Challenge to Latino Leaders: Put Principle Over Politics

The reason I hold out for world peace is my belief that, when it gets right down to it, people of all persuasions act about the same. We only appear so divided because people too often fudge beliefs and tailor behavior to suit their purposes. It’s an altogether human trait, but one with poisonous effects.

The antidote is easily identified but difficult to take: People of intellectual honesty must demonstrate it even when it runs counter to their cause.

At this moment in Orange County history, that task falls to anyone purporting to be a local Latino leader. Those not up to the task, as far as I’m concerned, forfeit any claim to the title.

Before getting to the specific challenge facing those leaders, a backward glance at local history:

In 1988, a relatively unknown Republican candidate from Garden Grove named Curt Pringle ran for a state Assembly seat in a hotly contested district. On election day, some 20 uniformed security guards, hired by local Republican Party officials, showed up at various polling sites in heavily Latino precincts in the district.

The GOP feared voter fraud, but the guards’ presence had a ghastly impact. Carrying signs saying “Non-Citizens Can’t Vote,” the guards conjured images of a Big Brother police state intimidating people on election day. Pringle won the election by fewer than 900 votes, but almost immediately cries went up to invalidate the election.

Leading those cries were local and national Latino leaders. This newspaper covered the issue extensively and editorialized against the guards’ presence. An official for LULAC, the nation’s largest Latino civil rights organization, said then: “Although it appears that the Republican Party of Orange County played a major role in this Mississippi-like voter intimidation, [our] position is that voter harassment goes beyond party and partisan lines and is occurring in areas throughout the nation. . . .”

In those days, the moral challenge fell to local Republicans. They gave a mixed performance. County GOP Chairman Tom Fuentes justified spending the money for the guards and said he regretted only that they were uniformed and that some people were offended.

Pringle took basically the same line, augmenting it with some media bashing and a claim of political partisanship.

As they say in movie scripts, let’s shift to present day.

Now, the district attorney’s office is investigating Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, a Latino rights organization, to see if it conspired to get large numbers of Latinos to vote illegally last November.

In shades of 1988, a relatively unknown candidate--Loretta Sanchez--ran in a hotly contested congressional district against incumbent Bob Dornan. In a neat bit of historical symmetry, she beat Dornan by about 900 votes.

Nor has it escaped the D.A.’s attention that Hermandad’s executive director, Nativo Lopez, also was on the ballot in a school board race.

Remembering that it’s 1997 and not 1988, local and state Republicans suddenly are outraged at possible voter fraud. They don’t view intense media coverage as bias, but as a welcomed event. This time around, they see a district attorney on his toes--not the office they’ve blasted for investigating Republican Assemblyman Scott Baugh’s election in 1995.

But this isn’t about the GOP. As wrong as it’s been in the past, that’s how right it is this time. Right, that is, about pursuing an investigation.

This time, the moral challenge belongs to local Latino leaders--at least, those who have condemned the investigation and questioned the press coverage.

As right as they were in 1988, that’s how wrong they are this time.

In an ironic juxtaposition, compare what LULAC said in 1988, which I quoted above, to what a local LULAC official said last week about the current controversy: “There isn’t anything of substance. You can always find human error in any big organization. . . . “

Not even Tom Fuentes trotted that out in ’88. Had he defended the poll guard incident by claiming that “you can always find human error in any big organization,” imagine how Latino activists would have responded.

With derision, and rightly so.

Until admitted or proved, nothing should be presumed about wrongdoing at Hermandad. But if Latino leaders continue to argue, as some have, that the local media is in Dornan’s pocket or that the allegations are tantamount to immigrant-bashing, their credibility will vanish.

Latino leaders have a chance to dress themselves in much more glory than did the local GOP in 1988.

They can do it by unequivocally supporting an investigation into Hermandad and, if fraud occurred, to condemn it and sanction those responsible for it.

If the Hermandad allegations prove true, they are hardly the worst election-day actions of all time. In my mind, they register about the same on the scale of misdeeds as does the poll guard issue. But, if true, Hermandad’s actions violated election-day purity as surely as did the GOP.

In 1988, Latino leaders led us to believe they understood that principle.

Could it be that a mere eight years later, the principle somehow doesn’t matter anymore?

Readers may reach Dana Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.