(Reuters) - California congresswoman and U.S. Senate candidate Loretta Sanchez has apologized for engaging in an action widely considered offensive to Native Americans that was caught on video at the state Democratic Convention.
Sanchez had hoped to use the party's twice-annual meeting to build a case for her candidacy against state Attorney General Kamala Harris in the race to succeed retiring Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer in 2016. Instead, she had to engage in damage control.
"In this crazy and exciting rush of meetings yesterday, I said something offensive, and for that I sincerely apologize," she said in remarks to the convention on Sunday, later posted online by CBS San Francisco and other news outlets.
Sanchez, speaking on Saturday to the party's Indian-American caucus, described a meeting with an Indian-American campaign supporter who had asked to see her.
"I'm going to his office, thinking that I'm going to go meet with 'wo-wo-wo,' right?" Sanchez said in a video widely circulated online, tapping her fingers to her mouth in a gesture mimicking an old popular culture depiction of an American Indian war cry.
The remark was caught on a cellphone video and distributed widely.
Harris decried the remark.
"It is shocking and there is no place for that in our public discourse," Harris, whose mother was from India, said in a statement provided by her campaign spokesman on Monday.
Harris is considered the front-runner in the race. Sanchez announced her candidacy late last week.
Sanchez' campaign manager did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.
