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Teachers have fired a salvo at the Fresno Unified School District, electing union officers who will continue a practice of high-pressure tactics that have resulted in higher pay and union-backed candidates on the school board.

During two weeks of campaigning, critics had seized on outgoing union President Larry Moore's nearly decade-long fight with school administrators and trustees. They said his combative style had hurt the Fresno Teachers Association's public image and caused dissention within the ranks.

But when the ballots in the union election were made public late Thursday night, Moore's chosen successor -- Greg Gadams, a Hamilton Elementary School teacher, received 956 votes, far more than rivals Sherry Wood and John Hazelett.

In addition, Gadams' slate of candidates won six of the seven open seats on the 10-member executive board.

Gadams said the vote signals that teachers are frustrated with Superintendent Michael Hanson's leadership. He said that during Hanson's three years as superintendent, student suspensions and expulsions have decreased, but assaults on teachers have increased.

Because his slate of candidates won, Gadams said he will fight to give teachers a voice in district decisions regarding programs for children and school safety.

"Teachers haven't liked the way they've been treated by administrators," Gadams said.

After the ballots were counted, Wood declined to comment.

The election was closely watched because the union's board has a big say in which candidates the union will endorse in Fresno Unified's school board elections. Moore plans to retire this summer and run for the school board against trustee Manuel Núñez. The election is in November.

The union's 4,000 members -- teachers, speech therapists, librarians and nurses -- had two weeks to vote by mail. The winners serve a two-year term.

Because tension among candidates and their supporters was high, a security guard monitored the union's office while ballots were being counted Thursday night by an independent accounting firm. It took nearly seven hours to count 1,569 ballots because Wood and her supporters were contesting many ballots, election observers said.

Wood, a teacher at Pyle Elementary School, has been Moore's chief adversary. She interrupted Moore's reign as union president in 2002, but Moore regained the top job by crushing Wood in an election two years later.

Prior to the election, Wood said she decided to take another shot at the presidency because Moore has been combative with many teachers and doesn't listen to them. She also said Moore's tactics of threatening a strike during labor negotiations last year hurt the union's public image.

She feared Gadams will follow in Moore's footsteps, but Gadams said Thursday night that he and his team will work together to do what is best for the teachers and the children.

Hazelett ran as an outsider and had no slate. He could not be reached to comment. Earlier, he said Moore's and Wood's bickering had destroyed camaraderie among union members.

The union's financial muscle was evident in 2006, when Moore persuaded the membership to pump more than $164,000 into the school board race -- an effort that helped oust trustees Luisa Medina and Pat Barr. The FTA backed the winners -- incumbents Valerie Davis and Tony Vang and newcomers Michelle Arax Asadoorian and Cal Johnson.

But during labor negotiations, the union attacked some of the union-backed trustees for supporting Superintendent Michael Hanson. The union circulated a cartoon that depicted Vang, Asadoorian and Davis as rats and Hanson as a big cat.

After nearly 20 months of bitter negotiations, the union finally got a contract -- with a raise -- in December.

Moore said his style has a purpose -- when he first became union boss in 1998, the top teacher salary was about $47,000. Today, it is nearly $72,000.

The union also has kept members' co-pay for health benefits at $70 or less per month, Moore said. In addition, special education teachers, speech therapists and teachers of bilingual classes now receive a stipend that they didn't have before, and elementary teachers get a guaranteed 45 minutes of preparation time every day.

Moore said he was not surprised by the election's outcome. He said Gadams was chairman of the bargaining team for four years.