There have to be a few people slapping their foreheads over this one.
Just days after Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) declared her candidacy to run against California Attorney General Kamala Harris in the primary election for US Senator, Sanchez dropped a deuce on her own fledgling campaign.
Sanchez, the US Representative of California’s 47th District who hopes to replace the retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer, met with Indian-American Caucus members Saturday at a restaurant in Anaheim and recalled a story of going to meet with an Indian-American. Sanchez joked offhand that she misunderstood the identity of the Indian-American on the other end of the phone before their meeting. She thought she was meeting a Native American Indian, not an American with roots from the subcontinental nation of India.
Except when she related the story to those gathered, she didn’t express her mistaken presumption in a way that offended nobody. She instead committed the sin of tapping her hand against her mouth while moaning–an impersonation of the Native American war cry, like racist white children everywhere did back when they used to play the racy-race-racist “Cowboys and Indians.”
As you can imagine, this misdeed by Sanchez did not sit well with some Democrats.
In an interview with KCRA, Uduak-Joe Ntuke, the man who filmed the cellphone video of the offense, said, “Oh, I was shocked and appalled that she would make the disparaging comments about Native Americans that way. It’s just very un-Democratic.”
Yes, because Democrats would never do such a thing…
Wait, no. Wrong example. It’s hard to keep the differences between American-Indian-Americans and India-Indian-Americans straight when our Democratic Party betters keep confusing the two.
When informed by a reporter of Sanchez’s taboo behavior, her opponent Kamala Harris–like Mr. Ntuke–responded by calling it “shocking,” although Harris seemed to be more gleeful than shocked. Harris had to think that if this was a sign of what’s to come, her ride to the Senate nomination was going to be pretty smooth.
Let’s go to the tape, shall we?
The way Sanchez fled from the reporter while crying that “we don’t have time todayyyy” to answer the reporter’s question was so very…pathetic. Like something you’d see in some overacted sitcom. But that’s a politician for ya. Just like the old saying I just made up goes–those who can, act; those who can’t, become politicians.
When reporters made another attempt to grill Rep. Sanchez about her audible-slash-optical infraction some time later, she performed a clumsy verbal somersault over the questions, as the LA Times reported. Something about how all her best friends are the Native American kind of Indians or some such.
In the same article, we find that today, Loretta Sanchez gave up on avoiding the touchy subject and apologized.
In remarks to hundreds of delegates at the state Democratic Party convention in Anaheim, the Orange County congresswoman said Native Americans “know that I have always had their backs.”
“And they know what many of you don’t know — that like so many Mexican Americans, I am proudly Native American on my mother’s side,” Sanchez said…
“And yes, sooner or later, we make mistakes,” she told the crowd. “Because you know what? We’re all humans.”
The world can’t be changed “from behind a desk,” she continued. “So in this crazy and exciting rush of meetings yesterday, I said something offensive, and for that I sincerely apologize.”
Yes, we are all humans, which is how silly people keep getting elected to lead the rest of us silly people.
Do remember that this isn’t the first time Rep. Sanchez took some heat over matters relating to race. When she was running for reelection in 2010 against her Vietnamese-American GOP opponent Van Tran, she told Univision, “The Vietnamese and the Republicans are, with an intensity, trying to take this seat from which we have done so much for our community — to take this seat and give it to this Van Tran, who is very anti-immigrant and very anti-Hispanic.”
It remains to be seen if the Democrat Sanchez can weather this storm, but it isn’t looking too good for her senatorial aspirations at the moment, though much stranger things have happened in politics.
I would think that Van Tran and Kamala Harris are both having a hearty laugh over this. Who says the two sides can’t find common ground?
Endnote:
Apparently Mr. Ntuke raised funds for Harris’ campaign back in February. When asked about it today, Ntuke (or “Ntuk,” as this latest article names him) denied working directly for the Harris campaign. He said he merely went to the Caucus shindig to see a friend, not with the hope of catching Sanchez in a slip-up.
Okey-doke.
