When Tony Lam won his seat on the Westminster City Council in 1992, he was the first Vietnamese-American to successfully run a campaign to fruition. His success unleashed a huge wave of participation by Viets in politics that resulted in the vast number of candidates and office holders we see today.

After almost a decade not running for anything, Lam is now back, seeking a seat on the Midway City Sanitary Board, as one of four candidates vying for three seats.

In his candidate statement (here), Lam said he would “provide experienced leadership.”

“While serving the City of Westminster as Mayor Pro-Tem, Councilman and Planning Commissioner, I cut costs, improve city services, and rebuilt our water system. I know the importance of maintaining our utilities to protect city assets,” he wrote.

Of his previous elected office, Lam wrote, “I was the first Vietnamese American elected official in the United States, elected with support throughout Westminster. I am recognized as a consensus builder.”

Lam is currently on the Orange County Planning Commission and the Orange County Airport Authority, appointed to both posts by OC Supervisor Janet Nguyen.

Lam first won his election in 1992 and served three terms until he decided not to run again in 2002.

In 1999, Lam was the subject of a lengthy and obscene picketing by none other than Ky Ngo - something that still scares other Vietnamese office holders today. Read the Reg’s Frank Mickadeit’s analysis of Lam’s case here.

During the 2008 elections, OC supervisor candidate Dina Nguyen and her supporters – all allies of Assemblyman Van Tran – also accused Lam of being a communist sympathizer.

The Midway City Sanitary Board, despite its name, serves the city of Westminster, plus the small unincorporated area known as Midway City – making it Lam’s natural stomping ground.

The race for three seats features two incumbents – Westminster Mayor Margie Rice and Westminster Councilman Tyler Diep – and two challengers, Lam and Frank Cobo.

Why would two large families want to squeeze into a 2-bedroom, 1-bath, house, when each family already has a home of its own?

Answer: Because one of the men needs to move to within the boundaries of Assembly District 68, that’s why.

Joe Dovinh, who until two months ago went by “Joseph” and was living in Westminster, has now stated under oath that he lives at the small 931-square-foot house in Garden Grove owned by Dina Nguyen. The photo above was taken from realtor.com.

Dovinh is married with at least one child that the Bolsavik knows of. Dina Nguyen has several children of her own. How does this Dovinh-Nguyen bunch all fit into the tiny house? Who knows.

Dina Nguyen is a Republican Garden Grove City Council member and a former OC Supervisor candidate.

Joe Dovinh is running for the Democratic nomination to the Assembly, district 68.

He previously ran for two offices using his Westminster home. (That’s when he added votes from the two races together to claim he’s the second-best Viet vote-getter ever.) That house, however, is outside the district.

Dovinh filed his Declaration of Candidacy below, and his address is shown.

That looks awfully familiar, and sure enough, it’s because the same address is on Dina Nguyen’s financial disclosure form as being hers.

See Dina’s disclosure form after the jump.

The Bolsavik saw the address before, and it stuck because it was the subject of a tax deliquency notice from the county, at the same time Dina was running to be county supervisor.

(Click on pic to enlarge)

Here’s the ownership record as found on NETRonline.com:

For that matter, Joe Dovinh and Dina Nguyen both have the same treasurer Lysa Ray from Santa Ana.

Here’s Joe Dovinh’s financial form (click on pic to enlarge):

The hoops Dovinh jumps through just to get on the ballot….

PS. Usually, the Bolsavik doesn’t post people’s home addresses. This case is an exception, because the address itself is the issue as to the candidate’s eligibility. Still, the Bolsavik refrains from typing the address into the text, so that search engines such as Google won’t pick it up.

At a press conference Thursday morning, the Vietnamese group Hội Đồng Liên Tôn (Interfaith Council), who had planned to march in the parade, announced that they’re withdrawing.

The head of the group, Lutheran minister Tran Thanh Van, said, “We cannot participate if they (Vietnamese GLBT) are in the procession.” Rev. Tran said the Interfaith Council already sent in their withdrawal letter.

The Catholic representative on the council, Rev. Si Nguyen, said that he would be willing to acknowledge gay people, but not during Tet.

Said he, “During Tet, we don’t bring up ugly matters, anything unseemly in the family we hide it away, we only bring out what’s good.” He calls on “all the faithful” to stay away from Bolsa Avenue during the parade.

Garden Grove Councilmember Dina Nguyen attended the press conference, and spoke up. She said, “I don’t believe in homosexuality” (in Vietnamese: “Tôi không tin vào chuyện đồng tình [sic] luyến ái”). She didn’t explain any more about what she meant by that.

