Calif. candidate's office raided over voter letter

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-me-letter21oct21,1,5609803.story

Raids Widen 'Immigrant' Letter Probe
Agents take evidence from candidate Tan Nguyen's home and office, seeking details of note about voting status sent to O.C. residents.
By Jennifer Delson, Christopher Goffard and Mai Tran
Times Staff Writers................October 21, 2006

Even as he prepared to step before the cameras Friday in an effort to mend his tattered candidacy for Congress, the worst week of Tan Nguyen's political life got bleaker still, as state agents raided his Garden Grove campaign headquarters and Santa Ana home, hauling off computers and bags of evidence.

The investigation by California Department of Justice agents stems from a racially charged letter that Nguyen admits his office sent to about 14,000 registered voters in central Orange County. The letter, which warned "immigrants" they could be jailed or deported if they tried to vote, has spurred condemnation across the political spectrum and an investigation into possible voting rights violations.

Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant who is running to unseat Democratic U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez, maintains that he neither wrote nor authorized the instantly infamous letter, claiming it was the work of a campaign manager he refused to name. According to the head of the Orange County Republican Party, however, the mailing house that sent the letter said Nguyen had a direct hand in it.

State agents arrived both at Nguyen's campaign office and his home about 1 p.m. Friday with search warrants, scouring files, plumbing cabinets and bagging evidence.

Nguyen had to cancel a planned afternoon news conference, which his lawyer, David Wiechert, said would be rescheduled for next week.

"I do not believe he'll be arrested," said Wiechert, who specializes in white collar criminal defense work. "My belief is he'll be cleared. He's asserted his innocence."

The lawyer said agents from the state attorney general's office had questioned Nguyen for two hours Thursday and that he was cooperating fully with their investigation.

"A search doesn't mean the person whose office is being searched is guilty," Wiechert added. "This is a political firestorm of high-ranking Republicans and Democrats speculating about an investigation they have no knowledge of."

• According to a source close to the investigation, the attorney general's office has determined that an LAPD officer, who is a friend
  of a worker in Nguyen's office, paid $4,000 on a credit card for the bulk mailing of the letter and used an alias.

In addition to the letter, the attorney general's office is investigating a racially charged poster that was recently hung in Santa Ana's Delhi Park. Translated from Spanish, the poster reads, "If you are a resident or are illegal, if you vote, you will be thrown out."

Park regulars say there were dozens of the posters hanging in the park for nearly a week. "They were put on just about every tree and pole around here," said Juan Cabrera, who was visiting the park Friday.

Santa Ana Councilman Jose Solorio found one of the posters on the ground in the park Friday and passed the information on to the attorney general's office. Solorio wondered whether there was a link between the letters sent out by Nguyen's office and the park posters. "The rhetoric in the signs sounds similar to the letters, so I have my suspicions," Solorio said.

State attorney general spokesman Nathan Barankin said the posters were "under review" but would not say whether that probe would be tied to the letter investigation. "We can't rule [the posters] in or out," he said.

Javier Gonzalez, executive director of Strengthening Our Lives, a union-based voter drive campaign, said the poster's use of the word "resident" was deceptive. He said his mother, a naturalized U.S. citizen, considers herself a U.S. resident, and might think from reading the letter that she should not vote.

Meanwhile, the letter from Nguyen's office, which has prompted the GOP to disown him, continues to generate howls of indignation. "When you tell immigrants who have become citizens they can go to jail for voting, you are spreading lies, not liberty," said an ACLU news release, calling for Orange County Registrar Neal Kelley to send out letters correcting misinformation in the original letter.

Said Mai Cong, president of the Vietnamese Community of Orange County: "I was distressed to learn that someone in our immigrant community is involved in a case of voter intimidation. This is like 'a single worm that spoils that soup,' as we Vietnamese Americans used to say."

Among the recipients of the letter was Kristen Panagua, a Disneyland Hotel worker, who said it angered her. "I respect and love this country," said Panagua, who registered to vote six years ago after becoming a U.S. citizen. "They are trying to intimidate us to keep us from being part of it."

Isabel Procopio, a janitor and volunteer for Strengthening Our Lives, said she was knocking on doors in Garden Grove on Saturday as part of a campaign to encourage voter participation. Of the 30 doors she approached, she found 10 residents who had received the letter. "Many people told me they are really afraid," she said. "They also said they were angry. I'm telling them not to let racist Republicans intimidate us."

