Gov. ramps up pressure over O.C. mailing

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger stepped up the pressure Saturday on an Orange County Republican congressional candidate, telling reporters that Tan Nguyen should withdraw if he knew about his campaign’s mailing of letters intended to threaten immigrant voters.

Schwarzenegger denounced the mailings traced to Nguyen’s campaign to unseat Democratic incumbent Loretta Sanchez in the 47th District and said that “anyone that knew ... has to resign immediately.”

Speaking during a campaign appearance in Santa Ana, the governor said the mailings “were illegal; it’s a hate crime.... There should be no tolerance for this kind of behavior.”

Democratic gubernatorial challenger Phil Angelides had earlier denounced Nguyen’s campaign, which sent mailers to 14,000 registered voters. Written in Spanish, they warned that immigrants who cast a ballot could face jail time or deportation.

Nguyen, himself a Vietnamese immigrant, said Thursday that he had fired his campaign office manager because of the letter but that he had no prior knowledge of it. However, the chairman of Orange County’s Republican Party has said that he was told by the mailing company that sent the letter that Nguyen was personally involved.

The Nguyen controversy -- and key Republicans’ quick action to distance the party from the mailings -- pointed to a sharp contrast between the two major parties’ approaches to the elections, just over two weeks away. As the Democrats seek to promote themselves as a unified slate, the Republicans are largely running as individuals.

Schwarzenegger made two Orange County campaign stops Saturday unaccompanied by other Republican candidates for statewide office, while the Democratic statewide candidates crisscrossed Southern California and stressed the need for unity.

Angelides began his day at a UC Berkeley football game tailgate party, then traveled to three Los Angeles-area labor rallies, which also drew such statewide Democratic candidates as John Garamendi, running for lieutenant governor; Cruz Bustamante, running for insurance commissioner; John Chiang, running for controller; and Debra Bowen, running for secretary of state; and local candidates.

“No matter where you go in this state, you see Democrats campaigning together,” Angelides told about 200 supporters during an afternoon barbecue at a Gardena union hall. “These Republicans this year -- in the year of George Bush’s Republican Congress -- they’re all treating each other like they got the bird flu.”

Despite Saturday’s show of solidarity, the Democrats have their own fissures. Ray Cordova, chairman of the South Bay County Labor Council, told the Gardena crowd that he was “sick and tired” of seeing Senate President Don Perata and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez “ride around the state” with Schwarzenegger rallying votes for Propositions 1A through 1E, which would spend $37 billion on state construction projects.

Schwarzenegger and the legislative leaders worked together to get the measures on the ballot and have since campaigned for them together.

But the theme of the day was unity, and the need to propel California voters to the polls by building on what recent surveys have shown could be a nationwide Democratic surge on election day. Angelides for the last two days has cited polls that he says have shown his campaign rallying from 17 to 7 points behind -- though the polls were, in fact, sponsored by different polling organizations and do not necessarily demonstrate a trend.

“We are rocking and rolling,” Angelides said in Gardena. “Those guys are slipping and sliding.”

Schwarzenegger’s campaign day was more low key. In Santa Ana, he admired cowboy apparel and browsed ranchera albums on 4th Street, chatting with store owners and pausing for photos, handshakes and autographs before a private meeting with the Hispanic 100 civic group, which has endorsed him.

Speaking to reporters, Schwarzenegger reiterated his support for immigration reform, advocating a guest worker program and, under specific conditions, driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.

“Right now we have this policy where everyone looks the other way and everyone does things illegally,” he said. “This is not the right way to go.”

He moved on to Cook’s Corner, a biker roadhouse in Trabuco Canyon, arriving on his maroon Indian Chief motorcycle. Nearly a thousand Harley-Davidsons and other choppers gleamed in the sun as part of the “California Dream Ride” to raise money for an organization that supports military families.

“I could have gone anywhere else in the world; I would not have remotely achieved the things that I have achieved, and it is all because of California,” Schwarzenegger told the crowd.

scott.martelle@latimes.com susannah.rosenblatt@ latimes.com

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