Nguyen also said that next year, she would “suggest to the City of Westminster to respect Vietnamese tradition.”

Which is something of a puzzler, because traditionally, Vietnamese may have misconceptions about gays, but they don’t exactly discriminate.

The most common misconception is that being gay is an illness. This mistaken belief showed itself at the Interfaith Council press conference through the Caodai representative Pham Van Kham, who said, “We are very sad to see our children fall victim to it” – referring to the supposed gay disease.

Other than such misconceptions, homophobia is new to Vietnam, and the country’s main religion Buddhism never made an issue out of homosexuality.

Here’s a comparison: The U.S., for example, used to have laws criminalizing gay sex, upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court in Bowers v. Hardwick (see summary here).

Ancient Vietnamese laws, however, never criminalized homosexual behavior, even as it did have a long list of sexual crimes – a fact noted by scholars Nguyen Ngoc Huy and Ta Van Tai in vol. 1 of their massive 3-volume work “The Lê Code: Law in Traditional Vietnam.” (The late Nguyen Ngoc Huy was a legal scholar, former dean of the University of Can Tho Faculty of Law, and a leader of Tan Dai Viet, one of the top political parties of South Vietnam. He also participated as a member of the South Vietnamese delegation at the Paris Peace Talks. He came to the US after the war and taught at Harvard Law School.)

Meanwhile, the LGBT groups that are in the parade are not pulling out. If anything, they’re more determined. On Facebook, someone has put up an invitation for the “Viet LGBT Contingent” to join the march. It has, however, so far drawn only 22 yes’s.

The four participating groups are: Sống Thật Radio; Ô-Môi; Gay Vietnamese Alliance; and the Vietnamese Lesbian and Bisexual Women Network and Friends.

Tran was attending a community meeting put together by the Hội Đồng Liên Tôn, a group of Vietnamese religious leaders and activists. When he came up to speak, the moderator introduced him as a candidate for mayor of Westminster.

Tran spoke, and said nothing of his candidacy, but it’s too late. The Viet Herald daily newspaper wrote it down, and printed it.

Tran is the head of VHN-TV, a satelite station, and of VAN-TV, a digital station broadcast locally on channel 18.7.

Since March of 2009, Tran has been a member of the Garden Grove Planning Commission as Dina Nguyen‘s appointee. So apparently he lives in both Westminster and Garden Grove.

In 2007, Tran was one of 20 business people honored at BizCon, an event put together by the Orange County Presidents Council, a collaboration of 20 ethnic business and community groups and government agencies.

During the 2008 elections, Bruce Tran and VHN-TV were active supporters of county supervisor candidate Hoa Van Tran.

Taking a more aggressive stance than when she was running for OC Supervisor, at yesterday’s Westminster City Council meeting Dina Nguyen spoke out against the proposed bridge (artist’s rendering, above) across Bolsa Avenue, even though the Council already pulled the item from the agenda.

The council was supposed to discuss and vote up-or-down on a proposal by the County to pay for and build a pedestrian bridge across Bolsa Avenue. The bridge would be, in all fairness, exactly where the most pedestrians would cross, right in front of Asian Village Mall (“Phuoc Loc Tho” to Vietnamese).

However, the bridge being there would link two shopping malls, one owned by and the other managed by Bridgecreek, the same company that once banned Andy Quach‘s political signs on its properties.

The bridge, dubbed “Freedom Bridge,” is a cornerstone of OC Supervisor Janet Nguyen‘s agenda and electoral platform. As a result, in addition to all the reasons people may have to support or oppose the bridge, their feelings for Janet, one way or the other, play a role as well.

Back to the Westminster City Council. As soon as the meeting began, Mayor Margie Rice, who was the one putting it on the agenda, proposed to pull it. Apparently, the members had a problem with one sentence in the county’s proposal. The proposal stated that County CEO Thomas Mauk had “negotiated” with City Manager Ray Silber, but apparently there couldn’t have been any negotiations. It seems such negotiations would have violated some laws or another. And since nobody should be violating anything — well, you know how it goes.

So the motion to pull the agenda item passed 4-0, with Frank Fry (who’s up for reelection) abstaining.

But the motion was made after people have signed up to speak, so they still spoke.

Some were for, some were against the bridge. And then Dina came to the podium.

Dina, of course, is a councilwoman in the neighboring city of Garden Grove. She spoke forcefully against the bridge, which begs the question: Why bother, when the item’s been pulled?

