COUNTYWIDE : Roth, Drug Rally Leaders Still Dueling

Church and community leaders said Friday that they will reserve a chair and a parking space at an anti-drug rally for Supervisor Don R. Roth, who they said canceled on them “at the last minute” because he was afraid that they were “out to get him.”

Leaders of the Orange County Congregation Communities Organization, a multidenominational group, called the press conference to announce that they would go on with their rally, planned for Monday at Century High School in Santa Ana, in spite of Roth turning them down this week.

Roth told the group in a letter they received on Tuesday that because of a “communications confusion,” he would not be attending the rally. Organizers said he had definitely told them he would be there.

“Supervisor Roth’s response is beginning to bring up the question of whether the (drug) problem out there is an accident, or does it exist because of the absence of leadership,” Father Joe Justice of St. Anne’s Church in Santa Ana, one of the group’s leaders, said.

“Putting aside all the political pretexts for Supervisor Roth’s last-minute cancellation, I regret that he has chosen to make of this organization . . . a stumbling block rather than a building stone for the development of a comprehensive response to the drug epidemic,” said Father Jaime Soto, Latino vicar for the Diocese of Orange.

Roth told The Times that the organizers are wrong when they say he canceled at the last minute.

“I find it very strange that people who talk in their letter that they are doing this in the spirit of good faith, brotherly love and kindness in their heart . . . are trying to pressurize me now with their news media conferences and all when they know that I never, never gave them a firm commitment to speak,” Roth said Friday.