Loretta Sanchez

Authorities are investigating whether a former executive assistant in the U.S. House of Representatives misappropriated thousands of dollars to finance a vacation and personal items, as part of a widening effort to determine whether congressional accounts are inadequately monitored, according to two sources familiar with the inquiry. At issue in the ongoing probe by the House inspector general is the role of a former assistant to Rep.

Friends and constituents of Rep. Loretta Sanchez will get one more year of holiday joy from the congresswoman's fluffy cat Gretzky. For nearly a decade, Sanchez and the Himalayan cat have co-starred in a wacky holiday card that is mailed each year to friends and voters by the Garden Grove Democrat's reelection campaign. The ritual seemed likely to end this year: Gretzky died in November 2010, prompting Sanchez to put out a call for new ideas for a “fresh holiday tradition.” But after posting a poll to her website last month, Sanchez concluded that she had to find a way to bring Gretzky back.

Re "Sanchez Elated as Probe Is Dropped," Feb. 5: In [former Rep.] Robert K. Dornan's remarks to the press following the loss of his challenge to Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove), he says, "I look 10 years younger than my age, and I act 30 years younger." I would say he acts 60 years younger--more like a child going through the "terrible twos." As a Republican constituent in the 46th District, I am thrilled with the accessibility and help I have received from Sanchez. My last visit with the Dornan office in Washington consisted of a homophobic diatribe by an aide.

Statewide, the work of the Citizens Redistricting Commission has sent politicians into a flurry. Some find themselves in the same district as a colleague and many others face the difficult prospect of running in unfamiliar turf. But this isn't the case in central Orange County. According to congressional district maps released Friday, Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez can rest relatively easy. Her new district encompasses most of Santa Ana, parts of Garden Grove, Anaheim, Westminster and Fullerton.

Ensuring that abortion will again be a major issue in the 46th Congressional District race, two leading GOP opponents of Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) are already attacking her for opposing a ban on the controversial partial-birth abortion procedure. Rather than defend her vote against the ban, Sanchez said she will try to steer the debate back to a general discussion of abortion and "the right to choose" by saying she, too, opposes late-term abortions, with certain exceptions.

Six antiwar demonstrators were arrested Wednesday at the Garden Grove office of Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Santa Ana) after camping there overnight and telling her they wouldn't leave unless she promised not to approve more funding for the war in Iraq. Most of the protesters are members of the group Military Families Speak Out, and some have relatives in the armed forces. They entered the office about 7 p.m. Tuesday during an open house.

When Democrat Loretta Sanchez launched her grass-roots campaign last November to make a grab for Robert K. Dornan's congressional seat, she was widely ignored by the party establishment. But the 36-year-old public finance specialist made a pointed and relentless push for victory, quietly recruiting her six siblings to walk precincts, dispatching her mother to local senior citizen centers and appealing to women and Latino voters with targeted mail.

In the three months since it was formed, a political action committee aimed at increasing Latino representation in public office has raised more money than any other Latino PAC in history. Hispanic Unity USA, gaining strength from the growing Latino political muscle nationwide, has raised $500,000 since May under its new leader, Rep. Loretta Sanchez.

The general counsel's office of the House of Representatives has filed a legal brief supporting former Rep. Robert K. Dornan in a tug-of-war over subpoenas concerning his challenge to last fall's election. But leading Democrats responded with a letter opposing the action. The back-and-forth on a fairly arcane, technical point in the ongoing investigation into alleged voting by noncitizens follows the partisan divide that has characterized the entire dispute.

The congressional committee weighing whether to overturn last fall's election of Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) because of alleged voter fraud decided Wednesday to ask the House to order the U.S. attorney to file criminal charges against a Santa Ana civil rights group for failing to comply with a subpoena. The panel also moved to demand that the following provide answers to written questions: Sanchez; Robert K.

