This time, Pham is running for OC Board of Education, Area 1. He is seeking to unseat four-term incumbent Felix Rocha.

Pham, a Republican and one-time supporter of Van Tran, has been running for one thing or another for at least a decade. In 1998, he ran for Congress and was trounced by incumbent Dana Rohrabacher in the primary, 77% to 8% (another candidate received 15% of the vote).

In 2006, when Van Tran announced that he would run for State Senate, Pham announced his candidacy for the Assembly. So did Janet Nguyen. But then Van Tran changed his mind and ran for re-election. Janet withdrew and ran for OC Supervisor. Pham told Van Tran he would consider withdrawing, but then didn’t. He was beaten in predictably lopsided manner.

You can tell the man is not afraid of losing.

Lately, Pham has also been a constant presence at numerous protests, the most infamous of which is the “Tommy Ngo‘s belt” protest in July 2007.

Who’s Tommy Ngo and what about his belt?

Tommy Ngo is a Vietnamese-American singer, and his belt is accused of being a commie. Tommy Ngo had a belt whose buckle read “LOVE” with a star in the ”O”. On a concert poster, that ”O” looks a little bit like red with a yellow star. (Sorry, the Bolsavik doesn’t have any larger picture.)

The flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is red with a yellow star.

So – you guessed it. People came out in droves to protest. Television news on VHN-TV ran an 8-minute-plus report of the protest (bottom, in Vietnamese), and pictures in this entry are taken from that report.

Long Pham appears several times in the video (at 1:25, 1:58, 3:25) ragging on the concert promoters for their communist leanings.

Oh, and look who else was there: Trung Nguyen the former supervisorial candidate turned serial litigant, at 4:42.

The Bolsavik was not there but according to what Trung Nguyen said to VHN-TV in this video, he appeared to have played some kind of intermediary or liaison role to go speak to the promoters.

And the belt? Here’s the belt. It’s on the video at 7:50.

Yep, you can see – the star is white. According to a source who shops more than the Bolsavik does, this type of belt can be found at Macy’s- hence the star. The Bolsavik has no idea if it’s true, but doesn’t think it matters one way or another.

p>
(Note: Video is in Vietnamese. If video does not appear above, go directly to YouTube here.)