Pictured are Ho and Marcario in the front row with State Senator Lou Correa and Assembly candidate Ken Arnold (first right) at Kim-Oanh NguyenLam‘s (first left) reelection launch.

This is a welcome break for Linh Ho, whose campaign is off to a rocky start. The first-time candidate has been not raising enough funds, missing some important events, speechifying for too long at other people’s events, and generally still slowly realizing that being an activist is far different from being a candidate, that politics is more than just policy, and that campaigning is a difficult art that takes time to master.

This development actually has a surprising element in it: Paul Lucas, considered labor’s favorite, didn’t get the endorsement.

T. Linh Ho was in the Union of Vietnamese Students Association of Southern California (Vietnamese: Tong Hoi Sinh Viên) at around the same time as some other now-notable names in the community: Phu Nguyen, Tammy T. Tran, etc. At UCLA, Linh played a major role in the unification of the former Vietnamese Students Association and the Vietnamese-American Coalition to form the Vietnamese Student Union.

Student activists from about 5 years ago probably will remember Linh from the UVSA, the Tet Festival, and the Camp for Youth, casually called in Vietnamese “Trai He Tong Hoi.”

After UCLA, Linh Ho went to Massachussetts to get a master’s degree from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government before returning to enroll in the UCLA School of Law. She is now working for a municipal law firm.

Linh Ho is pictured above attending (and speaking at) the meeting of the Garden Grove City Council in support of renewing the Tet Festival contract for another 5 years. Linh Ho is a graduate of Garden Grove High School, which ironically is right next to the park where the Tet Festival takes place.

The list of candidates vying for the 2 open seats on the Garden Grove City Council is still rather short, by historical standard. Paul Lucas is publicly in the running, as is Robin Marcario (read more here). At the same council meeting above, Lucas asserted that Trung Nguyen was running, which caused the school board member and former supervisorial candidate turned serial litigant turned red-baiter to backtrack. “I have until August 8 to decide,” Trung said.

Other people said to be running include Lac Tan Nuygen, who came in 5th in 2006 in a field of eight.

In related news, Councilman Bruce Broadwater, a former mayor, is said to want his old job back and contemplate a run against incumbent Mayor Bill Dalton. In the world of OC Viet politics, Broadwater is an ally of Van Tran while Dalton endorsed Janet Nguyen in her re-election campaign.

Photoshop-man Trung Nguyen, the serial litigant failed candidate for county supervisor and wild red-baiter who’s currently a member of the Garden Grove school board, is supposed to run for the seat.

Two seats on the Garden Grove City Council are up this year. Incumbent Mark Rosen is not running for re-election, and appointee Steve Jones is rumored to not run either.

A friend of Marcario’s announced her candidacy on Facebook. Marcario then confirmed it in an email to the Bolsavik. Robin Marcario, however, may or may not present much of a challenge. In the 2006 elections won by Dina Nguyen and Bruce Broadwater, Marcario came in 6th in a field of 8, behind Lac Tan Nuygen, who had changed the spelling of his last name. In 2004, when Janet Nguyen and Mark Rosen won, Marcario arrived 6th out of 9, two places behind Paul (Tuong Thang) Tran, who’s also rumored to be interested in running this year.