Case Dropped in GOP Use of Guards at Polls

SANTA ANA —  After a two-year criminal investigation, the U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday that it will not file charges against Orange County Republican leaders who placed uniformed guards at polling places in Latino neighborhoods on Election Day in 1988.

Some Latino leaders said the guards were stationed at the precincts to intimidate voters.

Investigators for the Orange County district attorney’s office, who were conducting a joint civil rights investigation with the Justice Department, said they are furious at federal agents who they said did not consult them about ending the case. As a result, they said, they still consider the matter open.

“We haven’t decided anything,” said Deputy. Dist. Atty. Wallace Wade, who is in charge of the county’s investigation. “We can make an independent decision (but) I want to talk to Washington before I say anything about that.”

Justice Department spokeswoman Amy Casner in Washington said the federal government’s investigation was officially concluded Tuesday.

It was not clear if prosecutors did not find evidence of a crime or whether federal laws did not apply.

“It’s just not prosecutable,” Casner said, declining to elaborate.

The federal prosecutor who handled the case was unavailable for comment.

The announcement sparked outrage from Latino community leaders who were incredulous that the Justice Department would simply drop the case after such a long investigation.

“Only in Orange County can you get away with things like this,” said Rueben Martinez, head of Americans for Constitutional Justice, a Latino community group formed to protest the 1988 incident.

“I’ve been struggling for more than 30 years to register my people to vote and this is an arrow that went right through my heart,” he said. “I feel weak.”

The case stems from Republican Curt Pringle’s 1988 race for the 72nd Assembly District seat based in Garden Grove and Santa Ana. Pringle’s campaign team and county Republican leaders said they hired the guards Nov. 8, 1988, because of rumors that Democrats were planning to bring busloads of illegal voters to the district.

Latino leaders, noting that many Latino voters were likely to oppose Pringle, countered that the intent was to intimidate.

Uniformed guards were posted at 20 polling places in heavily Latino precincts in Santa Ana, some holding signs in Spanish saying it was illegal for non-citizens to vote. Pringle won the race by only 867 votes, but he lost his reelection bid last November in a race in which the poll guard incident was a major issue.

A group of Latino voters who claimed they were intimidated by the guards filed a civil suit that was settled out of court last year, with insurance companies for Pringle and the county Republican Party paying more than $400,000.

Pringle and county Republican chairman Thomas Fuentes said Wednesday they were happy with the Justice Department decision but upset that the length of the investigation had damaged their campaigns last year.

“We knew all along there was no wrongdoing, and it was just a matter of time before this was going to come out,” said Pringle, who has returned to his drapery manufacturing business.

Fuentes, who acknowledged that he paid for the guards from Republican coffers, said: “I look back on it as an effort that was entirely well-intentioned but mistakenly implemented. The only concern at the time was to preserve the sanctity of the ballot.”

Last fall, federal investigators in the case wrote to Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego) that it was unlikely they would file charges because the incident involved a state Assembly race, not a federal contest, so federal laws did not apply.

There are state laws that prohibit voter intimidation, but Wednesday, investigators were at a loss as to whether those laws apply in this case.

Wade said county and federal investigators had been conducting a joint investigation and, after the material was reviewed in Washington, both sides were to have discussed a final resolution.

“This is very frustrating for us,” Wade said. “Some person I’ve never heard of in the Justice Department is saying the case is closed and the people we’ve been dealing with for two years haven’t said (anything).”