Even after charges were dismissed last month, anonymous,
racially-motivated hate mail has begun filtering into the mailbox
of the Hollister woman accused of voting twice for Supervisor Jaime
De La Cruz in the hotly contested District 5 supervisor election in
2004.
Hollister – Even after charges were dismissed last month, anonymous, racially-motivated hate mail has begun filtering into the mailbox of the Hollister woman accused of voting twice for Supervisor Jaime De La Cruz in the hotly contested District 5 supervisor election in 2004.
A letter Maria Araujo received last week assailed the 37-year-old mother of two for what prosecutors believed was an illegal act of voting twice for De La Cruz. The letter, which was printed on a single piece of white paper and sent in an envelope from somewhere in San Jose without a return address, warned the woman that after her “home boy supervisor is removed from the Board of Supervisors and put in jail for breaking elections law… don’t come crying and bitching in the paper again for that.”
Araujo did not return phone calls Thursday.
Araujo gave a copy of the letter to De La Cruz, who didn’t attempt to speculate who might send such a scathing letter to the woman a month after criminal charges against her had been dismissed.
“The letter was written with so much hate and prejudice. This goes beyond mad or disappointed,” he said. “This is a personal prejudice thing. And this type of letter needs to be shared with the community so the people can be aware of what kind of people are out there.”
District Attorney John Sarsfield charged Araujo with a felony charge that could have sent her to jail for up to three years if convicted in December – just weeks after filing four felony charges against De La Cruz for election forgery in the District 5 election.
After De La Cruz beat former Supervisor Bob Cruz by only 10 votes, the victory touched off a heated political battle over irregularities in the election. Though the felony charges and several misdemeanor charges were filed against the supervisor, the struggle ended with De La Cruz pleading no contest to one misdemeanor charge of obstructing a police officer.
De La Cruz then filed a $5 million lawsuit against the county for racial discrimination, which he later dropped. But the letter sent to Araujo stated “you people had a Latino supervisor looking out for your interests, and even pushing your racist agenda in some instances and you weren’t satisfied with that, so you had to use illegal methods and tactics to try and replace him – so you made your own bed here, now shut up and lie quietly in it (as long as it lasts, which won’t be much longer).”
Charges were dismissed against Araujo because a judge ruled there wasn’t enough evidence to show the woman had intentionally voted twice. She said that she thought she hadn’t mailed in an absentee ballot, although the elections department received one, so she voted again on Election Day. She claimed she asked for a provisional ballot as required by Elections Code because she wasn’t sure if she had mailed her ballot, but the poll worker on duty gave her a regular ballot instead.
While the letter was signed a “very disgusted Hollister neighbor of yours, who is embarrassed they has [sic] to live in the same town as you (I was here long before you, however, so I’m not leaving),” De La Cruz believes the letter represents a very small faction of the community and not a broader sentiment.
“There are still humble, good people and you’re going to have a couple rotten apples in the community,” he said.