Gustavo Arellano, the OC Weekly staffer who writes the syndicated "Ask A Mexican!" column, said the letter would generate a massive backlash among Latino voters, who would be galvanized to defeat Republicans in local elections in November.

"Latinos are going to hear about this [and say], 'Oh, Republicans: anti-immigrant,' " he said. "They're not going to pay attention to the fact that the Republican Party has denounced the letter, or that Gov. Schwarzenegger has called it a hate crime. They're just going to chalk it up as another instance of GOP xenophobia."

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-parsons21oct21,1,318552.column

DANA PARSONS / ORANGE COUNTY
The Political Season Has Gone Sordid
Ethnic attacks are up as election day nears...............................October 21, 2006

Republican congressional candidate Tan Nguyen was expendable (meaning he had no chance of beating Loretta Sanchez), so he was expended this week by the Orange County Republican leadership. A heroic decision, tempered only by the fact that as recently as 2004 Nguyen was running as a Democrat.

In other words, Nguyen wasn't exactly dyed-in-the-wool. Still, when it was learned that his office apparently sent out 14,000 copies of a letter to registered voters saying it was illegal for immigrants to vote, the party leadership quickly leaned on him to withdraw and said all the right things about veiled intimidation of Latinos who are duly registered.

It is truly a new day in Orange County, where a generation ago the previous Republican Party leadership would have tabbed Nguyen as an up-and-comer with a good head on his shoulders.

Nguyen, who clearly doesn't yet have the hang of this running-for-office thing, said he had nothing to do with the mailing and ascribed the blame to his office manager. He presumably was going to lay out his defense Friday afternoon at a news conference, but state agents put a crimp in those plans by raiding his Garden Grove office.

You can't help but appreciate (in a twisted way) how this flare-up reflects on Orange County's changing demographics. That is, no longer is the attempted thwarting of the Latino vote limited to Anglo officeholders. Nguyen, according to his website, is a Vietnamese refugee who was 8 when his family fled the Communists and came to America.

And now, just 25 years later, he's got his name in the newspapers in connection with political dirty tricks.

A cynic would say he's assimilated well..............And speaking of assimilation and participating in the democracy …

Over in Anaheim, Bill Dalati is getting a dose of the American political system in his first run for office. The 41-year-old insurance agent has been called a potential "Manchurian candidate" by a former state Republican Party chairman who cites Dalati's political support of a controversial congresswoman from Georgia and his advocacy of the local Council on American-

Islamic Relations, considered an extremist group by some but which somehow manages to operate quite comfortably and openly under the noses of the entire local and federal law enforcement structure. I was once at a CAIR meeting where local public officials and law enforcement representatives praised it.

For you youngsters, a "Manchurian candidate" is taken from a 1962 movie and refers to someone who pretends to be one of us but is really an agent of the enemy. Dalati's birth name is Belal, and he was born in Syria, so you know who the critics think he's a secret agent of.

Call me irreverent, but I'd like to see what a Manchurian candidate from Syria could do to Anaheim. Sure, he says he's interested in housing and traffic, but the mind boggles at what someone with a secret agenda could do.

Hey, wait a second! Isn't Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle a more likely Manchurian candidate? Nobody looks more benign than he does. And how do we know for sure his family drapery business wasn't fronting for something else?

Sorry, mayor. It's all in the spirit of a long political season.

I got hold of a subdued Dalati late Friday and asked him how he was enjoying his first run for office. He didn't sound overly amused. "I was trying to run a straightforward campaign," he said. "Unfortunately, they brought race and religion into it. Because of the Islamophobia out there, I think it's hurt me."

He said he was getting calls of support from "true Americans" but that other e-mails included threats. He's one of seven candidates for two council seats, and I asked if he regretted running. No, he said. "I know what I ran for. I wanted to serve … and give back to a community and country that has given so much to me."

In the present climate, you say something like that and your critics only chalk it up to more cunning.

There you have it. That's my report from today's Politics & Ethnicity front.

Kind of gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling about things, doesn't it?

 

So If Immigrants were stripped of being able to vote, then there will be noone left. United states was formed by immigrants.

 

Ahem. America was formed by Americans. Get it straight. These colours don't run.