Lopez: Sanchez Campaign Manager Lied to Congress

Lashing out at the Loretta Sanchez campaign, immigrant-rights leader Nativo V. Lopez said campaign manager John Shallman lied under oath about an alleged attempt by Lopez to collect money in exchange for influencing voters in last November’s election.

Lopez said that Shallman, in fact, asked him for help in a last-minute door-to-door effort to motivate voters and offered $5,000 for his assistance.

In an interview Tuesday night, Lopez said he considered the amount “inadequate and insulting” and refused. He said he would have needed at least $30,000 to mount an effective get-out-the-vote drive.

Lopez, who heads the immigrant-rights group Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, was a candidate for the Santa Ana Unified School District board at the time. He said the effort would have been made as part of his school board campaign, apart from the nonprofit Hermandad agency. Lopez won the election.

In written testimony submitted to Congress on Tuesday, Shallman said Lopez contacted the Sanchez campaign to ask for money in exchange for persuading voters to cast ballots for Sanchez. He said he was led to believe by another community leader that if he refused, Lopez would offer his services to Sanchez’s opponent, then-incumbent Robert K. Dornan.

It is not illegal or unusual for a campaign to pay an organization to encourage people to vote, Shallman said, but he said an implied threat of persuading voters to favor another candidate unless paid is highly irregular.

Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) defeated Dornan by 984 votes. Dornan complained that the election was tainted by fraud, including voting by noncitizens, and called for a new election.

Dornan’s son Mark, who was his father’s assistant campaign manager, said there was “absolutely no” communication between Dornan and Lopez during the 1996 campaign. “Obviously Shallman is lying,” he said. “This is nothing but a disgraceful, desperate, last-gasp attempt to try to steer the public’s attention away from who really did get the lion’s share of illegal votes, which would be Loretta.”

A House of Representatives task force has been investigating allegations of voter fraud for nearly a year. Shallman’s testimony came in response to questions from the task force.

Independently, the Orange County district attorney’s office is investigating Hermandad for allegedly registering noncitizens to vote.

Lopez said Shallman’s written testimony was part of a “desperate effort” by the Sanchez campaign to distance itself from Hermandad. He said Sanchez or her campaign staff contacted him twice asking for his support, once just after she won the Democratic primary and again last October. He said he turned them down both times.

On Wednesday, Shallman reiterated his story and said he was surprised by what Lopez said. He said that Lopez called numerous times in October trying to reach Sanchez and that he (Shallman) eventually called him back.

In that call, Shallman said, Lopez asked for “a big amount--it could have been $30,000 or $50,000. I said, ‘We don’t have any money for that.’ Then, he said a smaller amount, and I said, ‘Zero.’ ”

Meanwhile, several Latino community leaders reacted Wednesday to Shallman’s allegations with grim resignation and said they were struggling with how to react because they have supported Sanchez as well as Hermandad.

“I’m very dismayed and disappointed,” said Gil Flores, state director of the League of United Latin American Citizens and a Santa Ana resident. “It’s divisive when these things come out, especially when they come from the side that we thought we were helping.

“Everyday I pick up the paper and wonder what’s next. I just wish this thing would come to a head instead of dragging on for a year.”

Several described Shallman, a Los Angeles-based political consultant, as a “hired gun” who didn’t understand or care about Latino constituents in Sanchez’s 46th Congressional District.

“You don’t burn down a house in your own neighborhood,” said Arturo Montez, who was identified by Shallman in his sworn statement as the community leader whose call for money preceded Lopez’s request. Montez acknowledged talking to Shallman but denied implying that voters would be persuaded to vote for Dornan if money wasn’t paid.

Lopez’s attorney, Edward Munoz, said Shallman’s allegations “don’t ring true.” He said the timing of the disclosure was suspicious, because recent questions from the task force indicate it is seeking to prove a connection between Sanchez and Hermandad.

Munoz said, however, that Lopez did not intend to take any legal action.

“Nativo Lopez is under a microscope,” he said. “There are investigations up and down the state and across the beltway. People seem to forget that this is a nonprofit organization that has to scrape together nickels and dimes and relies on volunteers for its day-to-day operations.

“If Nativo Lopez and Hermandad took on everybody that made insinuations or accusations or said things that were inaccurate or untrue, [Hermandad] would not exist. They don’t have the financial wherewithal to defend themselves.”

Also contributing to this report was Times political writer Peter M. Warren.