The State - News from April 19, 1989

A judge rejected a motion to dismiss a felony indictment against Assemblyman John R. Lewis (R-Orange), accused of forging former President Ronald Reagan’s name on endorsement letters mailed to thousands of voters in 1986. Defense attorneys, relying on a nearly 100-year-old state Supreme Court decision, maintained that Lewis could not be charged with forgery, because he did not intend to defraud anyone of money or property. They said the phony endorsements were, at most, an unfair ploy to influence voters. But Sacramento County Superior Court Judge James Morris ruled that the voters could have been defrauded of their “voting franchise right” and ordered Lewis to appear for arraignment on May 2.