The final map has Little Saigon in one Assembly district

Before the redistricting process even began, Tyler Diep jumped up and announced his intention to run for the Assembly. In some district. Didn’t know which one yet, but running nonetheless, Diep said then.

That turns out to be a clever call, as the final draft approved by the Citizens Redistricting Commission (interactive map here) provides for an Assembly district that’s dominated by the thicket of Viet voters known as Little Saigon.

Now of course if Diep could feel the Viet votes, so can many others. Just to name a few: Lactan Nuygen (click here), Joe Dovinh (click here), Long Pham (click here). (Pham is a current office-holder and may not risk his seat, but there’s nothing holding back the rest.) They all smell blood, and are unlikely to let Diep have a cakewalk.

The Assembly district, temporarily numbered 72, has a voter base that’s 28% Asian, 15% Latino, 1% black.

At the Congressional level, however, Diep’s boss Van Tran is not facing so good a prospect.

Three new Congressional districts share Little Saigon

Currently, Little Saigon is divided between Congressional districts 46 and 47. CD 46 has the majority share and is represented by Dana Rohrabacher; CD 47 has the smaller part and is represented by Loretta Sanchez.

The new district map puts even more of Little Saigon in the coastal district, leaving one small piece for a district that reaches into Long Beach, and a sliver in the Santa Ana/Anaheim district that’s Sanchez’s natural home.

Little Saigon today: in 2 Congressional districts

The district that runs along the coast, temporarily numbered 48, is 16% Asian, 12% Latino, and 1% black. The second district, reaching into Long Beach, is 19% Asian, 20% Latino, and 9% black. The third slice on the Eastern edge of Little Saigon is in Sanchez’s district and is 15% Asian, 42% Latino and 3% black.

Now, in places like Long Beach and Santa Ana/Anaheim, “Asian” doesn’t imply support for the right of the Republican party.

The new map also puts less of Little Saigon in Sanchez’s district than before, making the task of taking her on even more difficult.

So what it means is that if Van Tran wants to run, he will have to take on Rohrabacher – something he is not expected to do.

Not that it matters. Tran told Nguoi Viet’s Dzung Do that he ain’t planning no run for no offices.

As has been shown in several elections in a row, a disproportionate portion of Vietnamese-American voters voting for Vietnamese-American candidates cast their votes by mail, and do it near the last day. This phenomenon has many times resulted in Viet candidates who may be losing on election night ending up winning the election. (See this, for example.)

That so-called “Vietnamese bounce” happened again on Tuesday’s primary elections. A number of Viet candidates who posted so-so numbers on election night ended up with a lot more respectable results, and some who first lost have now won.

First, there’s Van Tran‘s winning margin in his quest for a congressional seat. From a barely-there 50.0%, Tran reached 54.3% by today. Fellow Viet candidate in the same race Tan Nguyen also improved a bit, from 19.4% to 19.8%.

Perennial candidate Long Kim Pham, running for the Republican nomination to the Assembly, still lost, but by less disappointing numbers. He climbed from a super-low 26% on election night, to a much better 30.2%.

On the Democratic side for the same Assembly seat, the Vietnamese bounce got divided between the two Viet candidates.  However, the one who got more of the founce – i.e. the one more Vietnamese voted for – is winner Phu Nguyen, increasing his lead from 57.7% to 58.4%, and the same Vietnamese voting bloc dropped Joe Dovinh from 42.3% to 41.6%.

In the Republican Party’s race for the county central committee, AD 68, OC Supervisor Janet Nguyen, who was losing on election night, is now in the win column, placing 4th in a race that takes 6.

Still not making it is incumbent Tyler Diep, who came up short at 8th place. Also still not winning, despite the Vietnamese bounce, are Garden Grove City Council members Dina Nguyen and Andrew Do. And in the AD 69, incumbent Cuong Sinh Cao may make it after all, leap frogging Lupe Moreno and now sitting 119 votes ahead of her, at 6th place.

The Vietnamese bounce may be good news for some, but does not bode well for people running in districts where the Vietnamese-American votes are not enough to tip the balance.

The primary elections in California yesterday produced results that were as predicted. However, many outcomes had unexpected shades, foreshadowing a not-so-normal general elections for the Fall.

Van Tran, Phu Nguyen won, Madison Nguyen heads into the runoff the leader, and Tan Nguyen, Joe Dovinh, Long Pham lost, and in San Jose so did Thomas Nguyen. No surprises there.

But, at closer look, there are a few surprises, raising interesting questions.

First, there’s the winning margin. Van Tran, the three-term Assemblyman and darling of the GOP establishment, won just exactly 50.0% of the votes. Will the disgruntled Republicans who would rather throw away their votes Tan Nguyen and Katherine Smith‘s way sit out the general elections?

