GARDEN GROVE, Calif. (AP) - Orange County Republican leaders on Thursday called for the withdrawal of a GOP congressional candidate they believe sent a letter threatening Hispanic immigrant voters with arrest.
Tan D. Nguyen denied knowing anything about the letter in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press but said he fired a campaign staffer who may have been responsible for it. Nguyen's attorney said his client had no intention of quitting.
County Republican Chairman Scott Baugh said that after speaking with state investigators and the company that distributed the mailer, he believes Nguyen had direct knowledge of the "obnoxious and reprehensible" letter. He told the AP that the party's executive committee voted unanimously to urge Nguyen to drop out of the race against Democratic U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez.
"I learned information that allows me to draw the conclusion that not only was Mr. Nguyen's campaign involved in this, but that Mr. Nguyen was personally involved in expediting the mailer," Baugh said in a telephone interview.
Nguyen said he has fired an employee in his office who he believes might have used his campaign's voter data base to send the letter without his knowledge.
That's right out of the Repug playbook: When caught, blame a staffer.
"If it is proven that a candidate was responsible for this action, that candidate is clearly not fit to serve the people of California and should withdraw immediately from his or her race," California GOP Chairman Duf Sundheim said in a statement.
In an interview Thursday morning, Sanchez said she had never spoken to Nguyen because her campaign didn't see him as a threat to her re-election.
"If it is in fact this guy (who sent the letter), the most disgusting and saddest thing about it is that it comes from another immigrant," said Sanchez, who was born in the U.S. to Mexican parents and whose 1996 election signaled Orange County's increasing diversification. "These communities have spent years trying to get naturalized immigrants to vote."
Nguyen's campaign Web site says he was born in 1973 in Vietnam, where his family fled the Communist regime.
This is not the county's first dispute over alleged intimidation of Hispanic voters. In 1988, Republican Assembly candidate Curt Pringle posted uniformed "security guards" at 20 predominantly Hispanic voting places in Orange County.
Republicans said the guards were stationed to prevent noncitizens from casting ballots. Pringle and the county GOP paid $400,000 to settle a civil rights lawsuit alleging intimidation of Hispanic voters.
I grew up in L.A. County, and Orange County, just to the south, became a joke when I was in my teens. It was always a Repuglican hotbed. Richard Nixon was born there, and they renamed their airport the "John Wayne Airport". There were always a lot of wealthy people there, and they elected people to look out for their interests. Hard-core right wingers.
I worked at motorcycle joints, a dealer and a distributor, in Orange County, but move there? No thanks! I commuted thirty miles from Burbank. Motorcycle jobs don't last, but mortgages do, and I didn't want to get stuck there.
With a big influx of Vietnamese, Koreans, and Latinos over the last thirty years, OC's political makeup has changed somewhat. I'm not exactly sure which demographic has had the most impact (inscrutable, them Orientals!) but the OC ain't quite as far right as it used to be.
It's still a joke.
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