Anyway, so Dina’s points were, in random order: That the bridge doesn’t solve Bolsa traffic problems; that the bridge will attract drug users and the homeless; and that it really should be on Beach Boulevard near her office.

August 1 was the time to file. The reports by Janet Nguyen and Dina Nguyen are now online. Here and here. Hoa Van Tran‘s isn’t yet. The latest filing available for Hoa is a late contribution report dated June 2, 2008. <The Bolsavik’s mistake — the limit is $1,600 not $1,500.>

Dina showed no new contributions and some outstanding balance. Janet raked in another $10k after the last filing. The advantage of winning, probably.

But there’s something funny (funny funny, not funny hah-hah) in Janet’s filing.

On page 15, there’s a $162.61 payment to JohnsonClark Associates for “postage.”

Well, the funny part is, JCA is Dina‘s campaign consultant.

So the Bolsavik called Janet and asked.

Turns out, the treasurer that Janet has had since 2004 rents an office in JCA’s suite. He uses JCA’s mail room, so this is reimbursement to JCA for the postage cost.

California GOP politics is such a small world…

That’s Hung in the picture, manning the computer and projector showing the election results on the night of the primary, at Dina Nguyen’s campaign headquarters.

Hung Phuong Nguyen first read this text on the radio on Saturday night, on the “Anti-Communist Forum” (Vietnamese: Dien Dan Chong Cong) that is the Trannies’ outlet. (It’s the same one where Dina Nguyen blurted out her disgust of all the protest crapola.)

Immediately that same night, other radio hosts jumped on Hung and just ripped him apart.

Undaunted, yesterday Hung sent his text out by email to a huge long list of recipients that includes practically all known listservs, and the Coalition Against Resolution 36. Hung is a member of the Coalition.

In the text, Hung claims that the OC GOP is intent on bringing down the Vietnamese voting power, and so would support the independent Janet Nguyen rather than Dina – someone with an alliance with other Vietnamese. Quote (translated):

The Republican Party is afraid of the influence yielded by the Vietnamese-American elected officials, led by Assemblyman Van Thai Tran. The results of the BoS elections in 2006 made the political observers change their mind. The Vietnamese community is the youngest of the Asian ethnicities but is more politically mature than the other ethnicities. In choosing between two candidates, the OC Repulican Party had to choose an independent candidate (Janet Nguyen) because it’s easier to lead her than a candidate with a group of Vietnamese-American elected officials backing her. Intentionally endorsed Janet Nguyen, the Republican Party sent a veiled message for the American and Mexican voters to vote for Janet Nguyen. Therefore they didn’t allow any native candidate to run, to avoid splitting Janet Nguyen’s votes. Two Republican Mayors Margie Rice (Westminster) and William Dalton (Garden Grove) used their personal influence to get American voters to cast their ballots for Janet Nguyen.

Hung Phuong Nguyen’s text (you can get the whole Word document, in Vietnamese, here) also contains this idiotic calculation. In trying to “prove” that Viet voters didn’t support Janet Nguyen, the man did this:

* In 2006, there were 22248 votes cast for the three Viet candidates: Trung Nguyen, Larry Phan, and Janet Nguyen.

* In 2008, Dina got 12472, Hoa Van Tran 7150.

* “Therefore,” Janet got 22248 – 12472 – 1750 = 2626 Vietnamese votes. “Therefore,” Dina Nguyen was the choice of the Vietnamese voters.

Yah. Right. That sure is a sign of being “more politically mature than the other ethnicities.”

The Bolsavik had an email in to Assemblyman Van Tran last night, asking for his comment. Will post his response when it comes in.

Hung also attacked Janet’s husband: “Janet’s husband is an American, so he went out and got American votes for her,” he wrote.

For good measure, Hung Phuong Nguyen accused both the OC GOP and OC Dems of acting to protect “their future interests — doing business with communist Vietnam.”

Hear that?

You’re racist AND commies too.

Now would be a really good time for Dina Nguyen and Hoa Van Tran to issue public statements congratulating Supervisor Janet Nguyen (pictured) for her well-earned electoral victory, and that Dina and Hoa are both open to help Janet with any issue that benefits the people of the First District.

And right after that would also be a good time for Janet Nguyen to issue a statement praising Dina and Hoa for being very tough and worthy adversaries and that Janet is looking forward to working with Dina and Hoa to make the First District a better place.

And then everyone should say this: “You know what, I didn’t mean it about you being a communist.”

Kumbaya.