So the Bolsavik caught up with Linh Ho on Election Day. She was out at a polling station watching the voters. She had been out on GOTV mission, getting voter who support her to come out and make her the next member of the Garden Grove City Council.
Linh sounded confident, saying “I think we are looking good right now. I got positive feedback from people in the field, from people after they saw me on TV or heard me on the radio.”
She is, as she says, “feeling good.”
Nonetheless, Linh admitted that the campaign had taken a toll. “People have warned me that you won’t know what it’s like until you’ve been a candidate yourself.” And now that she has, she knows what it’s like.
“It’s taken a personal toll on you, a toll on your family, your friends, everyone who believes in you,” she said.
(Photo, by the way, was not from today. It’s from before the campaign has taken its toll.)
So, what’s the first thing Linh Ho will do after she wins? Going to Disneyland?
“I will thank everybody,” she said. “Either way it goes, win or lose, I will thank everybody, because a lot of hard work has gone into this.”
If she does win, Linh Ho plans to put a lot of work into planning for the city’s next 20 or 30 years. “The main thing Garden Grove lacks,” says Linh Ho, “is investment. We just updated our General Plan, but we still need to make sure investment comes to our city.”
The Bolsavik then tried to get Linh Ho to make predictions on other elections, but she wouldn’t bite. The most she’d go is to say that Barack Obama would be the next President of the United States. She would not make predictions on Proposition 8, on Andrew Do and Trung Nguyen, or on fellow Democrat Paul Lucas.
Fair enough. Who would?
(Actually the Bolsavik knows one politician/candidate who would be so reckless, but that person is not running in this election.)
no, linh will not win. americans do not know who she is. vietnamese tend to vote republican and she is a democrat.
one thing she would learn from being a candidate herself is that it costs a lot of money for an election nowadays. it will be to the point that there’s no point to run for a city council position, a position that is so insignificant, when the costs reach the range of $100,000s.
and why it’s so insignifant? orange county is about the size of saigon (former capital of south vietnam). the county has over 30 small cities while saigon has about 20 districts and wards, making the OC cities about the same size or smaller than a saigon’s district or a ward. and you represent what? a ward? that’s insignificant.
a mayor of an OC city is equivalent to a chief of a saigon’s district or ward, previously called “quan truong” and nowadays called “chu tich uy ban nhan dan quan”, literally translated as “chairperson of the district’s people’s committee”.
so, on one hand our community is young and small so these local elected officials look important but if we take a more serious look, they are not that important at all. we used to have congressmen and senators and president and vice president. until the day we have vietnamese congressmen, senators, president or vice president, nothing else is significant yet.
agree?
i agree. when a vietnamese-american wins a congressional seat outside of “little saigons” like gov. bobby jindal in louissiana outside of a strong indian-american enclave, that would be international news. when a black candidate like j.c. watts (95-03) win a seat in a dominant white gop oklahoma congressional district, that was national news. with that said, linh ho is an intelligent and professional who got a taste of a real campaign.
Linh has a real chance of benefitting from the Tran Nguyen proxy battle if she can get both camps to throw their second vote to her. This is a real and probable possibility.
If Linh does not win i predict she makes a real strong showing.
In the end, I think the most probable winner is iether Trung or Andrew Do by a razor thin margin. And Steve Jones. Lucas and Marcario and Linh Ho most likely in that order to follow.