The embattled incumbents in California congressional and legislative districts sweating out the ballot counting Tuesday night included Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez, who in preliminary returns was pulling ahead of wth Republican Assemblyman Van Tran for a central Orange County seat, and Republican Rep. Mary Bono Mack, who was fending off a strong challenge from Democrat Steve Pougnet in a Palm Springs-based district. In Northern California, two targeted Democratic congressmen were trailing their GOP challengers early in the ballot counting.

Ever since her headline-grabbing upset of conservative Republican icon Rep. Robert K. Dornan back in 1996, Rep. Loretta Sanchez has won reelection in her working-class district by wide margins. Now, however, Republicans believe they stand a fighting chance of unseating Orange County's only Democratic member of the House. Armed with years of local political experience, strong ties with the area's ascendant Vietnamese American community and the backing of Republicans in Washington and around the nation, Republican state Assemblyman Van Tran is giving Sanchez her first serious challenge in more than a decade.

Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez found herself in hot water this week after she said in a Spanish-language interview that "the Vietnamese" and Republicans were trying to take control of her seat. Sanchez, who is up for reelection, was put on the defensive after her main opponent, Assemblyman Van Tran (R-Garden Grove), a Vietnamese American, jumped on the issue and called her statements "offensive" and "divisive. " The tiff highlights the political dichotomy of central Orange County, where two big voting blocs are Latinos and Vietnamese.

Republican Rep. Mary Bono Mack of Palm Springs has a new title these days: "Patriot. " That's the term leaders of the National Republican Congressional Committee are using for House members they believe to be most vulnerable to a Democratic challenge this fall. Rep. Jerry McNerney, who wrenched his Northern California district from GOP hands four years ago, is a " Frontline Democrat," the name the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has bestowed on its party members facing strong challenges.

At a time when congressional travel is coming under new scrutiny, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) has the distinction of taking more trips at taxpayer expense than anyone else in the California delegation. In the last 3 1/2 years, she visited the South Pole, snorkeled at Australia's Great Barrier Reef and joined world leaders at a security conference in Munich, Germany. She met with Darfur refugees in Sudan, attended a "legislators' dialogue" with European Parliament members in Slovenia, delivered a speech on transportation security in France and inspected anti-terrorism defenses in Genoa, Italy, and Mombasa, Kenya.

When was the last time you read a baby announcement on the Op-Ed pages? Exactly. So this is obviously more than baby news. It's about how far we've come, and where we may still fall short. California Congresswoman Linda Sanchez is pregnant. Ordinarily, this would not make headlines, except to the Sanchez family and maybe in a newsletter to the 39th Congressional District in southeast L.A. County, which just elected her to her fourth term.

Sometimes you've got to do what you don't want to do. Duty calls. So, with their hands jammed into their coat pockets and polite smiles on their faces, three of Orange County's Republican congressmen Monday watched a Democratic president take the oath of office for a second term. On the west steps of the Capitol, Reps. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), Jay C. Kim (R-Diamond Bar), and Ron Packard (R-Oceanside) witnessed the inauguration of Clinton, the nation's 42nd president.

So much of politics is about who you know -- strategic alliances, swiftly forged intimacies. There are the family dynasties, to be sure, as well as a few husbands and wives who have done their share of heavy lifting in the name of public service. But rarer still in American politics are siblings working shoulder to shoulder. That's why much fuss was made when U.S. Rep. Linda Sanchez joined her sister, Loretta, on Capitol Hill in January 2003. Her swearing-in made history; the Sanchezes are not only the first sisters in Congress, but also Latinas, daughters of immigrant Mexican parents who set firm goals for their seven children.

Authorities are investigating whether a former executive assistant in the U.S. House of Representatives misappropriated thousands of dollars to finance a vacation and personal items, as part of a widening effort to determine whether congressional accounts are inadequately monitored, according to two sources familiar with the inquiry. At issue in the ongoing probe by the House inspector general is the role of a former assistant to Rep.