Dornan, Sanchez Square Off at Hearing

As attorneys and members of Congress tossed around the unfamiliar name of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional inside a government hearing room, members and supporters of that immigrant rights organization rallied around their leaders in a boisterous outdoor rally that drew thousands.

Backed by drums and Aztec dancers, and under banners of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Hermandad supporters chanted and cheered and lampooned former U.S. Rep. Robert K. Dornan, who contends that he lost the November election to Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) because hundreds of noncitizens voted.

A cry went out: “Get a Job, Bob!” Try picking strawberries, one suggested. “Or washing dishes,” offered another.

“It’s time for him to give up,” said Carmen Cardenas, 16, of Costa Mesa, who held one end of a hand-lettered sign “Dornan is a Sore Loser” while her father held the other. “What’s his thing? Why’s he still complaining after all this time? He’s a loser. He lost.”

Dornan’s case, presented to a three-member congressional task force Saturday at the Orange County Hall of Administration, rests largely on allegations of fraud by Hermandad, which helped thousands of immigrants become citizens last year and ran an aggressive voter registration drive. But the group was virtually shut out of Saturday’s hearing.

Hermandad attorney Mark Rosen was able to grab a seat in a spectator area by standing in line beginning at 6:30 a.m. But outside, co-directors Nativo Lopez and Bert Corona played to the crowd of more than 1,000 union activists, Hermandad members and other supporters who gathered at a nearby plaza.

“That’s the Republican Party,” said Corona, motioning toward the closed hearing doors. “That’s the way they do it.

In contrast to the forced civility inside the hearing room, the plaza from early morning on was crowded with plain-spoken, bullhorn-wielding, sign-carrying activists, from Chicano student activists to proponents of zero immigration.

“Hey, hey, ho ho! Let’s go vote in Mexico!” chanted members of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, taunting Hermandad supporters, who cheered back, “Sanchez, Sanchez, Sanchez!”

White-haired Walter Webb of Capistrano Beach, who wore a board-sign announcing himself as a “Veteran Against Vote Fraud,” lectured a crowd of largely Spanish-speaking Hermandad supporters:

“You people are nothing more than pawns,” he said, becoming more agitated with each word. “There’s nothing but doom for America if we keep going like we are. You people will know what it is to see famine, to see children dying in the streets.”

Although the scene presented potential for conflict, both sides appeared to be determined to keep the calm. Tensions flared only briefly about 9:30 a.m., when more than 1,000 Hermandad supporters marched to the hall from the group’s Santa Ana office two blocks away, arriving amid drumming and chanting and whistle-blowing. They joined several hundred Hermandad supporters already there.

As dozens of gloved police officers standing by held batons, members of the crowd--estimated at its peak at 2,200--shouted each other down, but Hermandad supporters soon moved to the nearby Plaza of the Flags, where they heard from half a dozen speakers at an hourlong rally.