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.

(This photo by Linh Nguyen/Nguoi Viet)

Phu Nguyen, the former student leader who brought about the current incarnation of the Tet Festival and more than $800,000 that the event generated for community groups left and right, last week-end launched his campaign for the California Assembly, district 68. A number of Viet community figures were there; and even though Phu Nguyen is running as a Democrat, there were quite a few GOP voters among those Viets.

But, first, Phu Nguyen has to win the Democratic primary, and many big names in the party were at his campaign office inauguration.

Jose Solorio, Assembly member and former Santa Ana Councilman.

Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (right) talking to Phu Nguyen campaign volunteer. Leaning against the wall is Ken Arnold, a volunteer and also candidate for Congress.

Arnold is running for Congress, trying to unseat Congressman Dana Rohrabacher. Ken Arnold’s wife is Vietnamese, by the way. In 2008, Arnold ran for the Assembly in this same district and finished 47-53 against incumbent Van Tran who’s not running for reelection because he’s termed out.

This is Melissa Fox, candidate for district 70 of the Assembly. The seat is currently held by Chuck Devore, who’s running for the U.S. Senate.

In late January, when Nguyen held his first fundraiser, Assembly Democrats came down in force to support him. The Majority Leader Alberto Torrico was there, as was the Majority Whip Fiona Ma.

The chair of the Asian-Pacific Islander Caucus in the Assembly, Warren Furutani, and the Vice-Chair of the Latino Caucus Tony Mendoza both came too.

Phu Nguyen, former President of UVSA (Union of Vietnamese Student Associations), has declared his candidacy for the State Assembly 68th District. He will have to win the Democratic nomination before facing the Republican candidate.

His first public fundraising event is scheduled for Friday, January 29, 6pm, at Paracel Seafood Restaurant. See text of invitation here.

For a first-time candidate, Phu has quickly amassed an impressive array of endorsers. Even though there’s another Democrat in the running, many top Dems have endorsed Phu, including: the only OC Democratic Congress member, Loretta Sanchez; the only OC Democratic State Senator, Lou Correa; and one of two OC Democratic Assembly member, Tony Mendoza.

Phu is the second Viet to declare for the seat. Tran’s 2006 opponent and current OC Board of Education member Long Pham is also running on the Republican side. (If Pham doesn’t win the primary, Phu’s likely Republican opponent will be Costa Mesa mayor Alan Mansoor, and Mansoor’s colleague on the Costa Mesa City Council, Katrina Foley, has endorsed Phu.)

Phu Nguyen was UVSA President in 2001 when the organization (or rather a handful of key figures in the organization) modernized the Tet Festival and raised $80,000 doing it in Westminster, at the empty lot where the Vietnam War Memorial now stands.

The following year, the group held another successful Tet Festival at Garden Grove Park. The year after that, with Phu still at the helm, the group made a successful presentation before the Garden Grove City Council (where Tran was a member at the time) to win approval of a long term contract for the UVSA to hold the Tet Festival at Garden Grove Park.

The UVSA’s winning proposal includes two features that have become the signature aspects of the festival ever since: Donation of half the proceeds to community groups; and financial transparency.

In 2008, the UVSA won a 5-year renewal of the contract. Phu was in the audience at the council meeting supporting the current UVSA leadership.

Over the years, the UVSA has donated $880,000 (and counting, as the checks are still being cut) to various community groups and causes.

On Phu’s fundraiser invitation is another familiar name: Nicole Nguyen. Nicole is another key figure in the transformation of the UVSA and Tet Festival: She was the UVSA Vice-President for Internal Affairs at the time Phu was President.

(The VP for External Affairs was Bao Huu Mai. He’s famous for traveling to Vietnam, demanding to visit an activist held by the police, and ended up himself being held for 24 hours. Read more here.)

A crowd that the OC Register here estimates to be over a hundred gathered yesterday morning across the street from the Asian Village Mall to rally in support of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

There were several politicians there, but before that let’s talk about a couple of interesting handouts among the dozen or so available. Both are in Vietnamese.

This one is a two-page letter going down the reasons why voting for Barack Obama is a good idea for Viet voters. It reminds people how John McCain had defined the “middle class” as people making between 1 and 5 million a year, apparently as evidence of where McCain’s economic priorities lie.

And this one here is a tri-fold brochure with items show why McCain would be a bad idea because he’s close to the communist government of Vietnam.

Interestingly, the brochure quotes Jerry Kiley, a Vietnam veteran most famous for having splashed red wine on Vietnam’s then-Prime Minister Phan Van Khai when the latter was on a visit to Washington, D.C. At the time, Kiley said the red wine symbolized the blood of POW-MIA.

Kiley belongs to a group of POW-MIA advocates who have long been angry at fellow veterans John McCain and John Kerry for blocking their efforts to punish the Vietnamese government over the POW-MIA issue. He’s got a web site, here, that tells some real horror stories about McCain including this funny one. However, very much unclear how much of it is true; a lot of evidence is highly iffy. Also read this excerpt from North Vietnamese radio broadcast.

Of course, savvy office-seekers came out to shore up support for themselves.

Above, front row from left, are Kim-Oanh NguyenLam, incumbent Trustee of the Garden Grove School District running for re-election; Debbie Cook, Huntington Beach Mayor seeking to unseat U.S. Rep. Rohrabacher; and Garden Grove Councilman Mark Rosen.

In this picture, from left is Phu Nguyen, former UVSA president and one of the organizers; Trung Ta, a member of the Democratic Foundation of Orange County and the president of the newly formed Vietnamese-American Democrats of OC; Ethan Dong-Matsuda, a barely-teen published author who’s the son of North OC College board member Michael Matsuda and Viet activist Xuyen Dong-Matsuda; Linh Ho, candidate for Garden Grove City Council; Q. Bao Nguyen; and Robin Marcario, candidate for Garden Grove City Council.

About Q. Bao Nguyen.

Eight years ago, McCain used the racist term “gook” to call Vietnamese – and he later said he meant the communists only – which would make McCain the only fluent English speaker to misunderstand the term. The Bolsavik actually believes McCain’s intent – as a millionaire senator from Arizona, it is doubtful if McCain has many opportunities to meet and therefore cuss out any Asian-American.

Anyway, so McCain came out to Little Saigon for a rally in 2000, and Q. Bao Nguyen was there to protest. Bao was so visible, author and former Naval fighter pilot Quang X. Pham, who introduced McCain that night, actually saw Bao from the stage and remembered and recognized him eight years later at the OCAPICA candidate forum (this one).

So, McCain was speaking, Q. Bao was heckling, the way all political rallies are and should be, and lo and behold out of nowhere came a handful of former South Vietnamese military officers in fatigues. They started man-handling Bao and his friends, and pushed Bao out onto Bolsa Avenue, into the path of an incoming SUV, almost killing him.

A younger, shorter-haired Q. Bao was one of the central figures in the documentary film Saigon, U.S.A., from which the photo at right was taken.