Fuentes Should Resign

Election and law-enforcement officials must still determine what laws may have been violated by the use of uniformed guards hired by the Orange County Republican Party to warn Latinos in selected Santa Ana precincts that non-citizens can’t vote.

No matter how those investigations turn out, there is no question the county GOP organization, and its chairman, Thomas A. Fuentes, are guilty of a blatant violation of fairness, decency and basic common sense in the inexcusable and reprehensible attempt to intimidate Latino voters.

County Registrar of Voters Donald F. Tanney says he warned Republican officials 4 weeks before Election Day not to challenge voters at the polls. Still, Fuentes allowed the security guards to go to the polls, where they displayed signs in English and Spanish warning against voting by non-citizens, sat alongside election officials at some polling places and, according to witnesses, wrote down license numbers and reportedly questioned some voters about their citizenship.

By singling out Latinos, the alleged security action introduced an element of racism against an innocent group of people. Santa Ana Councilman John Acosta, a Republican, said the action set back party efforts to recruit Latinos “by 20 years.”

But equally detestable to the authorization of such a despicable operation was the reaction by Fuentes to the proper indignation expressed by outraged community leaders, Republican and Democrat.

Fuentes, in confirming that the security guards at the polls “were part of our Election Day security effort,” first termed the charges of harassment and intimidation “a media event.” The following day he issued a weak apology and added: “I would say in retrospect, based on the brouhaha created by the opposition in the media, I would not have” hired the uniformed guards.

What that insensitive explanation seems to say is not that he was truly sorry for such a blatant intrusion into the voting process, or that he should never have allowed such a thing to happen, but that he wouldn’t have hired the guards if he had realized it would have raised such a reaction. But it was not a “media” reaction. Some of the strongest criticism came from the Republican Party.

State Republican Party Chairman Bob Naylor said he was outraged at what he termed was a “terrible symbolic insult to the Hispanic community.”

County Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, probably the most prominent Republican Latino in the state, said the episode “showed a tremendous lapse in judgment.”

Bruce Nestande, a highly respected county Republican leader who was co-chairman of the Bush campaign in Orange County, was shocked that Republicans took part in the security-guard fiasco, and he said “anyone who has that thought process ought not be involved in our party.”

Nestande is right. And so are those clamoring for Fuentes to resign as the county’s GOP chairman. The Republican Party in Orange County has matured and grown beyond this mentality. The head of the GOP should be providing leadership and sound judgment, not overseeing loathsome operations that intimidate and insult a minority community and hold the county Republican organization up to ridicule throughout the state and nation.

Fuentes has only a few months left on his 2-year term that ends in January. He should resign now to save his party further embarrassment. If he doesn’t, the Republican Central Committee should oust him. Some Republican officials may be reluctant to do that, preferring to let Fuentes quietly finish his term. But that would send the wrong message to the community. It is indefensible for the county GOP to hire security guards to intimidate and challenge a person’s right to vote because of the color of his or her skin. It is vital for the GOP to show that it does not condone and never will tolerate such action. That can only be done by removing from leadership those who find such an ill-considered approach an acceptable part of an election campaign.