Georgia lawmaker rants about colleague's 'dishonor' for promoting multilingual ballots: report

A suburban Atlanta city council member went on a rant in which she blasted a colleague who she said "dishonored" her office by promoting multilingual ballots ahead of an upcoming election, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

Morrow City Councilwoman Dorothy Dean said fellow Councilwoman Van Tran, who is Vietnamese-American, had “failed as a citizen of this country” and “dishonored” her office over her support for a petition that would provide ballots in Spanish and Vietnamese for the metro Atlanta city’s election.

Dean made the controversial remarks last week during a Morrow City Council meeting, the Journal-Constitution reported.

“I would like you to know that I feel as a citizen of this city and as a fellow councilmember that you do not deserve to sit on that dais as an elected official,” Dean said.

“You have failed in your oath of office. You have failed as a citizen of this country.

“You disregarded and you dishonored the oaths that you took as an American citizen. I would like to say that is un-American and inexcusable. Shame on you, Van Tran.”

Dean didn’t question the citizenship of the voters Tran sought to accommodate but said the petition Tran backed offended her “as a woman of color… who has had to march and stand in lines and protest to get the right to vote.”

Tran called the remarks “offensive.”

“There is nothing more patriotic and American than helping American citizens fulfill their duty to vote. I am providing access to voting for all American citizens,” Tran told the Journal-Constitution.

“It is offensive to call the many languages spoken by American citizens as foreign.”

State Rep. Long Tran (no relation to the city councilwoman), who is the son of Vietnamese refugees, suggested that protests at Morrow’s next scheduled council meeting next week are likely. Long Tran slammed Dean for “scapegoating” immigrants.

“We are not an English-only state or nation,” he said.

“Immigrants dream of the day they become citizens to fulfill their duty to vote. We should help them exercise their right to vote when we can.”

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