Phu Nguyen beat Joe Dovinh 57.7%-42.3%. The unexpected strong numbers posted by Dovinh shows that negative campaigning still works. In the two weeks preceding the primaries, Dovinh went on the air nightly and accused Nguyen, who runs the family money-remittance business, of being a communist or communist sympathizer. If red-baiting can help a non-entity like Dovinh, what will it do for a candidate who has some actual traction?

In San Jose, Madison Nguyen leads the field for her council member seat at 41.77%, not enough to avoid a runoff. She will face challenger Minh Duong in the Fall. Duong’s campaign has been severely damaged by cannibalism among former recall-Madison friends, many of which of Duong’s own doing. Now, really, how much forgiveness is in the air?

Another former recaller, Thomas Nguyen, got trounced in his quest for the mayorship. Incumbent Chuck Reed got an overwhelming 76.66% of the votes in a field of four.

Magdalena Carrasco, the city council candidate smeared by a fake flyer featuring the Vietnamese comunist flag,  got into the runoff with 34.34% of the votes; the leader Xavier Campos had 35.96%.

Another surprise showed up in the small print: In the race for the Republican central committee, AD 68, all Viet candidates lost. Republicans went for an all-non-Viet slate. OC Supervisor Janet Nguyen ended at 7th place in a race that chooses 6, and the bottom 3 vote getters are all Viets, including incumbent Tyler Diep, the former Van Tran staffer and current Westminster City Councilman; fellow Trannie and Garden Grove City Councilwoman Dina Nguyen; and Jannie and Garden Grove City Councilman Andrew Do. Over in the AD 69, another incumbent Viet member of the Republican central committee, Cuong Sinh Cao, also lost, ending in next-to-last place. Time will tell how this anti-Viet sentiment among GOP activists affect Tran’s race.

And then there were three. (Any rookie copy editor could have come up with that led.)

As if two separate Black April commemoration ceremonies are not enough, a third Black April commemoration is being planned to take place on the same date, April 30.

As previously noted, the Westminster City Council split the baby and gave Janet Nguyen‘s side the time slot from 9am to 4pm, so they’re scheduling their event at 11am on April 30, at the Vietnam War Memorial in Westminster.

The other faction, Lactan Nuygen‘s group and their allies, gets 5pm to 9pm, and they have their event at 6pm on April 30. Same place.

Today, an email being propagated around the listservs invites people to the event put together by a group calling itself, quote, “Spontaneous people organizing a commemoration ceremony for Black April 30.”

It is to take place at 5pm on April 30.

Which is agonizingly close to the 6pm slot scheduled by Lactan Nuygen’s group.

And it is to be held at the supermarket parking lot across Bolsa Avenue from Phuoc Loc Tho, the Asian Village Mall. Click on the image to read the email in full.

This ceremony, clearly fully planned ahead, still calls itself a “spontaneous” event. What’s up with that?

The Bolsavik is thinking two things. One: -”Hmmm, if we say it’s spontaneous, maybe we don’t need a permit!” -”Cool. Dude, where’s our car?”

Two: “Spontaneous” (“tự phát” in Vietnamese) for the last year or two, has become a sort of new buzzword used by protestors who want to demonstrate against somebody but don’t want to take the responsibility.

The coordinator of this new entrant into the commemoration market is Joe Dovinh, currently running for Assembly. According to the email, Dovinh dropped off a copy at Viet Herald.

It appears he ain’t gonna drop nuttin’ off at places that employ them that he don’t like. Like the guy who wrote this. Or this other guy who’s mean because he asked questions and wanted answers. That’ll learn ‘em.

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.

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

In his announcement, besides the usual (lamenting about the Bolsavik and others who did not sing his praises, etc.), Dovinh repeated his (insert adjective of your choice: idiotic/ clever/ WTF/ creative) claim that “with 42,111 ballots for Dovinh for the college district and 6931 ballots for Dovinh for the Midway City Sanitary District, (he is) still the second most vote-getter in all 12 Vietnamese-American candidates.” (See also here, here and here.)

Hung Phuong Nguyen, for his part, once “analyzed” the results of the June supervisorial election like this (see copy of his email here): Dina Nguyen got 12,472 votes; that means 12,472 Viet voters voted for her. Also: In the 2006 special elections to the District 1 Supervisor’s seat, non-Viet candidates got 23097 total votes. In June 2008, Janet Nguyen received 24642 votes. “Therefore” Janet Nguyen got only 24642 – 23097 = 2626 votes from Vietnamese-Americans. Or maybe he meant to take the 2006 votes for Janet and Trung Nguyen, and subtract off the 2008 votes for Dina and Hoa Van Tran to arrive at 2626. Or something like that.

Birds of a feather ….

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?

How, you asked?

By double-counting the votes — as it turns out. As Dovinh explained on radio, he was adding up the votes he got in the two separate races.

If you run in two races and want to know how many votes you get, you add the two, right? Every kindergartner knows that!

It’s such a relief voters didn’t put this overgrown kindergartner on the Coast college board. 

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.