Minor hinkiness on Dina’s front

Found this information from the Orange County Assessor’s office, about the property taxes at Dina Nguyen’s declared address – the one she uses to be eligible to run for Garden Grove City Council. Dina Nguyen is one of the three candidates – all Vietnamese – running for the OC Supervisor seat in the First District.

To link to the tax information, get to the Assessor’s office here. Enter this parcel number, which corresponds to Dina’s address: 099-063-16. (Dina’s address is public, on her Form 700, and that’s how the Bolsavik got the parcel number, but the Bolsavik would rather not disseminate the address itself.)

The due dates on her payments were:

First installment: Due 11/1, delinquent after 12/10/2007
Second installment: Due 2/1, delinquent after 4/10/2008

Her actual payment dates were:

First installment: 01/24/2008
Second installment: 05/14/2008

Late by more than a month. Both times. It’s not as if she didn’t have the money to pay the $1,700+ bill — she had $25k to lend to her campaign.

And she should know she’s under a microscope.

This is real minor stuff, but it’s funny because it just seems consistent with the way Dina twice couldn’t fill out her candidate form properly.

 

First impression of Janet – Dina – Hoa financial disclosures

Yesterday was the deadline for filing the second round of financial disclosures. The three Vietnamese-Americans running for First District Supervisor, incumbent Janet Nguyen and challengers Dina Nguyen and Hoa Van Tran all filed theirs. You can look them up at the Registrar of Voters web site: Janet, Dina, Hoa.

The bottom line: As of the end of the day on May 17, the cash on hand for each campaign is as follows: Janet $87,657.79; Dina $30,031.88; Hoa $23,416.62.

As you browse through these reports, keep in mind that nobody can contribute more than $1,600.

JANET

Janet’s report shows a contribution by Ruebén Martínez. The Mexican-American barber-author, winner of the MacArthur “genius” grant and whose legendary librería is in financial trouble, still gave Janet $150. Not much, but it means something.

Hoa goes on attack: Janet commie, Dina anti-Vietnamese

Hoa Van Tran’s Vietnamese mailer hit mailboxes today; the Bolsavik got his from someone in Westminster. (PDF here) Hoa went on the attack, accusing Janet Nguyen of accepting contributions from alleged communist sympathizers, and Dina Nguyen of failing to speak out against the deportation of Vietnamese back to the communist country.

In the three-pager printed on a folded 17 x 11 paper, Hoa first went after Janet, accusing her of accepting contributions from “pro-communist capitalists.” While noting that Janet Nguyen did join the June 2007 protests against visiting Vietnamese president Nguyen Minh Triet at the St Regis in Dana Point, Hoa claimed that Janet had taken money from people associated with that visit.

Hoa attached copies of Janet’s financial disclosure showing a January 2007 contribution from Tru Le, which Hoa claims to be Eric Le (Vietnamese: Lê Công Trứ) about whom, he said, “the Vietnamese community suspects of organizing the event for Nguyen Minh Triet in Dana Point.” Hoa also copied entries showing contributions in December 2006 from managers of Lee’s Sandwiches. The company’s owner Chieu Le caught flaks from the anti-communist forces for allegedly showing up at the St Regis event, and for a brief period the Viet Weekly protesters also staged loud and obscene protests outside the Lee’s Sandwiches on Bolsa. (For some unknown reasons they never hit other Lee’s locations…)

Dina, at least, was not accused of being a communist. But she was accused of being anti-Vietnamese. (Not sure if in Hoa’s mind anti-Vietnamese is better or worse than communist.)

The genesis for Hoa’s accusation is a memorandum of understanding between the Bush administration and the government of Vietnam. Signed by the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on January 22, the MOU provided for Vietnam to take back its nationals who have been deported by the United States. (Prior to the MOU, Vietnam would not take them back and as a result, most deportees had nowhere to go and had to be released.) Read the DHS press release here.

While most community service groups opposed the MOU and held seminars to help people who may be caught in it (read the Bolsavik’s previous entry here), the Trannies stayed mum. It’s that silence that Hoa is now going after Dina Nguyen for, questioning whether her loyalty was with “her party or her people.”

Anyway, none of it was what first caught the Bolsavik’s eyes. 

Maybe it’s because of his former job dealing with printers every day, but the first thing the Bolsavik noticed was how the entire letter is poorly prepared, all rasterized and the black-and-white mostly gray.

As you know, Vietnamese language is based on the regular alphabet, but with diacritical marks all over the place. Most commercial printers don’t have those character sets. The way most people do it, is to produce a PDF file with the font set included, and have the printer’s prepress department create a plate from that.

