Chief of Staff Andrew Do, who’s also a City Councilman of Garden Grove, intends to go back to practicing law.

Widely viewed as highly intelligent, very loyal, but with a streak of a temper, Do helped navigate Janet Nguyen’s 2007 campaign through the recounts and lawsuit that ended with a 3-vote win over Trung Nguyen.

In Janet Nguyen’s 2008 campaign for reelection, Do adeptly countered accusations by Assemblyman Van Tran (read here and here, e.g.) and his acolytes that Nguyen is a commie. (For that matter, Tran’s men also called Do a commie.)

Last month, however, Do appeared to have bungled a huge political opportunity. After cleverly obtaining a permit for Black April at the Westminster Vietnam War Memorial by applying 8 months in advance, Janet Nguyen’s office could have made her the Queen of Little Saigon by inviting everyone to the party. But no, somebody had to play mi casa ain’t su casa.

They tried to have their own party with their handpicked list of participants, keeping out some other community groups. Now, said “other community groups” may be unattractive for a number of reasons, but that’s no excuse for committing political malpractice.

As a result, Janet Nguyen lost her preferred time slot, got dragged through an unnecessary controversy, and made enemies where there were none before.

It’s not clear if it was Do’s idea or he was merely cleaning up after someone else’s mess, but Do was at or near the center of the dispute the whole time, getting on radio and fighting the “bad guys,” and representing Janet Nguyen at all the negotiations and meetings.

Do is a former prosecutor in the OC DA’s office, where his wife Cheri Pham still works. She’s on the ballot to fill the OC Superior Court seat left open when Judge Peter Polos retired. Pham is unopposed.

Former OC supervisorial candidate Hoa Van Tran‘s financial disclosures sill have not figured out that there’s a problem with all the money and noncash contributions they get from VHN-TV.

Let’s go through this one slowly.

VHN-TV is also known as Viet Hai Ngoai TV. (“Hai Ngoai” means abroad, and there’s also a “Viet Abroad TV” but that’s not the same one.)

In Hoa’s reports for the period March 18 to May 17 — both the original and the amended — VHN is shown to have contributed a total of $2,600:

On page 5 (of the amended report here), there’s a monetary contribution of $1,000, received on May 7, 2008, from “Viet Hai Ngoai-Television, Corp.” (May 3 was the fundraiser for Hoa targeting Vietnamese, co-sponsored by Bruce Tran, the CEO of VHN-TV)

On page 19, there’s a non-monetary contribution of $1,600, received on March 31, 2008, from “VHN-TV.”

So, that’s a total of $2,600, a thousand above the legal limit.

In the latest disclosure here, covering the period from May 18 to June 30, VHN contributed again.

On page 9, there’s a non-monetary contribution from “Viet Hai Ngoai-Television, Corp” of $600, received on May 18, 2008.

So now the total is $3,200.

Everybody knows that calling the same entity by two different names doesn’t change the facts, right?

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…

The race had deteriorated in its final few weeks. Third-place vote-getter Hoa Van Tran was the first to accuse Janet Nguyen of being a communist. Dina Dina and other Trannies such as Garden Grove School Board members Lan Quoc Nguyen and Trung Nguyen immediately jumped in the red-baiting, thus not giving the Bolsavik a lot of confidence about how the children of Garden Grove are being educated. Assemblyman Van Thai Tran himself joined the fray, earning a counter-attack by Janet that Van and his wife are commies too.

After the election, Van called Janet to congratulate her, but to date neither of Janet’s rivals has contacted her, and Janet hasn’t contacted them.

On late night radio, Van’s underlings continued attacking Janet. Janet’s proxies attacked back. Then the minions stated attacking each other. Which is totally funny for anyone who’s into this kind of crap, or just plain crappy for others.

The thank-you letter, written in Vietnamese, doesn’t neglect to kick one in her opponents’ shin. Quote:

“My opponents spent more than half a million dollars hoping to drag us into a second round of election in November, not to mention thousands of dollars in expenditures that they’ve failed to disclose to the state election authorities.”

There have been allegations of unreported expenditures by Hoa Van Tran. Click here for a collection of related Bolsavik posts.

There have also been allegations, some made publicly and others privately, that Assemblyman Van Tran spent money on Dina’s behalf without disclosing.

It is not immediately clear whether Janet is referring to Hoa or Van.

Click on the photo above for the full letter.

This young man, whose name the Bolsavik failed to get (sorry!), showed off his athletic skills while watching the returns at Hoa Van Tran‘s campaign office on election night.

