By turning incoming Governor Jerry Brown into a boogieman, Assemblyman Jose Solorio (3rd from left) got what he wanted: Front page exposure on Viet Bao Daily News.

Sensing an opening as well as an opportunity, as the only Vietnamese-American in the California Assembly is leaving office without a Viet replacement, Jose Solorio is stepping up his PR in the Viet community.

Taking a page from his exiting colleague’s book, Solorio came up with the same least-cost, highest-return proposal that Van Tran used, while at the same time taking a swipe at his fellow Democrat.

Solorio side-swipes Jerry Brown. Click to view more if you read Vietnamese.

Solorio is proposing a resolution to recognize the yellow-and-red flag as the flag of the Vietnamese community. Fair enough.

But, to make sure he gets a lot of attention and gets taken seriously, he made incoming Governor Jerry Brown into a boogie man.

Remember that executive order that Governor Schwarzenegger signed? (The same one that’s considered so politically valuable, candidate Trung Nguyen even Photoshopped himself into it?)

“The incoming Governor may nullify it,” Solorio threatened.

What? Is there a threat from Brown? Why did Solorio say such a thing?

So a reporter from Nguoi Viet Daily News called Solorio. The conversation went something like this:

Q: “Is there a basis for your thinking that Governor Brown will nullify the Vietnam flag order?”

Solorio: “No.”

Q: “Did Jerry Brown say something that makes you think he’d nullify or revoke it?”

Solorio: “No.”

Q: “So there wasn’t anything that Brown said or did that made you think that?”

Solorio: “No.”

Q: “It’s not like every governor nullifies every executive orders the previous governor signed…”

Solorio: “No, but there’s always a risk. What I’m proposing is blah-blah-blah.”

Q: “A resolution from the Assembly is not binding, is it?”

Solorio: “It’s not, but it strongly expresses blah-blah-blah.”

It appears that one doesn’t have to be a Vietnamese-American to be a Vietnamese-American demagogue.

Marking the end of her third year in office, OC Board of Supervisors’ Chairwoman Janet Nguyen today will hold a “3 votes in 3 years in March” fundraiser at the restaurant that’s the staple of her campaign, the Azteca in Garden Grove.

The 3-3-3 fundraiser refers to Janet’s winning the 2007 Special Election to replace then-Supervisor Lou Correa who had been elected to the State Senate. Janet Nguyen, then a Garden Grove City Council member, went to battle against Assemblyman Van Tran‘s protege Trung Nguyen, at the time a Garden Grove Unified School Board member. The first count gave Trung at 7-vote lead.

Janet asked for a recount, and she ended up as the certified winner by 7 votes as a result of the recount.

Trung then took her to court, where at the end of trial on March 26, 2007 the judge cut Janet’s lead down to 3 votes, but that meant Janet still won. She was promptly sworn in the next day. In the photo above, that’s her US Marine brother to her right and her husband Tom Bonikowski, now a Garden Grove Planning Commissioner and is the proud owner of his own controversy.

Trung Nguyen appealed, lost that, and the California Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

The defeat left Van Tran and his allies so bitter, in the 2008 election to the full 4-year term, they took to attacking with the ultimate smear – calling Janet a communist. Here and here, for example.

The red-baiting didn’t work, she won anyway.

Janet’s invitation follows the jump. Fittingly enough, the per-person price is $333.

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.

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:

Is it possible that Do attached our story to the Register’s banner because it has a wider reach in Orange County? A bit misleading, perhaps? A doctored mock-up of the story?

No way, Do told me. “I’ve got to talk to my consultant. If that got mixed up, I apologize. The design guy must have gotten it mixed up.”

He said his consultant is in Northern California and probably isn’t hip to which paper has the larger circulation in Orange County.

 On behalf of The Times, apology accepted.

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….)

Andrew Do and Trung Nguyen are both running for the Garden Grove City Council. Also on the ballot for the 2 openings is another Viet, T. Linh Ho. Other candidates of note include Paul Lucas, Robin Marcario and appointed incumbent Steve Jones.

Trung Nguyen is, of course, the notorious protestor against a red belt buckle.

Anyway, guess what the file name of the Andrew Do mailer is. It’s “Hit mailer against Trung in VN 2.jpg“.

Kekekek.

Subtlety shall not reign, in Bolsavikland politics.

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

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.

This is also the first time the OC GOP smiles upon Trung since he lost the election for the Central Committee in 2006, coming in 7th in a field of 12 for a race that takes the top 6.

Apparently, the OC GOP has forgiven the Trannies for lashing out at it as racist. Or at least they’re not holding Trung responsible for the rantings of Van Tran’s PR man who is, after all, running Van’s errands, not Trung’s.

New elections, blank slates, new rules, start over.

This will be one interesting race to watch.

* 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.”

* Garden Grove School District

With Trung Nguyen not running, there’s an open seat in addition to the two incumbencies. Incumbent Dr. Kim-Oanh NguyenLam is running, and she’s expected to win. Also running is John Chuong Nguyen, a telecommunications engineer who also ran in 2006.

Back then, Lan Quoc Nguyen worked hard to help incumbent Bob Harden beat back John Chuong Nguyen’s challenge. This time, Lan is already campaigning on behalf of candidate George West, again trying to beat back John Chuong Nguyen. The Bolsavik has no idea what Lan has against John Chuong; John Chuong has nothing against the Trannies that the Bolsavik knows of.

* Rancho Santiago Community College District, Area 1

Nam M. Pham, a Santa Ana Library Board member, is running for 1 of 3 seats. Two of the incumbents are running, the third filed papers but withdrew.

* Mr. Two-Seater

Trannie Joseph Dovinh is running for two positions, both seemingly under the radar: Coast Community College District, Area 2; and Midway City Sanitary District.

In the Coast College District, though, Dovinh would be taking on Jerry Patterson, a former U.S. Congressman, predecessor of Bob Dornan. Maybe some seats are not as far under the radar as Dovinh thought.