The Daily Background

This is an update on a story I mentioned recently, in which a Republican Congressional candidate in California sent out a letter to 14,000 hispanic people who recently registered to vote which falsely said that it was illegal for immigrants to vote. Hispanics are a voting block that usually trend Democratic, so it’s obvious that the letter was a dirty trick to try and depress Dem turnout in the election (by scaring likely Democratic hispanic voters), giving the Republican a better chance. When originally writing about this topic, I noted:

It is, of course, not illegal at all for immigrants to vote. My dad (now a US citizen, but an immigrant nonetheless) votes every cycle.

[…]
What’s even stupider is that the Republican candidate, Nguyen, is actually a Vietnamese immigrant himself. If this little dirty letter his campaign sent out was actually factual, he wouldn’t be able to vote for himself on election day.

Well, now it turns out that the Republican candidate’s office has been raided by the Department of Justice, which is investigating the matter. Associated Press is now reporting:

For two days, a Republican congressional candidate had promised to explain how a threatening letter was sent by his campaign without his knowledge to thousands of Hispanic immigrant voters. As about 200 people gathered Friday in front of his campaign headquarters seeking answers, Tan D. Nguyen was a no-show at his own news conference. Instead, 10 uniformed California Department of Justice police officers arrived with a search warrant and pounded on the glass of Nguyen’s storefront headquarters.

Agents spent two hours sifting through cabinets, boxes and computers. They left carrying several boxes and plastic bags of evidence.

Hours later, they searched a home in nearby Anaheim listed as belonging to one of Nguyen’s staffers, emerging with a computer hard drive and a small box. Nguyen’s neighbors in a gated community in Santa Ana said law enforcement officers also spent several hours searching his home.

It is, of course, completely illegal to try and stop people from voting by scaring them or using any type of intimidation. On a side note, this guy Nguyen is a complete asshole. Not only is he trying to scare his fellow legal immigrants from fulfilling their citizenship duty to participate in democracy for his own political gain– he’s also switched parties, running as a Democrat when the Dem primary came around, and then switching to become a Republiccan because it was more convenient to try and beat the Democrat in the general election.

Now, Republican leadership is calling for this guy to bow out of the race, and it seems that his little dirty trick has backfired quite sensationally with a DoJ investigation. AP also notes that “On Friday, Hispanic and Vietnamese leaders joined the chorus condemning the letter, saying it should not become a wedge that drives their communities apart.” Good.

Filed under: Immigration, oh six midterm Elections, Z-TDB Blog