Tan Nguyen facing reporters shortly after the scandal broke weeks before the 2006 general elections.

“Terrible day” is what former GOP Congressional candidate Tan Nguyen described to the Bolsavik his feelings on Valentine’s Day when federal judge David O. Carter sentenced him to one year in prison for lying to investigators about his role in sending a ”don’t vote” campaign letter targeting Latino voters.

Nguyen was convicted in December of lying to investigators and getting a campaign worker to take the blame for his actions in sending out a mailer targeting Latino voters trying to get them to not vote in the 2006 campaign for the congressional seat held by Rep. Loretta Sanchez.

That was a re-trial. Earlier, in August, the judge had declared a mistrial after the jury in that trial was stuck at 11-1 in favor of conviction on one count of lying to investigators and 9-3 on one count involving the campaign worker.

Nguyen told the Bolsavik today he is appealing the conviction and sentencing. But, for all practical purposes, he was hoping “only to take the felony away.” The one year sentence – he would have served it out by the time the appeal is heard anyway, Nguyen said. In federal court, a convicted defendant must serve time while pending appeal.

Citing Nguyen’s “exemplary” life before lying to investigators, the judge allowed Nguyen to report himself to prison on March 28. His lawyer Dean Steward said Nguyen is expected to spend about 10 months in a minimum-security facility in Southern California and then be moved to a halfway house.

Resigned to incarceration, Nguyen said he just wnated to “get it out of the way.”

In court, the prosecution painted Nguyen as an evil man who “threw under the bus” his campaign volunteers, whom he blamed for the letter. One of them is a close friend from college.

In attendance at the sentencing is Nhi Ho (in Vietnamese: Ho Van Xuan Nhi), a former co-chair of Van Tran’s 2004 campaign for Assembly. Ho sent out a lengthy email berating the campaign workers for testifying against Nguyen, calling them “false friends” and traitors.

Nguyen is currently involved in numerous big-ticket development projects. Asked by the Bolsavik what would happen to the projects, he said he had “good partners and they will take care of business.”

Nguyen ran in last year’s congressional race for the same seat, but lost handily in the Republican primary to Van Tran.

He had overwhelmingly won the Republican primary in 2006, getting 55.4% of the vote in a three-way race. Going into the general, Nguyen’s campaign sent out a letter that’s commonly interpreted by Democrats and Republicans alike as threatening U.S. citizens of Mexican origins that they can’t vote. The Governator Schwarzenegger (still popular back then) called it “appalling,” OC GOP leader Scott Baugh said he didn’t believe Nguyen’s denial, and all the Vietnamese candidates who only a month earlier had taken a joint “solidarity” campaign photo with him (Van Tran, Lan Quoc Nguyen, etc.) all jumped ship.

Later discussions centered on whether the word “emigrado” in the letter refers to non-citizen immigrants, or to all immigrants, totally ignoring any chilling effects the letter may have. The state knew it, though, and sent out counter-letters to all the people on the Tan Nguyen mailing list.

The State of California investigated him. However, in 2007, the new Attorney General, Democrat Jerry Brown, thought it was no-harm-no-foul and voluntarily dismissed the case.

In 2008, however, the U.S. Justice Department under Republican President George W. Bush indicted Nguyen.

The Statement of Votes is a 2630-page document from the OC Registrar of Voters, breaking down votes by precinct for every race in the November election. There are also a few important subtotals. The document is provided in PDF format, so trying to re-analyze the numbers would not be possible – unless one is willing to pay for the original spreadsheet format.

Even at the level provided by the Registrar of Voters, a few interesting details emerge.

* In the city of Westminster, in each and every precinct, and also in every subpart of the vote-by-mail ballots, Mayoral candidate Bruce Tran lost to incumbent Mayor Margie Rice by significant margins. He’d get two digits while she’d get three, for example. The closest Tran came was in Precinct 39368 (in the southwest corner of Bolsa and Ward), where both candidates get 14 votes.

* In Precinct 39274, which includes the house Andy Quach crashed into when he was driving drunk, he finished third, but ahead of both other Viet candidates. The result for that precinct is: Alin Hamade 72, Penny Loomer 57, Andy Quach 52, Tri Ta 45, Joy Neugebauer 34, Khoa Do 27, and Ginger Waugh-Borden 20.

* In the overlap of the City of Westminster and the 68th Assembly District, an area that can be considered a stronghold of Van Tran influence with Vietnamese voters, the top finisher for Westminster City Council is Tri Ta, and the second place is taken by Khoa Do. Quach comes in third. Within the confines of the data provided by the Statement of Votes, this may support a conclusion that Van Tran followers support Tri Ta, Khoa Do, and Andy Quach, in that order.

In that same Van Tran stronghold, the Vietnamese-American candidate to replace him, Phu Nguyen, scored 7551 votes to Alan Mansoor’s 7362, thus lending support to a conclusion that the majority of Van Tran’s Viet supporters vote for Phu Nguyen, just to a lesser extent.