His enthusiasm does not reflect the low number Hoa was getting. The candidate was garnering around 15% of the votes and wasn’t even in the office when the Bolsavik got there, and neither was his boss Phu Do Nguyen. His campaign consultants Edgardo Reynoso and Kimchi Nguyen were there, though, as were a lot of supporters milling about on the balcony. Paul Lucas, a former Democratic candidate for Assembly and now a controversial figure among Democrats, was heading out just as the Bolsavik pulled in to the parking lot.

Things were a little livelier at Dina Nguyen‘s (pictured right) campaign headquarters, across the street from the Asian Garden Mall (“Phuoc Loc Tho”).

They had set up a wide screen in the hallway, and the results from the Registrar of Voters’ web site were projected from a laptop onto it. In the picture left, the person manning the laptop is the Trannies’ designated McCarthyite-in-chief Hung Phuong Nguyen.

The incumbent Supervisor Janet Nguyen, whose Garden Grove campaign office is way too small to hold any party, had her election night celebration at the Azteca restaurant across Main Street, as she had done for all previous elections.

Somebody brought some Vietnamese food, too. Many local politicians were at Janet’s party, and one Baron Night, RPOC central committee member and candidate for mayor of Buena Park, took the opportunity to work the room. Janet was enjoying a strong 57.2% lead (later reduced to 56.6%) and relief showed on her face.

In the picture below, that’s Janet Nguyen at the food table with Scott Weimer, her landlord and a member of the Downtown Business Association — the group battling the above-mentioned Hung Phuong Nguyen and other protesters against Viet Weekly for destroying their livelihood.

It’s easy to have fun when you’re winning, and Janet’s gathering was the only one that had any semblance of a party.

One Viet voter there, upon finding who the Bolsavik was, gave him a frank but polite criticism of his decision to print the controversial foot-spa picture. The man also said that he supported Janet Nguyen because he’s incensed at the way other candidates shaded the facts to falsely accuse other Vietnamese-Americans of being communists. Anti-communism, he said (ok, not in so many words, but the Bolsavik is paraphrasing), is serious business and shouldn’t be used for petty purposes.

Also around this time last week, commenter Littlesaigonese wrote about the choices for First District Supervisor, referring to Hoa Tran, Dina Nguyen and Janet Nguyen, respectively:

“A candidate that can’t speak for himself , another that has no income (and no income tax paid) and the incumbent is pretty much a lost cause and they all want to do the talking for us. Hah.”

Well, you know how they say if you don’t vote you can’t complain?

Actually, the Bolsavik doesn’t buy that. What holy book says if you don’t vote you can’t complain? What statistics prove that voting is better at effecting changes, than complaining? Just who died and made only the voters king?

But anyway, if you do buy into that logic, then it’s only a minor extension to also conclude that if you don’t run you can’t complain either.

The red-baiting competition reached shrill level over the last couple of days, with Trannies Lan Quoc Nguyen and Trung Nguyen battling Janet’s chief of staff Andrew Do over the radio air waves, and all sorts of other surrogagtes chiming in.

And then in all the cacophony, the Bolsavik remembers something.

Remember that red-baiting piece that Van Thai Tran sent out on Assembly letterhead?

One person he accused of being a communist is Nhi Ho (pictured; Vietnamese: Ho Van Xuan Nhi).

Well, Nhi Ho was a co-chair of Van Tran’s 2004 campaign for Assembly.

Them commies sure get around don’t they….

Mike Schroeder (pictured) is a high-priced, high-octane lawyer and former state chairman of the GOP. He took Van Thai Tran under his wing, guided him up the Republican ladder. When it came time for Trannie Trung Nguyen to run for supervisor, Schroeder was the force that drove his lawsuits-upon-lawsuits against Janet Nguyen after Trung lost the last election.

And then, all of a sudden, Schroeder went silent and stopped attacking Janet.

What gives?

According to Moxley in his story here, Schroeder promised to shut up in exchange for Janet voting for Jack Anderson to be the interim sheriff of Orange County.

You see, the former sheriff Mike Carona is another protege of Schoeder’s, and Schroeder needed some of his sheriff department privilege continued under the interim sheriff, and Janet’s tie-breaking vote provided that.

Read more here.

The Bolsavik has a weakness, and that is he tends to believe things Moxley says about the sheriff department. Even under the secretive and paranoid Carona, Moxley has always been able to get information from there.

By the way, another Schroeder protege is OC District Attorney Mike Rackauckas, who appointed Schoeder’s wife Susan Kang Schroeder the DDA in charge of media relations.