An all-Vietnamese election for Orange County Supervisor

This year’s top story will be an unprecedented election for Orange County Supervisor where all the candidates for First District are Vietnamese.

The election will take place June 3, 2008, and the deadline for filing was last Friday March 7. The result: There are only 3 candidates for First District and they’re all Vietnamese.

First up is Janet Nguyen, obviously. She’s the incumbent, she’s running for re-election, and her signs are already going up all over the place in Little Saigon and elsewhere.

Next up is challenger Dina Nguyen (photo), the first-term member of the Garden Grove City Council. Rumors of Dina running for the seat have been floating for 2 or 3 weeks now, but everyone was still watching Trung Nguyen. In the 2006 special election to replace Lou Correa who left the seat to successfully run for the State Senate, Trung first won by 7 votes but upon recount lost by 7. Since then, led by the Republican machine’s consigliere Mike Schroeder, Trung Nguyen has been waging a protracted legal battle against Janet Nguyen. Nobody cares any more about any legal grounds supporting Trung’s lawsuits – everybody, friends and foes alike, knows his real purpose is to just harass Janet and deplete her funds.

Turns out Dina’s running for supervisor after all. Trung told the Register he’d be running for Garden Grove City Council.

 Dina is a newcomer to all this. She was the female face of the Van Thai Tran gang to replace Janet after she broke away. However, she proved to be more than just a token – in her first term on the Garden Grove City Council, she’s been working as hard as anyone else to support the Vietnamese-American community in issues that came before the city bureaucracy.

 For the Tet parade on Bolsa Avenue, Dina was the one who brought most of the sponsors to the table – whereas the organizers were just unable to get anything done. The fact that the Tet parade happened at all was due in large part to Dina’s hard work.

Now, why would a Garden Grove City Councilwoman spend so much time on something that brought business to the City of Westminster, that’s a question for other people. The Bolsavik doesn’t care. The Bolsavik is Bolsa-centric.

With the expected backing of the entire Van Tran gang, expect a rematch of the whole Trung – Janet battle, this time featuring someone with more charisma and who speaks better English than Trung.

Obligatory note to non-Viets: The various Nguyens – Trung, Janet, Dina, etc. – are not related to each other.

Now, playing spoiler is Hoa Van Tran, an attorney with a close relationship with SBTN-TV, a Vietnamese satellite TV station whose influence is unfortunately mostly outside of Orange County.

Hoa Van Tran is the only Democrat in the field. Paul Lucas, who last time tried to take on Van Tran, on the Thursday before filing deadline even pulled papers and paid the $1,400 filing fees, but then decided not to file. Lucas will be running for Garden Grove City Council.

So, there you have it, the making of the next Vietnamese-American political battle.

Big question: Whose votes will Hoa Van Tran siphon off?

The Bolsavik’s answer: Probably Janet’s. All pro-Van Tran voters will go for Dina. Without Hoa, all anti-Van Tran voters will have gone for Janet.