Hoa’s team, however, appeared to have just scanned his letter and printed the whole thing as an image. It came out with the words gray and not crisp, the page dirty with black dots, and the black-and-white photo totally flat.

 

Dina Nguyen mailer misspells, points to gay porn site

 

Chris Prevatt at TheLiberalOC pointed it out here. The mailer sent by the Dina Nguyen campaign for OC Supervisor (read it again: Supervisor, one “p”) contains a misspell for her website.

And if you follow that misspelled URL?

It’ll roll over to another site, and you’ll get “Gay Asian Amateurs” porn.

Lots of it.

So, control yourself.

 

 

 

More on Linh and Linh

Linh Nguyen, the former Westminster Planning Commissioner, called the Bolsavik yesterday. Apparently Viet Weekly took one sentence from the Bolsavik’s entry here, stretched it out, and now asserts that Linh Nguyen originated the talk about romance between Andy Quach and Dina Nguyen. And that that’s what the Bolsavik said. He didn’t, you can check for yourself, but maybe it was close.

BTW, Dina’s Vietnamese name is also Linh. ”Linh” is just one of a vast number of unisex Vietnamese first names.

Anyway, so let’s clarify this and avoid any confusion:

* Before meeting with Dina, the Bolsavik had heard from at least one person (and a few others who heard from that same person) blaming Linh Nguyen for the romance talk.

* Going into the interview, and given that background and who those people are, the Bolsavik already knew before asking Dina about Linh Nguyen, what her answer would be.

* But the Bolsavik doesn’t really care about any romance between Dina and Andy. They’re grown up. Neither’s married. They can have any kind of relationship they want, romantic or platonic. So the point was about the rumors (or rather, rumors about rumors, sort of meta-rumors) and the reactions to them, not about the relationship itself.

* Linh Nguyen said he did not start those rumors.

So there.

And the Bolsavik apologizes to Linh Nguyen for the potentially misleading sentence.

For a publication that’s supposedly marginalized and eliminated from the community, Viet Weekly seems to still have a lot of readers and sure can still make some strange waves….

 

Text message from Dina

The Bolsavik just got this text message in his cell phone from Dina Nguyen, the Garden Grove Councilwoman running for OC Supervisor, regarding the interview posted here and here.

Here’s the message, minus one sentence that the Bolsavik thinks is off the record. If Dina says it’s not, the Bolsavik will add it back on.

Please correct: 1. I was not before the central com. Janet was the issue, and the vote was 31 over 14. 2. The sentences are missing some essential thoughts discussed off the record. If u wont delete this part please correct the sentences : I went through the motion being at central com metngs, because I am a candidate and knowing from the very beginning it was not dina v janet or van v janet, like some republicans and Van haters would like to believe, . 3. Van really wanted to help my candidacy not “really wanted it” by not endorsing the encumbent who has not been working well with the rest of the V-A elected.  It by itself is not clear. 4. I did not say he was “just a supporter”.  I believe you asked if he has an active role in the campaign and I responded he is not part of the campaign commitee, but he is supporting my endorsement.

 

Dina Nguyen interview pt2: Who’s who in her campaign

The strangest part about Dina Nguyen’s campaign is that nobody seems to be part of it, even though everybody seems to be in it.

The Garden Grove City Councilwoman is in a three-way race for OC Supervisor, First District, with two other Vietnamese-Americans: Incumbent Supervisor Janet Nguyen, and Democrat Hoa Van Tran. Read here and here. The non-partisan primary is set for June 3. If no candidates receive more than 50% of the votes, the top two will go into a runoff election.

It is widely perceived that Assemblyman Van Thai Tran(no relation to Hoa that anyone knows of) is the power behind Dina’s candidacy. However, during her conversation with the Bolsavik last week, Dina calls him just a supporter, “a well-respected leader who endorses me.”

Dina was also so-over-it two days after she lost 44-14 the vote in the Orange County Republican Party’s Central Committee. She called it “something Van really wanted so I just accommodated him, just going through the motions, you know.” Dina said that when the votes went Janet’s way, she consoled Van Tran by telling him that he took 25% of the votes, “that’s a lot” – apparently taking 14 divided by 44.

The conversation went to her campaign. Who’s your campaign manager? “Tim Clark is my campaign consultant.” That’s the “Clark” in JohnsonClark Associates, one of the state’s top GOP campaign consulting companies. Right, so the professional is the consultant. But who’s your campaign manager?

“I divided the job into four areas and I have four people in charge of the four areas,” Dina said. “Finance, Ground Operation, Mailer, and Volunteers.”

OK. And the four people in charge are?

“Well, two of the people don’t want to be known, so I’d rather not name any of the four.”

That’s a surprise.

Why does a campaign worker not want to be known?

