House Inquiry Called Political Jab at Sanchez

Unhappy with the continuing investigation into last year’s victory by Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove), the top House Democrat said Friday that his party will begin to use “delaying tactics” and other methods to stymie legislation as a way “to defend Loretta against a totally unreasonable investigation.”

The first such effort, however, was brushed aside Friday by Republicans, who hold a majority in the House.

The House is investigating charges made by ousted congressman Robert K. Dornan that noncitizen voting and other election irregularities led to his 984-vote defeat in November.

But House Democratic leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri said the inquiry by the House Oversight Committee, which began in January, is “totally out of control” and is being used by Republicans to harass freshman Democrat Sanchez and weaken her for a GOP challenger in 1998. He called on his Republican colleagues to prove Sanchez’s victory was tainted by fraud or end their investigation.

“It costs money to pay lawyers and defend this contested election,” Gephardt said. “The ulterior motive is to keep her from raising funds for her reelection campaign. I also suspect they are trying to intimidate voting by new citizens nationwide and particularly in this district.”

Republican leaders rejected all the charges Friday and earlier in the day foiled efforts by Democrats to limit the time and funds the GOP believes is necessary for the inquiry.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield) defended his committee’s inquiry and chided the Democrats while indicating that the investigation is far from over.

“Those kind of bully tactics don’t work with me, and I am pretty sure it won’t work with the [GOP] leadership,” he said.

Noting that even the Democrats concede there was voting by noncitizens in the election, Thomas said the “natural question is to find out how many.”

“If we quit now, as the Democrats want, we would not be able to get to the bottom of this,” he said. “Our duty is to see that anyone who cast a legal vote does not have that vote canceled by an illegal vote.”

*

Thomas said his panel still has not received about 10% of the computer and paper files it subpoenaed in June from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The panel wants the material to determine how many people might have registered to vote before becoming citizens and then voted in the November election. Some of that material is due in the committee’s hands by the end of the month, he said.

Last month, the INS found 4,023 possible matches between people who registered to vote in the 46th Congressional District and people who were in the process of becoming citizens at the time. The matches were limited to people who appeared on each list with the same first and last names and middle initials, as well as identical birth dates, Thomas said.

It is not known how many of these people may have voted in the election, whether the matches are accurate or whether the INS records are able to accurately identify all people who are naturalized citizens.

In addition to these 4,023, there were some 1,500 “near matches” in which first names--such as Rosa and Rosalie--differed but all other information--such as last name and birth date--was identical, Thomas said.

Though Thomas declined to discuss specific numbers of possible illegal votes, Dornan said that the panel has evidence that as many as 2,000 people voted in the district though they were not citizens when they registered.

Dornan criticized the efforts by Democrats to short-circuit the inquiry.

“How do you shut down an investigation when you have substantial evidence of fraud and when people with evidence have been avoiding legal subpoenas?” he said.

*

Lawyers for Dornan have issued almost 40 subpoenas to immigrant rights groups, labor unions, colleges, local and federal agencies, Sanchez and others in a search for information about voting by noncitizens. They have largely been ignored.

Thomas said that the panel has additional lists it wants checked and would likely ask the INS to run those through its databases. One list includes the names of several thousand people who voted in the election but sought to escape jury duty by claiming a noncitizen exemption.

It is just such an open-ended inquiry that Gephardt and other Democrats attacked Friday, saying that Sanchez’s nearly 1,000-vote margin in the race is almost unsurmountable.

“The GOP is trying to broaden the scope of the investigation beyond these votes and beyond the 46th [District] into motor-voter and other issues,” said Steve Jost, chief of staff to Sanchez. “Who knows where the subpoenas will land next, Cook County?”

The Orange County district attorney and the secretary of state’s office are investigating the election and have said that at least 303 people registered by one local Latino advocacy group voted illegally in the 46th Congressional District.

* FORECAST FOR ’98

A nonpartisan group calls Democrat Rep. Loretta Sanchez an underdog. B6