Tom Fuentes' advisee Tan Nguyen is indicted

Remember Tan Nguyen, the local Congressional candidate who got into hot water in 2006 over a campaign mailer that warned immigrants against voting?

You know! SOCCCD trustee Tom Fuentes was his senior campaign advisor!

(And remember that babe who sang his theme song, "Stand By Our Tan"? See also the video below.)

Well, according to the OC Register (Former GOP Congress candidate indicted over 2006 mailer),

A Federal grand jury has indicted … Tan Nguyen over a controversial 2006 mailer sent to Latino voters that warned immigrants against voting. ¶ The letter, sent out in the waning days of Nguyen's congressional campaign against Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, was written in Spanish and triggered national headlines with many observers seeing it as the direct result of a long string of GOP candidates increasingly using anti-illegal immigration sentiment to get elected.

Nguyen was never prosecuted for voter intimidation, but the feds did pursue the fellow’s alleged efforts to impede their investigation.

The Reg reminds us of the facts:

During the campaign, Nguyen at first denied knowledge of the mailer – which was sent out under the masthead of an anti-illegal immigration group called California Coalition for Immigration Reform. He then said an overzealous campaign volunteer had engineered the mailer. That campaign volunteer was later hired back when Nguyen issued another explanation of the mailer arguing that the word "emigrado" had simply been mistranslated to "immigrant." … However, the mailer also raised memories of a 1988 episode where uniformed guards were stationed by the GOP in areas with high Latino turnout to benefit the State Assembly campaign of Curt Pringle.

You know who was behind the “uniformed guards” episode, right?

—Yep, Nguyen's senior advisor—our own Tom Fuentes, then the chair of the OC GOP.


Back in 2005 (Tom Fuentes), Gustavo Arellano explained the “poll guards” incident:

You [Tom] approved the use of poll guards to stand outside polling places in Latino neighborhoods when they cast ballots for the 72nd Assembly District race. The Republican Party candidate, Curt Pringle, won the election. But the subsequent furor led to your resignation as communications director for the Catholic Diocese of Orange, an exodus of Latino voters from the GOP (the first of many, it would turn out) and various settlements of lawsuits regarding the matter totaling more than $480,000.

STAND BY OUR TAN (2006):


See also: Tello

UPDATE: the Times’ Oct. 2 story (Former candidate for Congress indicted on charges of obstructing justice) notes that Nguyen’s letter “brought national condemnation from both political parties. Local Democrats and some Republicans decried the letter, saying it was an example of racially tainted voter intimidation.” It also notes that, “If convicted, Nguyen could face up to 10 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release.”