* Another identifiable Van Tran stronghold is the overlap between his Assembly district 68 and the Congressional district he was running in, the 47. In that overlap, he bested Loretta Sanchez 12,693 to 11,012. He also finished ahead in his old city Garden Grove, finishing 12,602 to 11,612.

And of course Tran lost in places he’s expected to lose. In the city of Santa Ana, for example, he got less than half of Sanchez’s votes,  10,577 to 21,831.

He did lose in a few surprising places. In the North side, where the 47 overlaps the Assembly 72, Tran lost 6,483 to 9,105.

* Many Viet candidates got an overwhelming percentage of their votes from vote-by-mail. In the race for the Westminster City Council, for example, the ratio of vote-by-mail are, from high to low:

Khoa Do 75.7%
Tri Ta 70.9%
Andy Quach 57.0%
Ginger Waugh-Borden 53.2%
Alin Hamade 52.6%
Penny Loomer 51.7%
Joy Neugebauer 51.6%

In the 68th Assembly race, it’s:

Long Pham 79.6%
Phu Nguyen 54.8%
Alan Mansoor 53.5%

In the 47th Congressional:

Van Tran 61.5%
Loretta Sanchez 51.5%
Ceci Iglesias 46.8%

However, because Tran’s grand total is behind by 13,000+ votes, Sanchez actually got more votes by mail than him, 26,195 to 23,174.

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.

Across the country, except for a few bright spots, most Viet candidate fall flat, losing their races, sometimes spectacularly.

Now, of course, there is such a thing as a “Vietnamese bounce” – late absentee ballots cast mostly by Vietnamese – which has caused people (including the Bolsavik here) to sometimes prematurely announce the demise of some campaigns.

But, from the way things look, even the Vietnamese bounce won’t help this time.

Starting with the highest ranking Viet elected official, U.S. Rep. Joseph Cao, he of the claim to fame as the only Republican to vote for health care reform.

Two years ago, Cao won in a year where most Republicans lost. Now that most Republicans are winning, Cao lost spectacularly, 34%-64%, and conceded early in the night.

Another Viet Congress hopeful, California Assemblyman Van Tran, ended the night trailing Rep. Loretta Sanchez 42%-51% with all precincts counted. The distance to be made up is 4,993 votes, a spread widely considered too wide for late absentees to cover.

And the man who had hoped to replace Tran in the Assembly, Democrat Phu Nguyen, fought valiantly in a district with 1/3 more Republicans than Democrats and in a Republican-leaning year. Phu Nguyen got all the way up to 44%-56%, and fell 8,000 votes short.

Two groups lost big in Little Saigon. One is an organization calling itself, well, actually, not sure what its English name is, but it held a public voting all over Little Saigon earlier this year, resulting in a committee of 7 that’s supposed to be the official representatives of the community. Its grandiose Vietnamese name translates into the Committee of Representatives of the Community.

The Vice-President of the group is Bruce Tran, owner of VHN-TV. (Click here for all entries tagged Bruce Tran.) Tran ran for mayor of Westminster, and lost big time, 19%-71%.

The spokesman of the committee that organized that public voting, Charlie Chi Manh Nguyen, ran for the Huntington Beach Union HSD, which reaches into and covers parts of Westminster. With 3 positions available, Nguyen ended in 4th place with a little over half the votes the 3rd place person got.

The other group that lost big is SBTN-TV, the media giant that had backed Hoa Van Tran for OC Supervisor. This time, SBTN stands behind the Westminster City Council race for Khoa Do, a show host who’s well thought of in the community, having volunteered for several popular community events. Despite the might of mass media thrown in, Do ended up next to last place.

It’s not as if other Viet candidates for council fared any better. Incumbent Andy “DUI” Quach burned tens of thousands on the race, and ended up 48 votes behind the other Viet incumbent, Tri Ta. It looks like there will no longer be a Viet majority on the Westminster city council, as challenger Penny Loomer – almost a winner two years ago – took the first spot, leaving Quach and Ta sort out among themselves the 48 votes plus-or-minus whatever late absentees, for the second position available.

Also running in the area is former Councilman Tony Lam, the first Vietnamese-American to win public office. Returning to politics seeking a seat on the Midway City Sanitary District, he ended dead last.

There is one local bright spot. In the city of Fountain Valley, businessman Michael Vo, owner of a traffic school, finished ahead of two incumbents to win a seat on the city council. (In this same race, another candidates reputedly also supported by SBTN ended in the single digits.) This marks the first time an OC Viet candidate wins without the votes of Westminster/Garden Grove.

And there’s an out-of-state bright spot. State Representative Hubert Vo in Texas held off a powerful challenge by his Republican opponent and is leading by around 1000 votes when the election office there went to sleep and stopped updating its web site for the night.

And some Democrats too, but then again Dems don’t scream and yell at government spending, whereas GOP’ers do.

