U.S. SENATE : Huffington Uses Disputed Story to Attack Feinstein

A new controversy over illegal immigration engulfed the U.S. Senate race Thursday as GOP candidate Mike Huffington seized on a disputed and unverified news report claiming that Sen. Dianne Feinstein hired an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper in the early 1980s.

By late Thursday the striking San Francisco newspaper reporters responsible for the report said they were revising their story because they had received incomplete information from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. INS officials said they had no proof that Feinstein had employed an illegal immigrant and were rechecking their records.

In a crowded news conference in San Francisco, Feinstein told reporters that she employed a Guatemalan woman but that the woman provided documentation showing that she was in the country legally. Feinstein pointed out that in any case, the woman worked for her years before a 1986 federal law made the employment of illegal immigrants a crime.

Asked if she believes the woman was in the country illegally, Feinstein told reporters: “No, and I don’t believe she was.”

Throughout the day there was continuing uncertainty about the housekeeper’s legal status, with Feinstein saying she was legally in the country and Republican challenger Huffington insisting otherwise. The first report about the housekeeper was prepared Thursday morning by striking San Francisco newspaper reporters and sent out over the Internet computer system.

But the reporters said they were revising their story to reflect that the INS had given them incorrect information. INS officials late Thursday said they were rechecking their records.

Even as Huffington’s top campaign officials acknowledged they had no proof the housekeeper was illegally in the country, the candidate accused Feinstein of deception and an attempted cover-up. His campaign said it was preparing television commercials to run today.

“She is a liar. And she is a hypocrite. And she has purposefully and blatantly attempted to mislead you and the people of California. She is unworthy to serve in the United States Senate,” Huffington told reporters at a news conference in Century City.

The day’s furor erupted exactly one week after the Santa Barbara congressman acknowledged that he and his wife had hired an illegal immigrant as a nanny for more than four years, beginning in 1989--well after federal immigration law made such hiring a crime. The revelation convulsed Huffington’s campaign and has dominated the race since.

Feinstein on Thursday drove home the distinctions between Huffington’s action and her own. Most notably, she said, she hired the woman only after asking for documentation and employed the woman years before the federal law was enacted.

Unlike Huffington, Feinstein opposes Proposition 187, the ballot measure that would deny health and education services to illegal immigrants.

The political impact of Thursday’s events was unclear.

“I think, from what I understand, it is does not appear to be the smoking gun. On the other hand, to the extent that Huffington can obfuscate the issue--as he has done with some success in terms of wealth and campaign spending and residency--it is . . . helpful” to Huffington, said Arnold Steinberg, a GOP consultant not associated with the Senate campaign.

Republican consultant Edward J. Rollins, one of several top GOP advisers to Huffington’s $27-million campaign, told reporters that television ads on Feinstein could be aired beginning today. Said one campaign official: “We need a (newspaper) headline” to run with the ad.

Huffington’s unverified accusations already took away a day of campaigning for Feinstein, whose support from a variety of women’s groups and abortion rights advocates was eclipsed by the questioning about her housekeeper.

In a teleconference with reporters, Rollins and senior campaign strategist Ken Khachigian not only called Feinstein a hypocrite but suggested that federal agencies were attempting to protect her by withholding information.

“Worse than her lies, worse than her hypocrisy is the disturbing appearance that her campaign may have actively tried to mislead you and the voters by attempting to cover up this story,” said Khachigian.

Federal officials said there was no effort to keep information from the Huffington campaign.

Late Thursday, Ron Rogers, an INS spokesman at the regional office in Laguna Niguel, said there was confusion over whether the woman in question actually was here illegally.

“I can’t confirm the status of the person in question,” said Rogers. “What happened is that a similar name was given, and the INS ran a check on a person with a name similar in nature.”

Subsequently, Rogers said, the INS received a different name and was running that person through the agency data bank. He could not definitively say, however, that the latest name was the woman who worked for Feinstein, or what that person’s status was.

The Department of Labor’s San Francisco office released an interim response that indicated they were making a good-faith attempt to the answer the Huffington campaign’s request. Officials there also pointed out the Huffington campaign’s request for information was very broad, covering a 24-year period and every office of the Department of Labor across the country. “The request was so broad that it was beyond the scope of this office to respond to,” said Department of Labor spokesman Joe Kirkbride.

Documents released by the agency indicated that from 1984 to the present, there was never an attempt by Feinstein, her husband, Richard Blum, or her daughter to certify any household employees who did not have legal status to work in the U.S. All records prior to 1984 were destroyed, under a routine policy to discard older files. Earlier this year, documents also show, Blum’s company, Richard C. Blum and Associates, began the process of getting a work permit for a financial analyst--a routine process for companies attempting to fill specific positions with non-U.S. workers. Documents do not indicate where that person lives.

Feinstein campaign manager Kam Kuwata said the Guatemalan woman worked for Feinstein from 1980 to 1982 as a housekeeper while Feinstein was mayor of San Francisco. At the time she was hired, the woman showed Feinstein documents making it appear she was legally able to work, he said.

Feinstein said she believed the woman had a proper work permit and has not seen any evidence to the contrary.

The former housekeeper also said she had legal permission to work at the time, according to the San Francisco Free Press, a newspaper put out by striking reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner. The woman told the Free Press that she had a work visa from a prior job working for a Guatemalan official in Los Angeles.

At the time of the hiring, it was not against the law for an employer to hire an undocumented worker.

Although the law did not require it, Feinstein asked the woman to show her documentation of a work permit and the woman complied, Kuwata said.

Kuwata said Feinstein did not learn that her housekeeper had immigration problems until after the woman was no longer working for her.

By 1983, however, the mayor knew there was a problem because sometime between 1982 and 1983, the housekeeper had returned to Guatemala and was unable to re-enter the United States.

Feinstein and her husband arranged for the housekeeper’s son, Josue, to come from Guatemala and live in their household so he could continue his schooling.

A 1984 profile of Feinstein in the San Francisco Examiner reported this:

“Without any publicity, the couple opened their home last year to 9-year-old Josue Paiz, the son of their former Guatemalan housekeeper, who was stuck in her native country with immigration problems. Feinstein said they sent for Josue so that he could continue in school. “She loves him like her own,” says daughter Kathy. He was supposed to join Feinstein at the beach but his mother, at last, returned to San Francisco.

Kuwata said that before the woman went back to Guatemala, Feinstein warned her she might have difficulty getting back into the United States.

While the former housekeeper was stuck in Guatemala, Feinstein wrote a letter on her behalf to authorities, Kuwata said. He said he did not know what the letter said, or to whom the mayor sent it.

“She (Feinstein) did not learn of the immigration problems while she (the housekeeper) was employed,” Kuwata said. “While she was in her employ, she understood she was here legally and she could legally hire her.”

Kuwata said Feinstein paid all applicable taxes and Social Security for the housekeeper.

Kuwata sought to differentiate Feinstein’s actions from Huffington’s, noting that the law prohibiting the hiring of an illegal immigrant was not enacted until 1986.

“Michael Huffington broke the law and Dianne Feinstein did not break the law,” Kuwata said. “What law did she break? She wasn’t required then even to ask for the papers.

“The law was clear. He broke it. Dianne did not. He knowingly hired an illegal immigrant. Dianne never knowingly hired someone illegally.”

Also contributing to this report were Times staff writers Jim Rainey, Patrick J. McDonnell and Richard Paddock in San Francisco.