California Rep: 'The Vietnamese' Want Me Out

Democrat Loretta Sanchez accuses opponent of being 'anti-Hispanic'
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 24, 2010 12:23 PM CDT
California Rep: 'The Vietnamese' Want Me Out
US congresswoman Loretta Sanchez gestures while speaking to reporters in Hanoi, Vietnam Friday, April 6, 2007.   (AP Photo/Tran Van Minh)

A Democratic congresswoman from California is taking heat today after telling Univision “the Vietnamese” are after her seat. “The Vietnamese and the Republicans are, with an intensity, trying to take this seat from which we have done so much for the community,” Loretta Sanchez said in the Spanish-language interview, according to the Orange County Register’s translation, “and give it to this Van Tran, who is very anti-immigrant, and very anti-Hispanic.”

The comments have lit up conservative media outlets. Tran, whose family came to the US after the Army evacuated them from Saigon in 1975, demanded an apology, calling the remarks “offensive and wrong.” Sanchez’s camp has responded with a statement saying only that she was “referencing those in the Vietnamese community who are supporting her opponent.” (More Loretta Sanchez stories.)

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