Loretta Sanchez: "The Vietnamese" are Trying to Take My Seat

[The Northerner]

California Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez has come under fire for recent comments she made stating that "the Vietnamese" were trying to steal her congressional seat.

"The Vietnamese and the Republicans are, with an intensity, trying to take this seat from which we have done so much for our community -- to take this seat and give it to this Van Tran, who is very anti-immigrant and very anti-Hispanic," Sanchez said during a recent Spanish-language interview with Univision, according to the Orange County Register.

Tran, a Republican state assemblyman and Sanchez's challenger for the seat, is a Vietnamese-American whose family immigrated to the United States in 1975 amid political turmoil in Vietnam, according to his website.

Tran's campaign promptly responded to Sanchez's comments, saying "the attack against immigrants and the Vietnamese community on national television is shocking. The 47th congressional district belongs to the people and not an individual ethnicity."

"At a time when our state faces an unemployment rate above 12 percent, Loretta Sanchez resorts to insensitive racist attacks against her own constituents," said Tran campaign manager George Andrews, according to the Register.

Andrews added: "This is one of many incidents demonstrating that Loretta Sanchez is disconnected with the values of central Orange County. In fact, she has attended more parties at the Playboy Mansion than bills passed in Congress. Her record is abysmal and so all she has to run on is personal attacks," Edwards said.

Sanchez's campaign responded that her comments specifically referenced "those in the Vietnamese community who are supporting her opponent," not the Vietnamese Americans as a whole.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20017604-503544.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CBSNewsTheEarlyShowLiving+

[demosincebirth]

1. Vietnamese in Ca. usually vote republican. Don't know why, but they do.

[Yeggo]

2. Still...

a weird thing to say.

[demosincebirth]

15. There is nothing between the lines...believe me.

[izquierdista]

3. Why? Because they left

Same reason the Cubans in FL vote Republican. When the country goes Communist, the rats desert what they see as a sinking ship. Kind of how we ended up with Zbigniew Brzezinski too.

[WillyT]

5. Makes Me Wonder... Do People Fleeing From Right-Wing Repressive Countries...

Pinochet's Chile for example, come here and tend to vote Democratic???

Never thought about it, til just this moment.

:shrug:

[izquierdista]

6. I'd guess Albert Einstein did

You could ask Isabel Allende....

[WillyT]

10. Good Points...

:hi:

[BlueCheese]

13. That's kind of a strong term to use, isn't it?

[demosincebirth]

14. Chinese immigrants, in my neighborhood, (from Hong Kong) came to the

U.S. because the communist took over in the nineties, and they tend to vote democratic. Don't know why, but I'm glad they do. They came over with a lot of money and live in wealthy areas in Fremont...twenty minutes south of Oakland.

[izquierdista]

19. Not analagous

The PRC in the '90s really wasn't doing many Communist things, like they did right after 1949. They have kind of guaranteed that Hong Kong would continue to be their capitalist face to the rest of the world.

[demosincebirth]

22. I guess they left before they found out. nt

[krabigirl]

7. The older ones do..the young, not as much.

[shanti]

9. you don't know why?

$$$$$$ many vietnamese own their own businesses. businessmen/women = repukes, and remember this IS the OC.

[Texasgal]

18. They do becuase they

were FOR the war.

[LynneSin]

23. Maybe they remember it was Johnson that started that war

:cry:

[JI7]

25. no, these are people who supported the Vietnam War, there was an incident a few years ago

some Vietnamese guy put up some poster or something of ho chi minh and he was attacked for it by the community including getting physically attacked on live tv.

McCain is pretty popular with the old crowd also even after he made the "gook" comments. but it's different with the younger ones who protested his comments as these people know the term from going to school here mostly and from racists.

[Ramulux]

4. Sanchez really blew it with this one

I get the point she was trying to make and its perfectly true, but she definitely put this in a way that cant be seen as anything other than racist. She needs to apologize, continually make clear what she actually meant, and campaign like crazy.

