Sanchez Flap: Voters Spread Blame

In the mad scramble for the moral high ground, everybody is bound to end up a little scratched and bruised.

A day after the Democratic National Committee stripped Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) of her speaking engagement at the party’s convention over a Playboy Mansion fund-raiser, they reinstated her when she caved in and agreed to change the venue. Voters on Sanchez’s home turf were not amused and shook their heads at the political quagmire.

“As a woman, I’m personally uncomfortable with her [initial] choice of venue, but I think it could have been handled much better (by the Democratic Party),” said Veronica Kelley, 33, a social worker from Huntington Beach having lunch with friends at El Curtido restaurant in downtown Santa Ana.

The way Kelley and others interviewed Friday see it, Sanchez may have shown poor judgment by picking a venue with a loaded name on the same week her party is crowning its presidential candidate. But the DNC’s raising a moral objection smacks of hypocrisy and plays into the hands of Republicans who want to turn November’s election into a morality contest, they said.

“She’s paying for the sins of Bill Clinton,” said Cary Sandler, 59, a watch salesman mak

ing his rounds in Santa Ana.

Rafael Canul, 33, a psychologist from Irvine, said he feels Sanchez unwittingly walked into the political minefield, then was reprimanded when she refused to toe the party line.

“The question is not about morality,” said Canul. “Everybody is just playing a game of chicken to see who blinks first.”

That would be Sanchez. The poster child for the new face of the Democratic Party, a woman who came to national prominence in 1996 after beating Republican Rep. Robert K. Dornan, said Friday that she will move the fund-raiser to Universal Studios in Burbank.

“I just feel strange about them bullying her into that,” said Amin David, president of Los Amigos of Orange County, a community group. “This is not the issue to test her loyalty on. It sits bad with Latinos after all her trials and tribulations, and all that she has done for the party. They are making a mountain out of a molehill.”

The fund-raiser will benefit Hispanic Unity USA, a political action committee formed to increase the number of registered Latino voters. More than 600 people have signed up to attend the $5,000-a-head benefit, originally scheduled to take place on the lawn of the Playboy compound Tuesday.

Among Sanchez backers planning to attend is Teresa Saldivar, owner of Teresa’s Jewelry in Santa Ana. “I still support her 100%,” said Saldivar, who helped arrange for the jewelry the congresswoman will wear at the convention.

Many Latino leaders in Orange County called the DNC’s actions hypocritical considering that the party has received $50,000 in campaign contributions since 1991 from Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner and his daughter Christie Hefner.

“They take the Latino vote for granted,” said Art Montes of Orange County’s League of United Latin American Citizens. “They come out to California and listen to mariachi music and have some tamales and they feel they have done their duty. . . . Instead of dealing with issues that really affect our community, they argue [over] whose lawn you are going to put up a tent for a fund-raiser.”

Others said they hope the incident will be old news by convention time and that Latino voters will remain loyal to the party.

“We all learn from our mistakes,” said Rueben Martinez, a Sanchez supporter and owner of Martinez Books and Art in Santa Ana. “It’s time to move on.”

* BACKING DOWN: Sanchez changes plans for a Playboy Mansion fund-raiser. A1

* NOT THE FIRST TIME: The mansion has hosted many a political event. A26