Not exactly a profession for the publicity shy, no?

“Two of them don’t want to be known because they still want to work with other people, politically,” Dina explained.

The conversation went round-and-round for a while, and the bottom line seems to be that of the four operatives, two are Vietnamese and two are not. Of the two that don’t want to be known, one is Viet and one is not. Both are apparently office holders with projects that may require cooperation from the Janet Nguyen camp. Other than that, no names.

How about Saulo Londono, the former campaign manager for Trung Nguyen, generally credited with spearheading an absentee-ballot campaign that brought the candidate within 3 votes of winning? “No, it’s all new people, nobody from Trung Nguyen’s team.”

How about just one more name: Linh Nguyen, formerly a close associate of Van Thai Tran and an appointee of Councilman Andy Quach to the Westminster Planning Commission?

“No, he’s not involved,” Dina said. That’s actually not a surprise. In some quarters, Linh Nguyen is blamed for the rumors about romance between Dina and Andy. (Add: Read carefully: The Bolsavik is stating the blame put on Linh Nguyen, the Bolsavik is not saying Linh did it.)

For that matter, “What’s the story about you and Andy?”

“We’re just good friends,” Dina said. “He’s knowledgeable and he wants to help me.”

“But no romance?”

“No romance.”

“What were the two of you doing at Ky Ngo’s press conference anyway?”

“I just want to hear first hand what they want to do and why they want to do it,” Dina explains. She added, “That day was also the first time they talked about the picture they disseminated and I just wanted to hear about it for my own record.”

Fair enough. Unlike Andy who sat on the side reserved for Ky Ngo’s supporters, Dina sat on the side for media and spectators. Pics here.

The pictures Dina’s talking about are the photographs of Nguoi Viet’s late founder and publisher Yen Do. Read more about them here and here.

BTW, there’s a hip side to Dina Nguyen: She’s a fan of Unco Same Unco Chin.

Read part 1 of the interview with Dina Nguyen here.

 

Dina Nguyen & Mark Rosen seek end to Viet Weekly protests

After watching ten months of picketing in front of the Garden Grove offices of Viet Weekly magazine, the City of Garden Grove apparently decides to step out from the sidelines and try to find an acceptable way to end the weekly protests. Two council members, Dina Nguyen and Mark Rosen (pictured), volunteered to mediate between the two sides in the protest, in an attempt to put an end to, or perhaps to limit, the activities.

That was announced toward the end of the meeting of the Garden Grove City Council on April 22.

Click here for video of the council meeting. Scroll forward to 59:55, you will hear a number of things:

♦  At around 1:01, Rosen relates the advice from the City Attorney that Garden Grove’s current noise ordinance does not apply to this protest because the current ordinance does not apply to outdoor activities.

♦  At around 1:02, Rosen cites the U.S. Supreme Court case Ward v. Rock Against Racism and suggested that maybe Garden Grove’s noise ordinance ought to be modified to apply to outdoor activities that affect businesses.

(What would the protest be without a battle of the loudspeakers?!)

♦  At around 1:04:50, Nguyen suggests that she and Rosen get the two sides together and mediate. Rosen welcomed the idea.

 

Dina Nguyen explains the way she’ll win

Garden Grove City Councilwoman and supervisor candidate Dina Nguyen (pictured; no relations to the incumbent Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen, but if you care enough to read this then you probably know it already) sat down with the Bolsavik on Wednesday and spoke of her campaign, how she’s sure she would win – and how she defines a “win” as forcing Janet into a November runoff, though she thinks she has a chance at an outright June victory as well.

The non-partisan election for supervisor is set for June 3. There are three candidates in the running, all Vietnamese: Janet, Dina, and Hoa Van Tran the lone Democrat. If no candidates receive more than 50% of the votes, the top two will go into a runoff election.

Talking with Dina, you can tell there’s no love lost between her and Janet. She criticized Janet for not “working directly with the people of the First District and instead would allow her staff Andrew Do and Nick Lecong to communicate for her.” (The references to Do and Lecong indicates that Dina meant the Vietnamese-American people of the First District.)

So, what does Dina think of Nick Lecong anyway?

Big long silence.

And then, “You can quote that I’m speechless when it comes to him,” Dina said. No surprises there. Nick Lecong has been the subject of numerous rumors running around town, and Dina doesn’t want to be seen as stoking those rumors. (Neither does the Bolsavik, so don’t ask. Won’t tell.)

Dina also disagrees with the way Janet has been allocating money. It’s “not fair, not logical,” she said, adding: “You can’t buy a new dress when you don’t have three meals a day.”

The $3-million pedestrian bridge across Bolsa Avenue? “It’s a new dress,” she said.