[alp227]

21. LA Times reports clarification by her office

The Report, authored by a reporter of Vietnamese descent (last name is Tran):

Her campaign released a statement saying Sanchez was referring to "those in the Vietnamese community who are supporting her opponent."

Sanchez has worked for years to shore up support from Vietnamese Americans, who make up a sizable portion of her constituents. She attends Vietnamese festivals wearing traditional ao dai tunics and is outspoken about human rights abuses and political freedom in Vietnam, an issue dear to the hearts of Vietnamese Americans in Little Saigon, which has the largest population of Vietnamese in the country.

This is the original source of the interview, which was shown on the Spanish-language Univision network.

So far this is the only subtitled version I could find - uploaded by Andrew Breitbart (yes seriously, be suspicious of any editing so do watch Univision's original too) of the interview. Sanchez's voice in the Breitbart clip makes me a bit suspicious but yeah.

And I just read her Wikipedia entry. The irony? Sanchez was a Republican 'til 1996 and even now is a Blue Dog. (National Journal ranks her at near 70% liberal though.)

In 2006, someone associated with Sanchez's R challenger Tan Nguyen reportedly sent a letter intimidating Hispanic voters, prompting the state Republicans to ask Nguyen to withdraw from the 2006 House race in Sanchez's district. Sanchez got 62% of the 47th District vote in 2006. In 2008, a Hispanic Republican ran against Sanchez, but Sanchez still got around 70% of the vote.

[madrchsod]

8. appealing to her base?

[emilyg]

11. She continues to amaze me - not in

a good way.

[GSLevel9]

12. moran. nt

[CBR]

16. What a stupid thing to say. nt

[kentuck]

17. It's not her seat...

I hope she knows?

[marmar]

20. That's the way to promote positive race relations, Rep. Sanchez.....

:wtf:

[Kajsa]

24. She did not think this through.

Open mouth+insert foot.

Not good Loretta!

Phu Nguyen, a Democrat, is running
for a seat in our State Assembly.
And he's Vietnamese-American.

He is a great guy and is running against
Alan Mansoor, Costa Mesa's mayor (ugh!)
who is trying to turn our city into a
west coast Arizona with his racist agenda
regarding immigration!

Loretta, think first next time!

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

26. "B-1" Bob Dorman probably felt the same way about her

Dornan's district, which was renumbered the 46th after the 1990 census, had always leaned Democratic, but became even more so when it absorbed a considerably larger number of Latino voters than he had previously represented. After failing to win the GOP presidential nomination in 1996, Dornan ran for reelection to the House against Loretta Sanchez, a former Republican who had switched parties and run as a Democrat. Dornan lost by 979 votes.

Following the narrow defeat, Dornan alleged that Sanchez's winning margin was provided by illegal voting from non-U.S. citizens.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dornan

I was living in SoCal that election, and remember the GOP had people dressed in uniforms which resembled those worn by the INS. Not to intimidate legal citizens of Mexican descent, mind you, just to "make sure the polls were safe for voters."

[alp227]

28. Turned out that indeed some illegal immigrants voted in that '96 House election

According to the Wikipedia article about Sanchez: "A Congressional investigation found evidence that 624 votes were indeed cast by non-citizens. An additional 124 votes had already been thrown out by California officials. These votes were not enough to throw Sanchez's victory into doubt, so the investigation was halted and the outcome was upheld by a Republican-controlled Congress,<4> making Sanchez the first American of Mexican heritage to represent Orange County in Congress."

Footnoted source: http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/02/13/cq/sanchez.html

Which reported: "Task force Chairman Vernon J. Ehlers, R-Mich., said investigators had found concrete evidence of 748 illegal votes by non-citizens, not enough to throw Sanchez's victory into doubt."

[SoCalDem]

27. And not that long ago B1-Bob complained that a "Latina" was after HIS job.

Sorry Loretta, demographics change & if you do not keep up with them and their needs, you will eventually lose your position too.