[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 144 (Thursday, October 23, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H9491]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          THE CONTESTED ELECTION IN CALIFORNIA'S 46TH DISTRICT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, the last gentleman who spoke in the well 
states his own opinions as fact. The gentleman is factually challenged. 
Let me go with some specifics.
  First of all, it is a fact that every voter was looked at, not by 
surname, but every single voter. I am of Irish descent, but I would 
want to make sure that every voter that voted, whether they are Irish 
or of any ethnic background, had a legal right to do that. That is the 
issue.
  They cannot win over the majority based on issues. They want bigger 
government, they want higher taxes, they want big government control. 
They do not want a balanced budget. They do not want tax relief. They 
want a centralized Federal Government. So what do they do? They try to 
scare up the minorities to think the Republicans are going after them. 
Every single voter was looked at, not by surname. That is incorrect.
  Second, for 7 months, 7 months, they refused to comply with subpoenas 
both from an individual, Mr. Dornan, which the Supreme Court held up, 
or from the committee. So now they are even bucking the Supreme Court 
decision to comply with the subpoenas.
  What were the subpoenas for? To find out the information, to find out 
the facts. Seven months, and it went into 8 months, and now they are 
saying a year is too long. Yes, it is too long. If we would have been 
able to get the facts, then it would have been over by now.
  The rights of the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Sanchez), her 
rights have not been violated. She is a sitting member of this 
committee and of this House. But until we find out the facts, and from 
the facts that have been found, there was fraud. That is fact. It is 
documented. It is documented over and over and over again. The amount 
of fraud is the question. We have facts and we have figures that were 
delivered to the minority and to the committee. All we are asking 
before we go forward is to make sure that the State verifies the facts. 
We will live with those facts if they are verified, or not. That is the 
question.
  But yet the gentleman over there, they cannot win, so what do they 
want to do? They want to scare people with surnames, to think that the 
Republicans are bad people, so they can take over a majority. Well, it 
is not going to work, because they are smarter than that, Mr. Speaker. 
I resent, I resent the racist implication. I resent the other side of 
the aisle making this a racist issue.
  The issue is that every single American, as few of them that show up 
at the polls, want to know that their vote counts, that it is not being 
canceled out by someone that is not qualified to vote. That is the 
issue. It is not just in California, it is in Texas, it is in Arizona, 
it is in every State of the Union. This is bigger than Dornan and 
bigger than Sanchez.
  This is that the American people want to know that their rights 
count, and that it is not going to be taken away by someone that is 
fraudulently voting. They do not want that. They want to win at any 
means, whether it is the DNC taking money from Charlie Huang and Trie 
and Riady and Chinese money, or the Vice President doing Buddhist monk 
fund-raisers and the money going to DNC, or whether it is from illegal 
contributions from the Teamsters, who two people have already pled 
guilty of laundering money to the DNC for campaigns for the Democrats. 
They do not want us to know that.
  All we are doing is asking, when people go to vote, they want to know 
that the campaign laws are upheld and not violated, and that someone 
that wants to vote, their vote counts. I do not care if it is an Irish 
American that is voting that should not be, or someone from Ireland 
that is a citizen, that vote should not count and that individual 
should be taken a look at.
  Another fact, the State--the alleged fraud, where the gentleman said, 
show us the fraud, we have. There is fraud. One liberal group alone had 
over 300 votes verified, documented by the State. That is why we are 
asking for these others. The other thousands of votes and fraudulent, 
allegedly fraudulent votes, we are asking the State to verify that. 
That is fair, Mr. Speaker. There is nothing racist about that. Guess 
what, they are not by surname. They are not by any surname. They are 
looking at every single vote.

                              {time}  2015

  But yet my colleague on the other side would like you to think, so he 
can get the support of certain minorities in his own election and other 
Democrat elections so they can retake the majority. But yet they will 
not support a balanced budget, they will not support tax reform. They 
will not support welfare reform. They cannot win on the issues, so they 
will play the ``R'' word, and I resent that, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker, I had not planned on speaking about that. I was going to 
speak with the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra] on education, 
which I will continue to do. But I cannot sit here and let facts be 
disillusioned before this body, the challenged facts go uncontested, 
because they are wrong and they are incorrect.

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