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A Busy Year for ELPAC The English Language Political Action Committee made its biggest election effort ever for the November elections, reaching more than a million voters in direct personal pleas for support of pro-English candidates and opposition to anti-English ones. In a year in which the "ground war" was considered crucial by election experts, ELPAC election workers visited homes, left "doorknob hangers," and wrote letters to individual voters, all in an effort to turn out the vote on Election Day. "It was a herculean effort," ELPAC Executive Director Steve Workings said, "and it took everything we had. I was on the road for days, supervising our voter contact efforts. I put thousands of miles on my truck, just driving through battleground states in the last couple of weeks before the election." Despite these efforts, not every candidate ELPAC supported won election. "We strongly supported Gloria Matta Tuchman, the Republican candidate in Orange County, California," Workings noted. "Gloria would have been great for us. In 1998 she was the co-chair for the ballot initiative that ended bilingual education in California, and she used to be on the Board of U.S. English when I was there, and it would have been great to have a Hispanic congresswoman supporting us. She was running against Loretta Sanchez in the seat that used to be held by Bob Dornan. We thought we might have a chance after Sanchez tried to hold a fundraiser in the Playboy Mansion. But unfortunately, Gloria didn’t win." |
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The
ELPAC Report 