”

Barcelona lost her seat to newcomer Jeff Ferrin, a vice principal at William J. “Pete” Knight High School. Both had the backing of Valley Republicans, and Ferrin had state Senator George Runner, R-Lancaster, behind him. Republicans also endorsed incumbent Sheldon Epstein.

Ferrin, Epstein and Sandy Corrales, the current board president, all of whom won seats in Tuesday’s election, were on the slate of candidates endorsed by the California Teachers Association. Barcelona drew the union’s wrath for supporting Governor Arnold Schwarzennegger, whose propositions the union adamantly opposed. She came in fourth, finishing 466 votes behind Ferrin.

The big winner in this election, locally and at the state level, was the California Teachers Association.

On local school boards, with one exception — the Antelope Valley College Board of Trustees — every candidate teachers picked won a seat.

The union also helped sink initiatives backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that would have changed teacher tenure rules, changed political spending by public employee unions, affected school funding and capped state spending.

Endorsements are a regular part of every election. Candidates at every level seek the backing of every influential organization they can find, hoping voters who put stock in those groups’ philosophy will help put them in office.

CTA wasn’t the biggest power player in this election, and it certainly wasn’t the only group promoting candidates. In fact, teachers’ endorsements often overlapped with groups that have little in common politically with the left-leaning union. The Antelope Valley Republicans Assemblywoman Sharon Runner and Sen. George Runner, for example, also boosted their own slates of candidates in most races.

But where there was a difference — such as in the Antelope Valley Union High School District or the Palmdale School District — the union’s candidates won seats.

Ferrin might never have run if not for the Palmdale Elementary Teachers Association. The union asked members to find candidates, and a Joshua Hills teacher knew Ferrin, whose wife is active in the Parent Teacher Student Association at another Palmdale School.

PETA organizers convinced Ferrin to throw his hat into the ring. They said he had more ideas than Barcelona, who has had a rocky relationship with the teachers’ union.

Barcelona, a Republican, took heat from PETA for appearing at a fund-raiser in Lancaster for Schwarzenegger. Her husband, Isaac Barcelona, head of the Palmdale Chamber of Commerce, sold enough $250 tickets to the dinner for the couple to sit near the governor and be named a co-chairman of the event.

While Barcelona said she opposed the core of Schwarzenegger’s proposals — the spending cap and tenure-reform initiatives — she said she still supported the governor.

That got teachers fuming.

Earlier in the year, when teachers rallied outside the Palmdale district office in an effort to improve stalled labor negotiations, Barcelona parked in back, then joked about avoiding the union.

“I came in the back way,” she told the Valley Press. “I didn’t want to be mauled.”

She apologized a few weeks later, saying the remark wasn’t meant to harm. But the damage was done.

“Shawny was compromising a lot,” said Bruce Shank, a political organizer for PETA. “She didn’t have strong opinions or ideas of her own that were really contributing. Whatever (fellow trustee) Tom Lackey did, she usually did.”

Lackey is a conservative Republican on the Palmdale school board. He won a seat on the Palmdale City Council in Tuesday’s vote. Barcelona is now angling for the Palmdale board seat Lackey will vacate when he joins the City Council.

“The union’s worked hard,” Barcelona said the day after the election. “I’m not going to take away from fact that Jeff Ferrin is an educator, and that’s very powerful.”

Palmdale teachers started organizing politically three years ago, Shank said. This year, PETA built a campaign fund from member dues and CTA contributions, setting aside about $5,000 for the election. The union split that money evenly between the candidates.

David Aponik, a local CTA organizer, said parents were a key target in local races.

“They’re very supportive of teachers and the teaching profession,” he said. “When the teachers’ associations weighed in on candidates and endorsed them, parents and residents gave their support.”

In the state election, CTA formed the core of the opposition groups fighting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Year of Reform” initiatives. Voters rejected all the governor’s propositions, along with every other initiative on the ballot.

Senator Runner, a strong Schwarzenegger backer, said his side made a mistake in letting the opposition frame issues before the governor could respond.

“I think we underestimated the vigor with which the unions and Democrats would come against these things,” George Runner told the Antelope Valley Press.

“A lot of the attacks went on early and were unanswered…Part of our problem was we started in a hole because we were not able to come back and answer the critics and attacks that started early in the summer.”

The stunning defeat for the once invincible Schwarzenegger, who rode into the statehouse on a wave of voter rage that ousted Governor Gray Davis by recall, gave CTA President Barbara Kerr cause to gloat on Wednesday.

“Let’s hope the governor has finally heard the real will of the people and understands that his agenda was wrong for California,” Kerr said.

“The people of California want real solutions that include adequate funding of our schools, protecting our minimum school funding guarantee and affordable health care for all.”

Aponik said the campaign started long before the special election. Really, he says, everything began in January, “when the governor declared war on working families.”

In his State of the State address, Schwarzenegger called for massive structural reforms in state pensions, teacher pay and tenure and the state budget. Every proposal would have affected public-employee unions.

