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Hung Phuong Nguyen, the representative of Van Tran who spent $5,000 of his boss’s money on radio air time accusing people (mostly Janet Nguyen and Andrew Do) of being commies, ran out of cash (and usefulness) after the election and announced that he was closing down his program, that he’d dubbed “Free Vietnam.”

Almost immediately, his frequent guest and former candidate Joseph Dovinh announced a new weekly radio program featuring himself and Hung Phuong Nguyen.

This pair (pictured at Dina Nguyen’s campaign headquarters in June) will go well together.

In his announcement, besides the usual (more…)

Don’t know if any inhaling is involved here, but Joseph Dovinh was heard on radio boasting that he got more votes than any Viets except Assemblyman Van Tran.

The amazin’ claim was heard on late-night Vietnamese radio hosted by Van Tran’s representative Hung Phuong Nguyen. That’s Dovinh to the left and Nguyen to the right, in the photo, taken at Dina Nguyen’s campaign headquarters in June.

Dovinh thanked the Viet community for its support and for giving him, said he, ”more votes than all Viet candidates” other than Van Tran, making him the second-best vote getter.

Say what?

How does a second-best vote getter get pummeled as the sole Viet candidate in tiny 64-precinct smack-dab-where-all-Viet-voters-live Midway City Sanitation District?

How does a second-best vote getter get door-matted in the Coast Community College District by worse than 20-to-80? (more…)

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.

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Under accusations that he and his trenchmen are using strong-arm tactics to silence critics in the Vietnamese-American community, Assemblyman Van Tran (pictured at the presser, with Andy Quach) yesterday held a press conference to explain his group’s side of the story. And, for good measure, he put up a guy to accuse Janet Nguyen, all over again, of being a communist.

This is a cannibalistic dispute between factions within the right wing of the Viets. Non-right-wingers are sitting this one out, watching from the sidelines, probably all smug.

Front and center butting heads with Van Tran is Do Son, a late night radio personality who is one of a longish list right-wingers who once were firmly behind Tran when he was on the Garden Grove City Council and during his first run for the Assembly, but who have since broken with him.

During the June primary elections, Do Son was firmly on Janet Nguyen’s side, belittling the candidacy of Dina Nguyen any time he got.

After the election, Do Son was also among the first to speak out in favor of the OC GOP against accusations by Van Tran’s representative Hung Phuong Nguyen. Nguyen had blamed Dina’s defeat on the OCGOP’s racism, accusing the latter of sabotaging the Vietnamese-American political structure built up by Tran, and instead propped up the “independent” Janet Nguyen that they could allegedly control better. (Doesn’t make any sense, but that’s what Hung said here and here - in Vietnamese.)

Do Son’s berating didn’t make Hung Phuong Nguyen very happy, so shortly after the elections, Nguyen went to the radio station’s owner and bought out Do Son’s air time contract, allegedly paying twice the going rate. One crazed right-winger was thus replaced by another - this one frequently featuring Mr. Protest-Against-A-Red-Belt-Buckle Trung Nguyen, and attack-dog Joseph Dovinh, who’s running for both the Midway City Sanitary District and the Coast Community College District.

Just last week, Do Son held his own press conference, reciting a litany of what he considered abuses by Van Tran. Read Chris Prevatt’s report here. One thing Do Son said at his press conference that Prevatt didn’t report, was that he showed a $5,000 payment from Van Tran to Hung Nguyen, which Do Son said was used to force him out.

OK, fine, nothing wrong with that. But Hung Phuong Nguyen, again displaying a penchant to talk first and think later, went on the radio and said something along the line that - “I got that money months before the air time buyout, so that couldn’t be what it’s for.” The weak denial only made people more suspicious that hmm, maybe there is something wrong with that.

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OK, here we go, the authoritative list of all Viets running for various positions in Orange County. We’re looking at 14 Viets running for 15 positions. (Read more about some of them here.) The mathematical “Pigeonhole Principle” would tell you that it means someone is running for two positions at once. This is high, but not record high. In 2006, there were 16 Viet candidates in the OC.

* City Council of Westminster

With Kermit Marsh not running, the path is clear for Assemblyman Van Tran’s staffer Truong Diep to run for the open seat. Tammy Tran, Senator Lou Correa’s district director, pulled papers, but did not file. It is expected that Diep will win this one.

* City Council of Garden Grove

There are two seats and nine are vying for it. Three Vietnamese are in the running: T. Linh Ho, Trung Nguyen and Andrew Do.

Ho is a former student activist, very well known among young Vietnamese-Americans, but is a new name outside that demographic. Trung Nguyen is currently on the Garden Grove School Board and has been drumming up support by protesting against anything he can find. Andrew Do is OC Supervisor Janet Nguyen’s chief of staff. The rumors about Do’s war chest are awashed with numbers so high it’s not believable.

* City Council of Stanton

There’s a Viet among the five candidates running for two seats, including both incumbents. His name is Alex Lam.

* Westminster School District

The district has two incumbents, both running again. Four Viets are challenging the incumbents for the seats: Ethan Nguyen, Nghia Nguyen, Linh Nguyen and Frank Tran.

Frank Tran (web site here) ran in 2006 as a write-in candidate. Ethan Nguyen is a Golden West College student who just received an OCAPICA scholarship to attend UCLA next year.

Linh Nguyen has dropped out of this race, but his name will continue to be on the ballot.

Talking to the Bolsavik on the telephone, the former right-hand man for then-Assembly candidate Van Tran and current sales manager at Nguoi Viet Daily News explained why: “I just took this job at Nguoi Viet, and the project I’m in charge of - the Nguoi Viet yellow pages - will be coming to a peak at the same time as the elections, so I don’t think I will have the time to commit to both. The paper also thinks it would be a conflict of interest for me to run, so I’m dropping out.”

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The Bolsavik was planning to introduce all Viet candidates for various offices in the OC, but with last minute developments, such a list won’t be finalized for several days. So instead the Bolsavik will hit a number of highlights.

* Taking a page from Long Pham and aiming for an elective office not a lot of people pay attention to, Trannie Joseph Dovinh is running for the Coast Community College District Board. In fact, he’s running for two such offices, concurrently campaigning for the Midway City Sanitary District. Dovinh is currently an editor of Viet Star, where Dina Nguyen is also a contributor-slash-editor.

Previously, Dovinh was best known as a writer for Viet Weekly (you know, the commie mag that incurred protests for a year) specializing in the paranormal such as haunted houses, haunted street corners, exorcism, feng shui, etc.

* In Westminster, (more…)