Sanchez Asks What She Can Do for Her County

While Republican leaders and a congressional committee continue to attack her on her 984-vote election victory in 1996, Rep. Loretta Sanchez has tried to sidestep the fracas and focus on her district.

“I have definitely not been the one to concentrate on the 1996 election,” she said. “I have been looking at what I can get done for Orange County now.”

Despite unprecedented distractions for a freshman lawmaker, Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) has crafted a modest legislative program in her first year in office and made herself a fixture in the district, according to politicians in both parties.

In the Capitol, she has voted consistently pro-environment, pro-abortion rights and pro-labor and has still won moderate plaudits from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a middle-of-the road rating from the Christian Coalition.

“I campaigned on four things, and when I go to the voters next year, I want them to assess what I did for education, what I did for small business, and the same thing for seniors and for public safety,” Sanchez said.

In those areas, she has sponsored two bills and hosted a string of seminars and community meetings during her almost weekly cross-country trips back to the district.

Some Republican leaders dispute her claim of being a moderate. And were the challenge to her election by former Rep. Robert K. Dornan to evaporate, she would still be at ground zero for the GOP.

Michael Schroeder, chairman of the California Republican Party, said the GOP will spend $1 million to $2 million to defeat her. “She is one of the top five targets nationally,” he said. “She doesn’t have a significant accomplishment.”

Schroeder, an attorney who represents Dornan, calls Sanchez “extremely vulnerable” because, in her “socially conservative district, rather than staking out a moderate position, she has positioned herself as a most extreme advocate on abortion . . . and held fund-raisers with gay rights organizations.”

Sanchez said that assessment misses the mark. What the community cares about is service, attention and getting its share of federal benefits, she said.

“I haven’t gone an a crusade for ‘choice.’ I haven’t gone on a crusade for gay issues,” she said. “I haven’t gone on any crusades on the things my detractors say I am so interested in. If you look at the things we work on, it is all back to the four main categories.”

The congresswoman has made the 5,000-mile round trip from Washington 37 times this year at a cost of $230 each time, with about every fifth trip covered by frequent-flyer miles. The typical three-day sojourn includes Rotary lunches and constituent dinners, appearances at local schools and visits to area businesses.

Her office faxes out her weekend schedule, trolling for press coverage, while constituents get postcards telling them, in one instance, that Sanchez will hold “office hours” outside a local market on a Saturday afternoon.

Her office has built a series of seminars around the visits. Several were designed to boost small business, including one in Santa Ana in which NASA and Boeing representatives met with 50 local entrepreneurs seeking contracts with the aerospace industry.

And while such community outreach may be routine congressional care-taking in some places, her office insists it demonstrates Sanchez’s focus on her constituents despite the distractions of Dornan’s election challenge.

Local business leaders and city officials generally say Sanchez is attentive, accessible and hard-working.

Republican City Councilman Ho Chung of Garden Grove described Sanchez as “active and energetic in reaching out to people,” especially minorities. He and others in the city praised her for accelerating the delivery of several federal grants.

While one measure of a legislator’s commitment comes in the home district, the other takes place in the Capitol.

Sanchez has sponsored three bills and expects to push them next year after the recess. One would increase funding for school construction in suburban districts by reducing the cost of borrowing. Under the plan, schools would owe only the principal to investors, who would receive interest in the form of a federal tax credit.

Another measure would aid senior citizens by providing for criminal background checks of people providing services to the elderly through shared housing programs. A third bill would recognize 300 Vietnamese commandos who were captured while fighting for the U.S. during the Vietnam War; about 50 are constituents.

Sanchez is seen as a moderate member of her party and is a member of the Blue Dog Caucus of fiscally conservative Democrats. In those cases where the five Republican members of the Orange County delegation vote as a block, about half the time she votes with them.

Sanchez voted with her colleagues to back constitutional amendments that would require a two-thirds vote to raise taxes and would allow Congress to criminalize flag desecration. She also joined them in backing the 1997 Tax Cut Act, as well as bills to require adult prosecution of juveniles older than 14 who are charged with serious violent felonies, and to allow the military to patrol the border.

She joined four of the members of the Orange County delegation in opposing most- favored-nation status for China.

On other key issues, she voted against a 12-year term limit for Congress--dropping her support when a bipartisan proposal to make it retroactive lost. She opposed a ban on partial-birth abortions--supporting a medical exception to protect the life of the mother--and she opposed offering workers the option of taking compensatory time off instead of cash for overtime work.

She and her staff ticked off a list of other actions, such as: helping secure $100 million in funding for the Prado Dam, $3 million for the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana, $20 million in restitution for the South Vietnamese commandos and $1.4 million for countywide Head Start.

Some Republicans say those issues exaggerate her role. Dornan maintains she pirated the commando project from him. Sanchez said she adopted it because Dornan failed to get the funding mandated while he was in office.

On the Prado Dam, a spokesman for Rep. Jay C. Kim (R-Diamond Bar) said it took three months to get Sanchez involved. Sanchez said her work wrung the funding from a Democratic administration.

While it is difficult to tell whether she is taking deserved credit or basking in the light of someone else’s effort, Democrats know there is no harm in Sanchez being the bearer of glad tidings.

Two weeks ago, it was Sanchez who personally called Santa Ana Police Chief Paul M. Walters and Mayor Miguel A. Pulido Jr. to say the city had won a $1-million grant from the Department of Justice to aid community-based policing.

Pulido, a Democrat, called Sanchez “instrumental” in lobbying for the grant.

During her first year in office, Sanchez has made education a high priority, visiting 40 of her district’s 166 schools. She believes it is vital for her to see the problems in schools firsthand and for minority children to meet role models.

At Saddleback High School in Santa Ana last week, she presented the school with a program designed to fight dropouts. During a discussion with 50 students, the need for the program was underscored. Half the students raised their hands when asked if they knew a dropout or a gang member.

Only two spoke up when the students were asked if they knew what they wanted to be.

Sanchez, who had gone to the school with the program’s creator and one of its financial backers, seemed taken aback afterward.

“We try,” she said. “I don’t know if we are getting across to them. We have to do something.”