Tales from the Orange Curtain

Apparently the campaign for the Republican challenger in an Orange County congressional district sent a letter threatening arrest to Hispanic immigrant voters.

The candidate, Tan D. Nguyen, is an immigrant from Vietnam who denies any knowledge and blames the targeted mailing on a rogue employee. Of course, the central plank of his candidacy is fighting illegal immigration, so it's not like he had motive.

Mainly, I find this amusing because it shows the GOP continues to honor its illustrious traditions in the O.C., even if the country party is calling for Nguyen to drop out.

Several years ago a Republican, Curt Pringle (now the mayor of Anaheim, and the genius behind the city's doomed lawsuit to sue the Angels for demoting Anaheim from the team name in favor of Los Angeles, which blew a $2 million hole in the city budget), hired security guards and had them posted around predominantly Hispanic polling places to intimidate Latino voters.

Then there's the fact that the bozo who founded the Minutemen (not Paul Revere, the other bozo), ran in the Republican primary for an O.C. congressional seat.

But, most notable is Nguyen's predecessor in the dirty-fightin' 46th, former Republican congressman "B-1" Bob Dornan.

For the unacquainted, Dornan lost his seat to the current rep, Loretta Sanchez, a decade ago, then fought tooth and nail to have the election results thrown out, alleging that mass numbers of illegal immigrants had voted and swung the election to Sanchez, and insinuating that she must have had something to do with it because she's Mexican. (Well, her parents are, anyway, but the subtleties are unimportant for Bob.)

Two years later, Dornan challenged Sanchez to win back the seat and seemed perplexed by his inability to court Latino voters (who are all Mexican, as far as Bob's concerned). When I interned at the Register's local bureau, one of the reporters recounted an anecdote from an interview with him, where he explained why he should be seen as the "real" candidate of Lations: "I've done everything I can for these people except wear a sombrero!"

Perhaps it's understandable that Michael Moore devoted a chapter in Downsize This! to chronicling his efforts to have Dornan committed to a mental institution.