Teachers came out swinging. They hit back early and hard.

Ten months later, after watching his initiatives sink in a special election he called, the governor promised to work with the Democrat-controlled Legislature.

While union organizers and supporters were celebrating the statewide victory, they also noted a swing in local polls driven by strong sentiments toward state measures. Candidates took notice, too.

“I think the propositions brought out a lot more union voters than usual, which in turn affected the outcome,” said Gwen Farrell, a Westside Union School District trustee who was not up for re-election.

“They’ve always had clout,” said Greg Tepe, who won re-election to the Lancaster School Board. He said of teachers: “They certainly showed up in force because all the propositions affected teachers.”

CTA’s hand was hard to miss.

“The teachers’ union seems to have affected all the districts,” said Lancaster trustee Keith Giles, the top vote getter in Tuesday’s election for his district. “Overall I received a lot more votes than I have in past elections.”

Both Tepe and Giles enjoyed CTA backing.

Aponik, the local CTA organizer, said his union has the momentum. Politicians should take note, he said.

“It’s not just a message for the governor. It’s a message for the Legislature, as well,” he said.

Looking at Tuesday’s vote, in which all eight initiatives lost, Aponik said the Legislature should hear people saying: “We elected you guys to do a job. Now do it,” he said.

He added, “I think we’ll see that.”

Now the only incumbent not running for re-election has turned on his colleagues, endorsing three challengers in the Nov. 8 election.

Harbeson said Larry Layton, Deborah Jauregui-Rocha and Leona Sexton are “the only candidates that I feel really care about the children of our district.”

Harbeson said he now notes when in the board meeting trustees first discuss students.

“Today it was 9:58 (p.m.),” he said after the meeting. Open session began at 7:30 p.m.

“This is the worst board we”ve had since I”ve become involved.”

Harbeson did not publicly state his endorsements, instead passing a note to a reporter before the school board meeting Thursday, so the news caught some by surprise, especially Sexton.

Sexton tried to remove Harbeson from office earlier this year and has become one of the school board’s fiercest critics. But that follows years of close involvement with the district, especially at Vasquez High School.

“That’s very nice to hear,” she said when told by a reporter of the endorsement. “I never had anything personal against him. It was just things happening in district. Actually, he’s a close friend of mine.”

The recall started after the district reassigned Vasquez Principal Steve Pinkston to a teaching post. Pinkston had been serving as an assistant football coach at the time, and many of his critics said he was spending too much time on the field and not enough in the school office.

“She was upset over a personnel decision,” Harbeson said. “Had I shared her view, I would have agreed with her. I think she’s the best candidate there is.”

Board President Fred Heslep, another incumbent who is seeking another term, also was targeted by the recall effort. He changed his tone, however, and proponents admitted he was no longer the problem.

After the recall effort fizzled, Harbeson and Heslep started finding themselves on opposing sides of many votes.

“We’ve had a lot of different viewpoints on way things should be done,” Heslep said. “It’s not a spiteful thing, but I can understand him not supporting us.”

Trustee Max Duran, the other incumbent not getting Harbeson’s backing, shrugged off the endorsements, chalking them up to the ongoing divisiveness on the board.

“He’s entitled to his own opinion, I guess,” Duran said. “It’s unfortunate that we have fallen out of grace with one another. I still like Steve. He’s a caring person and I think the recall took a lot out of him.”

Harbeson was board president in 2004 and usually carried a majority of the five trustees with him. This year, however, he has found himself more often in the minority.

On July 16, Harbeson cast the only vote against canceling a restroom installation project at Meadowlark Elementary and High Desert Middle schools. Underlying the vote was a sentiment that Meadowlark would close and the district would reopen Acton Elementary School, which it shut down in June 2004 to save money.

Harbeson left the meeting early.

The most recent board meeting, on Thursday, saw tempers flare between Harbeson and the two incumbents seeking re-election.

He clashed openly with Duran over a teacher’s plan to restructure the master schedule at Vasquez. The two interrupted and spoke over each other throughout the meeting.

At one point, Duran asked that Harbeson be recused on a vote to call a special meeting on the alternative plan.

Heslep and Harbeson found themselves at odds Thursday night over the new lights at the Vasquez High football field.

Vasquez Athletic Director Tim Jorgensen bought the stadium lights from Georgia Tech in an eBay online auction, then drove to Atlanta to pick them up.

Jorgensen has given trustees updates on the project, either directly or through administrators, but the school board has never voted to endorse the lights. Heslep said he worries about liability.

While Thursday’s meeting ended around 11 p.m. — early for Acton-Agua Dulce Unified, which has had recent meetings go past midnight — Harbeson and Heslep stood outside arguing for another half-hour.

The two said they have been friends for years and don’t let disagreements become personal. Heslep did say things have been more heated lately.

“Everybody is trying to do the best they can for the kids. The direction the board’s been going in, he’s been unhappy with, so maybe he wants to change it,” Heslep said.

“We parted friends as we always do, but he was being pretty hostile about some issues.”