In the mad scramble for the moral high ground, everybody is bound to end up a little scratched and bruised.
A day after the Democratic National Committee stripped Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) of her speaking engagement at the party's convention over a Playboy Mansion fund-raiser, they reinstated her when she caved in and agreed to change the venue. Voters on Sanchez's home turf were not amused and shook their heads at the political quagmire.
"As a woman, I'm personally uncomfortable with her [initial] choice of venue, but I think it could have been handled much better (by the Democratic Party)," said Veronica Kelley, 33, a social worker from Huntington Beach having lunch with friends at El Curtido restaurant in downtown Santa Ana.
The way Kelley and others interviewed Friday see it, Sanchez may have shown poor judgment by picking a venue with a loaded name on the same week her party is crowning its presidential candidate. But the DNC's raising a moral objection smacks of hypocrisy and plays into the hands of Republicans who want to turn November's election into a morality contest, they said.
"She's paying for the sins of Bill Clinton," said Cary Sandler, 59, a watch salesman mak
ing his rounds in Santa Ana.
Rafael Canul, 33, a psychologist from Irvine, said he feels Sanchez unwittingly walked into the political minefield, then was reprimanded when she refused to toe the party line.
"The question is not about morality," said Canul. "Everybody is just playing a game of chicken to see who blinks first."
That would be Sanchez. The poster child for the new face of the Democratic Party, a woman who came to national prominence in 1996 after beating Republican Rep. Robert K. Dornan, said Friday that she will move the fund-raiser to Universal Studios in Burbank.
"I just feel strange about them bullying her into that," said Amin David, president of Los Amigos of Orange County, a community group. "This is not the issue to test her loyalty on. It sits bad with Latinos after all her trials and tribulations, and all that she has done for the party. They are making a mountain out of a molehill."
The fund-raiser will benefit Hispanic Unity USA, a political action committee formed to increase the number of registered Latino voters. More than 600 people have signed up to attend the $5,000-a-head benefit, originally scheduled to take place on the lawn of the Playboy compound Tuesday.
