Former California Candidate To Jail For Harassing Latinos

Tan Nguyen ran as a Republican for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006 against then-incumbent Democrat Loretta Sanchez, and was just sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison for lying about a racist campaign tactic. He was found guilty of violating federal obstruction of justice laws and will also serve six months in a halfway house.

If you recall, what Nguyen did in the electoral race was have his campaign workers send out letters in Spanish to mostly Latino neighborhoods telling them that immigrants could go to jail for voting — which isn’t true. Depending on your immigration status, you can vote. It’s taken years for this trial to finally result in a conviction, but last December Nguyen was convicted of felony obstruction of justice after he lied about his involvement with this letter.

He initially said it was a mistake made by a campaign worker, but it turned out he was much more involved than that. The letters were sent specifically to registered voters with Latino surnames who were born in another country and also claimed that immigration reform groups would be gaining access to new voter information.

After he fired his volunteers, he lied to investigators about the incident. Now that he has a felony conviction on his record, he’ll never be in politics again. The lesson we can learn from this is that racial profiling is not a “campaign tactic” and that lying to state and federal investigators is not a good idea.