Jones Says His Decision Isn’t Political Although the Issue Is

To hear Secretary of State Bill Jones tell it, there was no political calculation in ordering an unprecedented review of Orange County’s 1.3 million voter registrations.

Not that the veteran Republican from the San Joaquin Valley couldn’t foresee the implications of such an action. Rather, it didn’t matter, he says.

“You have to evaluate the political fallout, I will say that,” he said, in a telephone interview Saturday from his ranch in Fresno. “In any decision of this consequence there are pluses and minuses and no matter how well you explain it there will be fallout. . . . But the fact of the matter is, this is public policy and you may agree or disagree, but that is what I am hired to do. I am hired to make sure elections are fraud free.”

Some critics see in Jones’ order raw political posturing. Or perhaps an opportunity to latch onto an issue ripe for exploitation.

Whatever, the decision by Jones is placing his office at the center of Robert K. Dornan’s effort to have Congress order the rerunning of the election he lost to Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove). Dornan has contended that voter fraud, primarily in Santa Ana, led to her 984-vote victory.

“I think we’ve got to be pretty honest,” said Chris Sautter, an attorney working with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and a specialist in election recounts. “The motivation here is partisan and the goal is twofold: one, to try to yank a duly elected member of Congress out of Congress; second, to intimidate a block of voters who in the last election were trending very strongly to the other party.”

Sautter said Jones is taking advantage of a politically hot issue already advanced by Dornan. “It sounds as if there’s a little competition to get some political capital out of this situation,” he said.

Bob Mulholland, an advisor to the state Democratic Party, thinks the maneuver is typical of Pete Wilson-style Republican politics, which winds up being seen “as Latino bashing.” It is driving Latinos to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Mulholland said he thinks Jones’ move is a mistake.

“It doesn’t matter what happens, if they find more voter fraud or not,” he said. “What happens is the Latino voters hear that the Republicans are once again going after Latinos. That is the way it comes across.”

Jones says he is unfazed by such criticisms. He says the size of the unlawful voter registration problem in Orange County requires action.

“If they choose to disagree, so be it,” he said. “The policy is either wright or wrong. You can cloud the issue with all kinds of noise, but in the final analysis. . . . you ought to be a citizen or not [vote]. I am doing what needs to be done.”

Other observers, such as John Pitney, a Claremont McKenna College professor who studies congressional Republican politics, see Jones as a bipartisan reformer.

His position is “good politics and good policy,” Pitney said, “because it shows he’s not just targeting the Latino community, and not just helping Bob Dornan. He could uncover misconduct in the Republican community as well. . . . And there probably is an unfair amount of improper voting.”

The idea of a politician advancing his career by adopting the role of reformer has a rich tradition in California politics, said Orange County-based political consultant Dan Wooldridge. It worked 20 years ago for Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown, who Wooldridge points out went from the “obscure office of secretary of state to the corner [governor’s] office at the State House.”

“That is not to say Jones is doing it only for those motives,” Wooldridge said. “He is probably doing it because he thinks it is right. I think that most people looking at the events of the past four months are genuinely distressed that for the first time in modern California political history, we are facing a serious case of election fraud.”

Jones, who last week said he wouldn’t run for U.S. Senate in 1998, acknowledges ambitions of higher office, perhaps governor.

But he says these aspirations have to be joined to objectives he believes are important, such as the three-strikes law he co-authored.

“Few will remember who the 27th secretary of state was,” he said. “But they will remember if the elections system is fixed. People will remember three strikes long after they remember who wrote it.”

Also contributing to this report was Times staff writer Gebe Martinez.