Viet candidates lost left and right, Rep and Dem, Southern and Northern California. It is a demonstration of Viet candidates’ narrow lack of broader appeal that when non-Viet voters turn out in record numbers, they were not voting for the Viet candidates.
All in all, every single Viet candidate is heading to defeat, 
with the exception of the incumbents running for re-election: in Texas, Hubert Vo in the Texas House of Representatives; in San Jose, Lan Nguyen on the East Side Union High School District; and here locally, Van Tran in the California Assembly and Kim-Oanh Nguyen-Lam (pictured) on the Garden Grove School Board.
And even those two didn’t fare so well. Van’s winning margin at 53-47 was the smallest among all O.C. Assembly members, and Nguyen-Lam ended third in a race for three seats.
Truong Diep, a Van Tran staffer, was expected to win a seat on the Westminster City Council — but didn’t. He ended behind not just winners Frank Fry (incumbent) and Penny Loomer, but also behind Alin Hamade who like Diep is an appointee to the city’s Traffic Commission.
In the hotly contested race for Garden Garden City Council, with two seats available, all three Viet candidates lost, though with respectable results.
OC Supervisor Janet Nguyen’s Chief of Staff Andrew Do finished third, 1200 votes behind Robin Marcario the second-place winner. New law school grad and first-time candidate Linh Ho (pictured, with Marcario at the OCAPICA candidate forum) finished behind Do, but ahead of Garden Grove School Board member Trung Nguyen, who by now has lost 4 of 4 straight races for 4 different offices.
Joseph Dovinh, hoping to sneak in a victory by running for two lesser-known offices, had his head handed to him. In the Coast Community College District, Dovinh lost to incumbent Jerry Patterson by a whopping 81% to 19%. In the Midway City Sanitary District, he finished last, with just 12.2% of the votes.
That is still better than one Nam Pham, the appointed Santa Ana Library Commissioner running for the Rancho Santiago Community College District, who wasn’t campaigning at all and finished dead last in a field of 5, with single-digit 9.6% of the votes.
Another non-campaigning candidate even did better than Dovinh. Alex Lam for Stanton City Council finished third out of five, with 19.1% of the votes.
In the race for the Westminster School District, four Viets were running, and ended up in the four last places. The total votes cast for the four Viets, even if added together, would still keep them in last place.
Another last place finisher is John Chuong Nguyen, getting 9.4% of the votes for Garden Grove School Board.
Up north, Viet non-incumbents in Santa Clara County were not doing any better.
Kathi N. Tran, running for the West Valley-Mission Community College District, received less than 7% of the vote, coming in last in a field of four. The next higher person got more than 29% of the vote.
Van Vuong, running for the Milipitas School Board, also came in last, but at least gathered double digits at 22% in a field of three.
Doing better than them is Khoa Nguyen, running for the Berryessa Union SD, is coming in third with barely more than 100 votes separating the top 4 candidates.
Heidi Pham, running for Milpitas City Council, is placing third. Her husband Craig Donnelly is losing badly in his race for Milpitas mayor, trailing 36-64.
Non-Viet candidates who supplement their chances with Viet votes, however, are doing fine.
In the race for Santa Clara County Supervisor, former San Jose Councilman Dave Cortese, a supporter of the “Little Saigon” naming camp, has a commanding lead of 57% to 43% over his opponent.
U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez (pictured at the victory party her campaign held jointly with the DPOC, Assemblyman Jose Solorio‘s campaign, and the OC Barack Obama campaign) has always counted Viet voters as part of her support base, and she gathered a whopping 66.4% of the votes, almost twice the total of her two challengers put together — and the highest margin among OC-area Congress members.
Janet was in my political sci. class at UCI
@ John Doe.
Tastes great or less filling…Just another long blog session. This is more of a chat anything. In the end, it’s just beer.
Nothing to worry about.
Jung Kim, up to 1:24AM, thinking about such a silly question. Weapons don’t kill; people do that.
Jung Kim, were you there when they were teaching the democracy?
to jung kim….if youre boy (Tran Daddy’s boy) had just done a little better we could already send Janets boy back home. As of now he could still get elected on these fastly becoming tiresome late viet ballots. You know the ones you guys pass around menacingly to every viet you can find that had no intention of voting. I SEE THROUGH THIS BS. Mark my words, if that happens Master Do wo’nt see a moments peace til the day we have him recalled for the TOTAL FRAUD he is. That’s a promise. Maybe you can help…as in its Trungs/Van’s fault anyways. Van is a total moron by the way. He says the viets dont have ewnough money to get their message out. What message? You way outspent everyone and now blame the money. What bull. When Van terms out, he’s through. His message is clear. and good riddence.
Thunderchief,
He skipped the democracy lecture and went to a College Republican meeting instead.
My UCI political science degree went down a notch on the value scale, after reading that Jung Kim went to UCI, and may be a poli sci major.
lotta poop, Viets did not have enough money to send extensive mailers to the main stream voters at this time …..due to large turn outs.
Anteater…. how many ants have you had for lunch? I am afraid there were many students like you …..receiving failing grades.
Janet was around B- to C range not too bad …but in general, she wasn’t too bright.
Janet is fortunate to have well paying Supervisor job now because I was worried about her future after the college.
Andrew Do Do spent 150K for this election……. wiith 60K in debt and for lousy 8000 votes.
Mail me $20.00 check instead and I will vote for Do Do or Chow Chow…or whoever!
@Jung Kim, rather pathetic, mate. Hate to see you in this state of mind. Time to log off and take a long rest. Have a good evening; we’ll talk in the morning. Good night…
All from the blogsphere.
A vote for Vietnamese candidate is a wasted vote. It is not for community service, not about taking care of public administration.
Actually, Truong Diep and Andrew Do both won.