Radio Ad Urges Latinos to Vote

Orange County radio stations and cable television networks have begun airing an advertisement encouraging Latinos to vote and invoking the memory of a 1988 election incident in which uniformed guards were employed by the Republican Party at several heavily Latino precincts in Santa Ana.

The 30-second ad, produced in both English and Spanish, does not name any of the parties involved in the incident, nor does it urge Latinos to vote any particular way.

“The point of this campaign isn’t partisan,” said Lowell Finley, a partner in the San Francisco law firm of Remcho, Johansen & Purcell, which filed a lawsuit on behalf of five Latino voters after the election. “It’s simply to urge Hispanics to get out the vote.”

Leaders of the county Republican Party and Garden Grove Assemblyman Curt Pringle’s 1988 campaign settled the civil lawsuit last year for about $400,000, although a criminal investigation is still pending.

Pringle, who won a narrow victory in 1988, is facing a tough challenge this year from Democrat Tom Umberg, a former federal prosecutor.

Santa Ana Police Officer Jose Vargas and Jane Fantauzzi, two of five plaintiffs in the lawsuit, paid about $44,000 from their share of the settlement to produce and distribute the ad. Remcho, Johansen & Purcell contributed another $10,000, Finley said.

Among the stations and networks playing the ad are Santa Ana radio station KWIZ; KVEA Channel 52 in Los Angeles; Santa Ana-based Comcast Cablevision and Garden Grove-based Paragon Cable.