For Different Reasons, Few Celebrating

Finally, more than a year after allegations of vote fraud first surfaced, the ordeal seemed to be over.

But at the offices of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional--the Latino rights organization accused by former Rep. Robert K. Dornan of conspiring to push him out of office--there were no cheers or champagne.

“Our reaction around here is pretty sober, mainly because this decision was something we completely expected,” said Hermandad spokesman Jay Lindsay. “We’re not jumping for joy. This is something that should have been decided long ago.”

Local Republicans weren’t reaching for the champagne, either.

“I think it’s a shame,” said Anaheim Councilman Bob Zemel, who is running in the June primary to challenge Sanchez in November. “The vote is of such vital importance, and to have American citizens’ votes canceled out by any improper or illegal vote is a travesty. I think Bob Dornan deserves his day in court.”

Orange County Superior Court Judge James P. Gray, who also is running in the primary, declined to assess the decision.

“I have no opinion,” Gray said. “I don’t have the information. I know the wheels grind slowly sometimes. This is something that I think we would have wished would have come to whatever conclusion earlier.”

Attorney Lisa Hughes, the third declared candidate in the primary, could not be reached.

Patrick Birkett, of South County’s JFK Good Works Democratic Club, applauded the decision. He said the only surprise was the length of time it took the House to drop the matter, which he said did not reflect well on its leadership.

“I did think it would finally go that way,” Birkett said. “Frankly, I didn’t think it would take this long.”

Barbara Coe, co-founder of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform and co-author of Proposition 187, decried the decision.

“My reaction is one cut away from ballistic,” Coe said. “I think that I speak for a lot of fellow patriots. If our Congress has no concern for protecting the sacred right of the citizens’ vote, then it’s time, I believe, that many of us will walk away. I have no intention of supporting elected representatives . . . if they have no concern for protecting my vote.”

The person at the center of the controversy, Nativo V. Lopez, executive director of Hermandad’s Santa Ana office, was sick Tuesday and unavailable for comment.

Lindsay said Lopez would issue a statement this morning, after the House Oversight Committee officially announced the end of its investigation into the November 1996 election that unseated Dornan. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) won that race by 984 votes.

Dornan blamed his loss in part on voting by noncitizens registered to vote by Hermandad. The organization helped thousands of legal residents become citizens and also ran an aggressive voter registration drive before the 1996 election.

Lopez later conceded that some people registered to vote before completing the months-long citizenship process, but he said the improper registrations were due to confusion rather than an attempt to commit fraud.

He and other Hermandad officials also have maintained that the extent of improper registration was inflated for political reasons.

An investigation by Orange County Dist. Atty. Mike Capizzi was closed in December after the grand jury declined to indict anyone from Hermandad for vote fraud.

Lindsay said the district attorney’s decision was far more significant for Hermandad than the committee’s announcement that it would end its probe.

“That [decision] was the main thing for us,” said Lindsay. This week, Capizzi’s office returned 13 computers and about two dozen boxes of documents that were seized more than a year ago.

“The DA’s investigation meant for some very hard times,” Lindsay said. “It was a hardship on the organization, on our operations. The missing records, the attention we had to give to this matter, the stress and tension on the employees because of the stink of accusation and, in some cases, actual threats of violence. It was as if we were on trial all year.”

Tuesday, community activists who supported Lopez and Hermandad through the controversial investigations said they felt vindicated. “I think with this, it’s ended,” said Arturo Montez, former president of the Santa Ana chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

“The people who looked into this are basically saying what I said a year ago, that there was a systemic problem with the registrar of voters, the INS and everywhere, and to blame it on one organization, to persecute them and run a media frenzy against them, was outrageous.”

Amin David, who leads the Latino activist group Los Amigos of Orange County, and who has been outspoken in his support of Lopez, said a Sanchez aide called him Tuesday to tell him the news.

“We’ve matured tremendously, in a very positive, constructive way,” he said. “It’s not the time to gloat. We just stood firmly in our belief that such wild accusations prompted by the Dornan campaign were just outrageous. We look forward now to the big challenge of getting Loretta reelected.”