Sunday was the dedication ceremony of the “Heroes Memorial,” a set of plaques affixed to a wall, built at a park in Orange County’s unincorporated Midway City. The memorial is the proud brainchild of OC Supervisor Janet Nguyen, who funded it using part of the $2 million in taxpayers’ money allocated to her district.

The memorial consists of three walls, each about 10 feet long and around 5 feet tall. The whole thing is budgeted for $350,000.

Shown in the picture above, joining Republican Janet Nguyen (center) is Republican Westminster Mayor Margie Rice, Republican Assemblyman Van Tran, and (skipping over the Democrat with the mustache) Republican Garden Grove City Councilmember Dina Nguyen.

According to Song Thuan, the president of the group contracted to design and build this memorial (and who previously had no idea what they were getting into), they are coming in under budget, having spent only $340,000.

Which means that at $11,000, you get less than 1 foot of the wall (shorter than the paper your typical apartment lease is printed on). Apparently in some people’s mind that counts as saving.

Tan Nguyen reading a statement to the press in 2006, when he was investigated by the state Department of Justice.

The jury deadlocked in the trial of former Congressional candidate Tan Nguyen, and the judge declared a mistrial, reports the OC Register’s Martin Wisckol here.

Nguyen is accused of lying to investigators and getting a campaign worker to take the blame for his actions in sending out a mailer targeting Latino voters trying to get them to not vote. The federal judge in the trial of the polled the jury late Friday. They were stuck at 11-1 in favor of conviction on one count of lying to investigators and 9-3 on one count involving the campaign worker.

“We’re disappointed that we didn’t get an acquittal, but we’ll live to fight another day,” said Dean Steward, Nguyen’s attorney.

The prosecution has not decided whether it will retry the case. It must decide by the Sept. 13 status hearing.

The case arose out of the 2006 elections. Earlier this year, Nguyen ran again in the Republican primary, but lost to the party establishment’s favorite, Van Tran. Tran, for his part, went to a Tea Party and joyfully posed for pictures with a bumper sticker that says “Jail Tan Nguyen.”

Apparently, he thought better of it, and his afterthoughts were strong enough for him to claim in writing that the bumper sticker was “thrust on me.” A Vietnamese-language paper took the story and picture off its web site.

Tan Nguyen overwhelmingly won the Republican primary in 2006, getting 55.4% of the vote in a three-way race. Going into the general, Nguyen’s campaign sent out a letter that’s commonly interpreted by Democrats and Republicans alike as threatening U.S. citizens of Mexican origins that they can’t vote. The Governator Schwarzenegger (still popular back then) called it “appalling,” OC GOP leader Scott Baugh said he didn’t believe Nguyen’s denial, and all the Vietnamese candidates who only a month earlier had taken a joint “solidarity” campaign photo with him (Van Tran, Lan Quoc Nguyen, etc.) all jumped ship.

Later discussions centered on whether the word “emigrado” in the letter refers to non-citizen immigrants, or to all immigrants, totally ignoring any chilling effects the letter may have. The state knew it, though, and sent out counter-letters to all the people on the Tan Nguyen mailing list.

The State of California investigated him. However, in 2007, the new Attorney General, Democrat Jerry Brown, thought it was no-harm-no-foul and voluntarily dismissed the case.

In 2008, however, the U.S. Justice Department under Republican President George W. Bush indicted Nguyen.

In a paragraph written in Vietnamese but not present in his English-language press release, Assemblyman Van Tran accuses the judge in the Proposition 8 case – a Republican appointee - of being an openly gay man who made his ruling because of gay pressure.

The press release is much longer than the English version (see that one on Red County here, for example), runs two pages, and is accompanied by three photos of gay men and women marching in the Westminster Tet Parade.

At the top of the second page, the press release reads:

The San Francisco area, a place concentrated with homosexual people [incomplete sentence in original]. Chief Judge Walker is also an openly gay person, working for the Federal Court of that area. Word is that the judge’s ruling overturning Prop. 8 was the result of personal interest and because of influence by the homosexual groups in the area.

Also included in the Vietnamese version but not the English version is an accusation from Tran that U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez allegedly favors abortion and gay marriage. The Bolsavik hasn’t checked if that’s true, but if true, it’s puzzling why Tran didn’t include that fact in the English copy.

Near the end of the press release, Van Tran also made a promise not stated in the English version. He said he would support the appeal.

Read the press release as a Word document here. Or see the two pages as jpg here and here.

Trannies of the world, rejoice. You will not go hungry. There’s always Janet.

On Sunday, when half of Little Saigon was watching the final game of World Cup soccer somewhere, OC Supervisor Janet Nguyen served penne pasta to people who came to watch at Viet Herald Daily News. A picture printed in that paper shows that among people who showed up and ate was Assemblyman Van Tran.

Rumors of the death of bad vibes between the two, however, are said to be still greatly exaggerated.