The Republican Filth Machine Kicks Into High Gear:
AG: Voter Warning Linked to GOP Campaign
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October 19,2006 | SANTA ANA, Calif. -- State investigators have linked a Republican campaign to letters sent to thousands of Southern California Hispanics warning them they could go to jail or be deported if they vote next month, a spokesman for the attorney general said.
"We have identified where we believe the mailing list was obtained," said Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer.
He declined to identify the specific Republican campaign Wednesday, citing the ongoing investigation. The Los Angeles Times and The Orange County Register both reported Thursday that the investigation appeared to be focused on the campaign of Tan D. Nguyen, a Republican challenger to Democratic U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez.
The letter, written in Spanish, tells recipients: "You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time."
In fact, immigrants who are naturalized U.S. citizens can vote.
Complaints about the letters this week prompted state and federal investigations, and Barankin said investigators had been questioning people in Orange County.
The two newspapers reported state investigators had found the location where the letters were printed and mailed to an estimated 14,000 Democratic voters in central Orange County. The Los Angeles Times, citing an unnamed source, said authorities had interviewed Nguyen at his office.
Nguyen did not return messages left by The Associated Press or either newspaper. Sanchez also did not return messages seeking comment.
The owner of Huntington Beach-based Mailing Pros, Christopher West, told The Orange County Register that he didn't know any laws were being broken when the mailer was sent. He said he gave investigators the name of the person who hired him to do the mailings but declined to provide that the name to the newspaper.
"I'm the one that processed it, and I don't read Spanish," West said. "Until the investigator read it to me, I didn't know the content."
Scott Baugh, chairman of the Orange County Republican Party, condemned the letter as "an obnoxious, grotesque piece of work."
"Regardless of who did it -- Republican or Democrat -- if it's a crime, then whoever did it should be prosecuted," Baugh said.
A group of six Vietnamese-American political candidates running for offices in Orange County issued a joint statement saying: "The content of this mailer is offensive to the immigrant voters, regardless of their ethnicity."
The note's letterhead resembles that of an anti-illegal immigration group, California Coalition for Immigration Reform, but group leader Barbara Coe said she told investigators for the attorney general's office Wednesday that her group didn't authorize the letter and she didn't know who sent it.
"The letterhead was altered and I've never head of any Sergio Ramirez," the name signed to the letter, Coe said.
Numerous political leaders including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have denounced the letter and called for the investigations.
© 2006 The Associated Press.
Colo. opens probe on Beauprez attack ad
By STEVEN K. PAULSON, Associated Press WriterTue Oct 17, 2:42 PM ET
Colorado authorities have opened a criminal investigation into whether an attack ad run by GOP Rep. Bob Beauprez (news, bio, voting record) against his opponent for governor illegally used confidential information from a federal law enforcement database.
Democrat Bill Ritter's campaign has suggested the information was taken from the computerized crime records.
But John Marshall, the congressman's spokesman, said Tuesday that the details came from an informant he refused to identify. He said the campaign is cooperating with investigators.
The investigation marks an ugly turn for what has so far been a relatively mild campaign to succeed Republican Gov. Bill Owens, who is prevented by term limits from running again. Recent polls show the two-term congressman trailing Ritter, a former Denver district attorney.
The governor has asked the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to expedite its investigation. Use of the federal criminal database for any purpose other than law enforcement is a crime punishable by fines and up to a year in prison.
The TV ad in question refers to Carlos Estrada Medina, a suspected illegal immigrant who was arrested in Denver in 2001 on suspicion of heroin trafficking. The ad says Ritter chose to seek a plea bargain in the case, Medina avoided deportation, and he was later arrested in California on suspicion of sexually assaulting a minor.
Reporters found that the person arrested in Colorado was identified as Walter Noel Romo and had a different birthdate than Medina, according to the Ritter campaign. When questioned about the man's identity, the Beauprez campaign said Romo and Medina were the same man because federal criminal databases indicated the two men had the same FBI numbers.
Ritter spokesman Evan Dreyer said the campaign tried verifying that information through public records but could not — raising the possibility that the databases were illegally accessed.
"We could not connect the dots using information available to the public in a way that made any sense at all," Dreyer said. "If we couldn't do it, how was the congressman able to do it?"
Arrest records are the only public information in the database, CBI spokesman Lance Clem said.
Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press
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