Bolsavik.com

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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The Bolsavik was pointed (by a third-party) to this blog entry by the L.A. Times’ Dana Parsons.

Apparently, in a mailer (that the Bolsavik doesn’t have; sorry), Garden Grove City Council candidate Andrew Do was pointing out his rival Trung Nguyen’s character flaws and drew attention to Trung’s infamous Photoshop job.

To bolster his case, the mailer displays a newspaper story entitled “O.C. Candidate Has Serious Image Problem.” The newspaper story is shown under an OC Register masthead.

Unfortunately, as Parsons points out, that bad pun belongs to the L.A. Times, not the Register. It has been noted by many observers, from both ends of the political spectrum, that the Register was conspicuously silent in the whole Photoshop scandal.

Writes Parsons:
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The Bolsavik received in his email an attack mailer from AndrewDo.com against Trung Nguyen. Click on the picture to see the full image.

Written in Vietnamese, the mailer states that “Garden Grove cannot have an elected official that lacks honesty, lacks integrity, is selfish/ambitious, and is irresponsible, as Trung Nguyen.”

Some accusations are familiar — the Photoshop job, the bankruptcy and student loan default — some are petty, such as a vote on air conditioning at 3 Garden Grove schools (ok, probably not petty to the parents of students at those schools); and some are stretching it, like tying Trung’s vote to up school-lunch prices by 25% to a tax increase. OK, so Trung voted to raise school lunch prices — but that’s not a tax. (Unless maybe if you drink out of some Howard-Jarvis tax-revolt wells, you’d call anything the government collects a tax….)

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A candidate forum, organized by OCAPICA and moderated by the Chair of Asian-American Studies at UC Irvine, is taking place today evening, putting together candidates for school boards and city councils of Garden Grove and Westminster.

The flyer (click on the picture to see full uncropped version) doesn’t list Garden Grove city council candidate Trung Nguyen as confirmed, but a person involved in the organization told the Bolsavik that both Trung and his nemesis Andrew Do will be there. If true (and that’s a big if), it should make this forum the first time both appear at the same public event as candidates.

Other Viet candidates scheduled to appear include Kim-Oanh Nguyen-Lam, the incumbent member of the Garden Grove School Board; Linh Ho, candidate for Garden Grove City Council; and Frank Tran, candidate for Westminster School Board.

Moderating the forum will be Dr. Linda T. Vo, a Board member of OCAPICA and professor and chair of Asian-American Studies at UC Irvine.

The forum will take place at the Board Room of the Bolsavik’s employer, the Rancho Santiago Community College District. The building, at the corner of Broadway and Santa Clara, can be seen from the I-5 freeway.

Here’s the when and where:

5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Rancho Santiago Community College District Board Room
2323 North Broadway Avenue
Santa Ana, CA 92706

For info: Tanzila Ahmed, (714) 636-9095

The Endorsement Committee of the OC Republican Party voted unanimously to endorse Trung Nguyen for Garden Grove City Council, reports Red County/OC Blog’s Jubal here.

His opponent Andrew Do, OC Supervisor Janet Nguyen’s chief of staff, lost the endorsement apparently because he only recently moved to Garden Grove from Santa Ana, and briefly switched his registration to the Democratic party before returning to the GOP in 2005. Both of these facts were exploited by Endorsement Committee Chairman Kermit Marsh in formulating his questions.

This must be very welcome news for the once dignified Garden Grove School Board member, who had been reduced to scraping for support by engaging in red-baiting protests against such things as a Macy’s belt buckle and other assorted sundries.

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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.

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The first candidate has confirmed - though not through any official announcement - that she’s running for Garden Grove City Council. That would be Robin Marcario, the president of the Central Garden Grove Neighborhood Association, and it’s not the first time she’s running.

Photoshop-man Trung Nguyen, the serial litigant failed candidate for county supervisor and wild red-baiter who’s currently a member of the Garden Grove school board, is supposed to run for the seat.

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The California Supreme Court earlier today refused to review the appeal by former supervisor candidate Trung Nguyen challenging the recount that gave Janet Nguyen her election victory by 3 votes. See docket here.

That should be the end of all various complaints and lawsuits filed by the Garden Grove School Board member and his mastermind Mike Schroeder. (Unless the Bolsavik missed something, which is very much possible considering the number of proceedings held.)

There were also at least three other complaints - two with the California Fair Political Practices Commission, and one with Attorney General Jerry Brown. All three deal with just one topic: Janet Nguyen had set up a legal defense fund to fight Trung Nguyen’s lawsuit, but it turned out county rules don’t allow legal defense funds, so she had the money returned. The legal defense funds were in her attorney’s account, so the attorney wrote the refund checks, and they bounced. He wrote new checks.

Janet paid $5,000 in fines to the FPPC for the illegal legal defense fund. The return of the money mooted the other two complaints (the one filed with Jerry Brown claimed that because the checks bounced, Janet committed perjury).

Meanwhile, after trial judge Mike Brenner ruled on the recount and gave Janet her 3-vote victory, Trung Nguyen filed for a writ of mandate (a sort of emergency appeal) to the Court of Appeal. He lost. So he filed a regular appeal.

When he lost the emergency appeal, the Board of Supervisors voted to seat Janet, who took office as the highest ranking Vietnamese-American in county politics. That new reality on the ground made it very difficult for Trung’s court case. Predictably, Trung lost the regular appeal as well. So he sought review by the high court. That is the review that the Supreme Court declined today.

The Court of Appeal’s opinion is here. The earlier denial of writ of mandate is here.

The OC Register’s Peggy Lowe has an entry about the Supreme Court’s denial of review here.

Perennial candidate Long Pham (seated on the right, with Fr. Thanh Nguyen) is on the quest for another public office, inaugurating his campaign office today in the same building on Bolsa in Little Saigon that houses Dina Nguyen’s campaign.

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.

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