Sanchez, Constituents Put Report Aside

Rep. Loretta Sanchez hasn’t read Kenneth W. Starr’s report.

She doesn’t plan to any time soon.

Stumping under the hot Santa Ana sun on a day most of her colleagues in Congress spent digesting the special prosecutor’s titillating document from cover to cover, the Garden Grove Democrat said she had more pressing things to do than read what she called “garbage” about her political ally President Clinton.

“I’m not one of those people who sits around and talks about idle gossip and rumors and allegations. And you know why? Because it happened against me,” Sanchez said, referring to the lengthy Congressional investigation of her 1996 election victory launched by nemesis Robert K. Dornan, whose seat she won.

But with the freshman congresswoman facing a fierce electoral rematch against Dornan on Nov. 3, the staunch Democrat’s decision to stand by her president could be tricky.

Dornan wasted no time trying to capitalize on the fallout from the report’s revelations. Unbidden, he called a reporter Friday to declare himself “as sick over this as I was during Watergate,” and tried to link Sanchez to the Clinton scandal.

One thing is undeniable, political observers agree: There is no freshman member of Congress who owes more to Clinton and other Democrats than Sanchez. With the help of Democrats, she spent much of her first term defending herself against Dornan’s charges of vote fraud.

And there is no freshman member of Congress who has raised more reelection money than Sanchez, helped by appearances at her fund-raisers by both Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.

Sanchez, dressed in red, white and blue, moved smoothly Saturday from one event in her district to another: a speech to a political science class at Santa Ana College, a ribbon-cutting in Anaheim, a union picnic. The congresswoman’s tactic seemed to be paying off. Not one constituent asked her about the Starr report.

The electrical workers who flocked around the Latina lawmaker wanted to talk about why there were so few people at their picnic--their boss made hundreds work overtime to repair a power outage, they told her.

The mom who brought her daughter to meet Sanchez wanted the congresswoman to encourage the youngster in her dream of being the first woman president.

And the Anaheim residents at the opening of a community center wanted to talk about more federal money for their city.

“If we knew all the stuff that went on with Eisenhower and Roosevelt and Nixon it would make your hair curl,” said Charlie Bye, an Anaheim retiree. “It doesn’t have much to do with what happens to us. You pick up and you go on.”

Sanchez’s studious avoidance of the Starr report went over well among the supporters she spent Saturday with, shaking hands and joking, but it might not play as well in Washington.

Eventually she and the rest of the House of Representatives will use the document to vote whether or not to recommend impeachment hearings. If she doesn’t read it, and Sanchez said she was not inclined to, she could be attacked for not performing her constitutional duty.

All that can wait, Sanchez said.

“You know when we’re gonna vote on it? February of next year, earliest,” Sanchez said. “I’ve got a lot of things to work on before then.”

Meantime, Sanchez said she was “saddened” by and “disappointed” in Clinton. But she reserved her disgust for the attention being paid the report. While she voted with a majority of the House of Representatives to release the report to the public Friday, she said she believes it shouldn’t have been.

“It was gonna be released anyway, so you might as well put it out there,” Sanchez said. “I wish it wasn’t but, oh well, it’s out there.”

As to the allegations in the report, Sanchez said she isn’t convinced there is anything to them.

“It’s a very one-sided process, and it’s not a fair process,” Sanchez said. “It’s like when you have two little kids running around the house and one goes running to mommy and says, ‘Mommy, Mommy, he hit me.’ Of course you’re going to get one side of the story.”