GOP Worker Fired for Role in Latino Voter Intimidation
Mai Tran, Jennifer Delson and Christian Berthelsen
www.latimes.com
Oct 20, 2006
Republican congressional candidate Tan Nguyen acknowledged today that an employee in his campaign was involved in sending out a letter intended to suppress Latino voter turnout in Orange County in next month's election, but said he had no knowledge of it and that the employee has been fired.
The disclosure came one day after the state attorney general's office began focusing on Nguyen's campaign as the source of the letter. At the same time, Republican officials today distanced themselves from Nguyen, with several calling for him to bow out of his underdog campaign to unseat Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez of Garden Grove.
Nguyen has hired a lawyer and said that he expected to meet with investigators from the state attorney general's office today.
Addressing questions about the letter for the first time, Nguyen said his office manager "took it upon herself to allow our database to be used to send out the letter."
"It was disseminated without my authorization or approval," he said.
The office manager, whose name was not released, had been working for Nguyen since the campaign office was opened. Nguyen said she had access to the database of Democratic voters that he purchased to send out mailers to 73,000 households. He said he did not know who wrote the letter, which was in Spanish.
"People are pointing fingers, saying that I did it and that's going to get cleared," Nguyen said. "I want to get the truth out so people can vote for candidates for the right reasons."
In an interview today, Orange County GOP Chairman Scott Baugh said representatives of the Huntington Beach mail house that produced the letter told him that Nguyen was directly involved with the letter, calling and asking that it be sent out as soon as possible.
Today, a host of Republicans called on Nguyen to drop out of the race. Baugh, who called the letter "reprehensible and stupid," said the party's executive committee voted unanimously to ask Nguyen to withdraw from the race.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has called the letter "a despicable act of political intimidation and a hate crime."
Nguyen said he will not withdraw.
"We're winning and we're going to win," he said.
Also today, the owner of the mail house, Mailing Pros, acknowledged that his firm sent out the mailers and that he spoke with investigators from the attorney general's office.
He declined to discuss details of his talk with the agents but said Nguyen was not the person he dealt with. He would not identify the person.
"The only thing I can say is that the client involved in this is a one-shot customer," Christopher West said. "I haven't seen the person before, and I guess it's unlikely I will see them again."
Nguyen has made halting illegal immigration part of his campaign against Sanchez, who is Orange County's only Democratic member of Congress.
In a fast-moving examination that began just days after the letters were mailed, sources said investigators estimated that the letter was mailed to 14,000 Democratic voters in central Orange County.
The letter, which purports to be from a Huntington Beach-based group, warns that immigrants will not be permitted to vote in the election. It also warns that the state has developed a tracking system that will allow the names of Latino voters to be handed over to anti-immigrant groups.
"You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time," the letter, written in Spanish, says.
The information in the letter is false. Immigrants who become naturalized citizens, such as Schwarzenegger, can vote. An illegal immigrant who voted could be subject to deportation and jail. The letter's assertion that the state had developed a computer system that would make it easy to track down immigrants and illegal residents is also false.
Until now, the campaign for the 47th Congressional District had generated little notice. Though it has historically been a competitive seat, Sanchez is expected to cruise to reelection. Democrats hold a 5-percentage point voter registration advantage, despite a large number of decline-to-state voters. Latinos make up 35% of registered voters in the district; Asians make up 18%.
Nguyen is "not popular with the Republican Party down there," said Allan Hoffenblum, a longtime Republican consultant and publisher of the California Target Book, an insiders guide to handicapping political races. "Nobody seems to be paying any attention to it."
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