Early Special Election for 46th District Unlikely

It is increasingly unlikely that a special election could take place before late May for the congressional seat held by Rep. Loretta Sanchez, even if the House of Representatives finds sufficient voter fraud to vacate last year’s election.

That would place the special election just ahead of the June 2 primary for the seat Sanchez won from former Congressman Robert K. Dornan.

Both sides in the contested election agree that the House has all but run out of time to vote on the issue before it adjourns in November. If the House does not vote by then, the issue won’t come up again until late January, when House members return to the Capitol for the State of the Union address.

Under California law, the governor sets a special election about four months after a vacancy occurs. That would place a special election in late May--at the earliest.

“At the rate at which they are going [in the House], I think it is extremely unlikely that they will get this done before they adjourn in November, and that is deeply disappointing,” said Michael Schroeder, Dornan’s attorney and chairman of the state Republican Party.

Citing “foot-dragging,” Schroeder said it is long past the time when the House Oversight Committee should have acted on what he believes is convincing evidence that voting by noncitizens and other irregularities changed the outcome of the election in the 46th Congressional District.

Sanchez spokesman Steve Jost said the House leadership has decided to push the issue over into the next year because it lacks hard evidence of fraud. He called the delaying tactics purposeful and a continuing burden on the freshman congresswoman, who won the election in the central Orange County district by 984 votes.

“We are not happy that it is being dragged out,” Jost said. “But the longer it is dragged out, the clearer it becomes that this is about partisan political motives. They are trying to steal back a seat that they lost.”

House Oversight Committee Chairman William M. Thomas declined Friday to be specific about a deadline for ending his panel’s inquiry.

“Iam not trying to create an outcome that includes a special election, so I am not governed by some timetable,” he said.

In assessing the task before his committee, Thomas said that completing the investigation “could take three weeks or it could take three months,” but that depends on cooperation by the Democrats. Thomas said his panel’s work has also been slowed by stalling tactics at various times from Sanchez, the INS and House Democrats.

The Bakersfield Republican said the timetable could be moved up if the Democrats and Republicans agree on criteria for deciding who cast ineligible ballots.

Thomas said Republicans want Democrats to “accept the work” of the INS or California Secretary of State Bill Jones, also a Republican, in determining who was ineligible to vote.

Jones maintains that prospective citizens are ineligible to register to vote until they have taken the oath of citizenship, and that votes cast by people who “jump the gun” on registration are invalid.

Democrats say a vote should be valid if someone was a citizen on election day, regardless of that person’s status at time of registration.

Democrats also have been critical of using INS data to assess who was not a citizen when they voted in the 46th Congressional District. They say that INS records are unreliable and that a list released last spring of about 300 ineligible voters in the 46th Congressional District included numerous errors.

The Democratic leadership, for its part, has been angered at what they view as an open-ended inquiry designed to hurt Sanchez, intimidate legal Latino voters, and make voting and registration less accessible.

House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri again vowed Friday to disrupt House business and prevent adjournment unless Republicans give him a firm timetable for the investigation to end. Adjournment is set for Nov. 7 but could be stretched a week, several House officials said.

“Short of our pressure, I don’t believe this will be concluded this session . . . and I feel that is unjustifiable,” Gephardt said. “We will soon be beyond one year from the election.”

Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who serves on the House Contested Election Task Force, believes if the Republicans had the evidence, they would already have brought the issue to a vote.

“They don’t have the facts and are thrashing around to get more facts,” he said. “But frankly, the thrashing serves their purposes: to delay, to intimidate legal voters, to cause Ms. Sanchez to focus on this instead of 1998 and distract her from service to her constituents. It is a very bad precedent for the future.”

One factor that almost certainly puts the issue beyond the adjournment date is Thomas’ request last month asking Jones to “review, analyze and verify” confidential information on suspected ineligible voters in the election.

As of Friday, Jones’ office had not received the voter information, nor has a meeting been scheduled to either sign off on a privacy agreement to protect the INS-based data or even to turn it over, said Undersecretary of State Rob Lapsley.

“At a minimum, it will take three to four weeks” to complete the analysis once the material is handed over, Lapsley said.

Should Congress decide in late January--when it returns from recess--to declare Sanchez’s seat vacant, Gov. Wilson has 14 days to issue a proclamation setting a special election.

The election must be on a Tuesday and must occur between 112 and 119 days after the issuing of the proclamation. A primary for the special election would be held eight weeks before the election, placing it in late March.

The governor would have the option of consolidating the special election with the June 2 primary. It would cost $400,000 to hold a special election and its March primary in the 46th Congressional District, said registrar of voters officials. If the special election is consolidated with the June primary, it would cut the cost in half.

State officials have also researched what to do if Congress vacates the seat sometime later in 1998. The governor has the option of leaving the seat open if the vacancy occurs after March 6.