Outside, Sanchez Backers Have the Numbers

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 closed ranks 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 Rep. Robert K. Dornan, who contends he lost the November election to 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 here Saturday, rests largely on allegations of fraud by Hermandad, which helped thousands of immigrants become citizens last year and also 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 walled-off spectator area by standing in line beginning at 6:30 a.m., and gave five minutes of public testimony during an unscheduled half-hour of public comments at day’s end.

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. I was alive in the 1950s during the McCarthy hearings, and it was the same way then. They conduct a circus for themselves. They’re not interested in the truth.”

Said Lopez: “We’re not interested in being inside. This is our testimony.”

Then he walked to the podium to acknowledge his supporters and chide his enemies. “We are confronting the most conservative and reactionary forces of the United States,” he said.

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. . . . “

Two young men who claimed to be Chicanos handed out small Mexican flags, which were quickly scooped up by members of Hermandad’s security forces. One gave his name as Sam Antonio, and wouldn’t say who he represented.

“We were warned yesterday this would happen,” said John Palacio, a Latino rights advocate, who held a fistful of small American flags. “They’re Dornan supporters trying to discredit us. So we printed up 1,500 flags of our own.”

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 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 one another 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.

In the morning’s most poignant moment, immigrant Ramon Mascorro, an electrician from Santa Ana who moved here from Mexico 15 years ago, held up his naturalization certificate, which he received on June 20. “After 15 years in this country, after all we’ve suffered, we think that once we’re citizens, finally no one is going to bother us,” he said. “But now we see the fight continues.”

Mascorro said he learned through attorneys for Sanchez three days ago that his name was included on a list of suspected noncitizen voters. He also carried his voter registration card, which clearly showed he registered to vote one month after becoming a citizen--and four months before the last election.