“So, if you’re elected, you’ll take back the bridge?” the Bolsavik asked.

“I’ll listen to the cities if I’m elected,” Dina finessed.

“So you’re not taking it back?”

“It depends on what the people in Westminster say. I don’t think they’ll say they want the bridge.”

Although Dina admits that she has a strategy to force Janet into a runoff, she’s not dismissing the possibility of winning outright in June.

“It depends on the turnout. If the turnout is mostly Vietnamese, I have a good chance,” Dina says.

Dina then recounts a scenario that’s been stated by many analysts: There are no other significant races in the June election, only the supervisor’s race. If people say, “Oh, there are three Vietnamese, let them fight it out,” then all non-Viets stay home and Dina wins the Viet vote. (The assumption that Dina will win among the Viets is extrapolated from the results of the 2007 special elections. In that race, academic pollster Chris Collet found that 6% more Viet voters went for Trung Nguyen than for Janet Nguyen.)

The issue of immigration came up during the conversation. Dina defends her trip with the Van Tran gang to the border. She told the Bolsavik:

“Flying down to the border is not for or against immigrants. My purpose was to see what the border project was about, and in fact I would suggest that people on both sides of the issue go down and observe what’s going on.”

Her own observations led to this conclusion:

“I concluded that it is a peaceful deterrent to illegal immigrants from passing the border. To a point, it works. Not only that, it tells me that we’re secure from certain things like drug trafficking, terrorism. It deals with our security.”

The visit to the border also gave her one particular point of comfort. “Before I went, I had this concern about the Minutemen, and how they were running around enforcing their own laws. But the border guards told me they were very in control of the Minutemen. That was my concern with civilian vigilantes.”

(Continued: Who’s who and who’s not, in the Dina Nguyen campaign, here)

 

Garden Grove tilting at Communist Party of Vietnam

The Bolsavik met up with Garden Grove City Councilwoman and supervisor candidate Dina Nguyen yesterday, and she was all giddy. The night before, Tuesday, the City Council had passed a resolution condemning a resolution of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

Read the text of the City Council’s resolution here. At the meeting, Nguyen also passed around background information here about the CPV’s resolution no. 36, which she calls an executive order (possibly to distinguish it from the Garden Grove resolution).

The CPV’s “no. 36″ calls for the party and government to “reach out” to Vietnamese living abroad. Many read “reaching out” as a euphemysm for assimilation. There are numerous Vietnamese-American community groups formed with the express goal of resisting and opposing this resolution no. 36.

One group in Little Saigon is named Coalition Against Resolution No. 36 (Vietnamese: Liên Ủy Ban Chống Nghị Quyết 36) and it is the original organizer of the protests against Viet Weekly. The group did not show up to speak, but sent in a letter in support of Nguyen’s resolution. Councilman Mark Rosen made a point of specifying that passing the resolution does not mean the City is taking a position for or against the protests.

Click here for video of the council meeting where the resolution is introduced and voted on.

The Garden Grove resolution passed unanimously on motion by Nguyen and second by Rosen.

Dina Nguyen considers this resolution an effort to raise awareness among non-Vietnamese about the danger of communists interfering in the U.S. The Bolsavik rather doubts that this actually sinks in with the members of the Garden Grove City Council. They probably just saw this as a costless gesture. But hey, whatever gets you off.

UPDATE: Just got the official final copy of the Garden Grove resolution here.

UPDATE 2: Fixed the links. They should work now without having to log in to esnips.com.

OC GOP endorses Janet Nguyen

The Orange County Republican Party Central Committee in its meeting last night voted to endorse Janet Nguyen (photo, left) in her re-election to the OC Board of Supervisors, reports The Orange Juice here.

The vote count of 44-14 was comfortably more than the 2/3 required. Strangely enough, prior to the meeting supporters of Janet’s opponent Dina Nguyen (photo, right) had been calling for OC GOP to have no endorsements – rather than asking for an endorsement of Dina.

 

Janet Nguyen won in OC GOP Endorsement Committee

Check out these two items on Red County/OC Blog here and here.

On a 5-1 vote yesterday, the Orange County Republican Party’s Endorsement Committee recommended that the party endorse Janet Nguyen (photo, left) for OC Supervisor.

The lone “No” came from Mike Schroeder, a former state party chairman and consigliere to the Van Tran camp. Assemblyman Van Thai Tran is the power supporting Dina Nguyen’s (photo, right) candidacy. A seventh member was not present.

Next round is the April 21 meeting of the OC GOP Central Committee who must approve any endorsement by a 2/3 vote.

What’s interesting to the Bolsavik was the following comment posted by Tim Whitacre, a member of the OC GOP Central Committee:

“We have two Republican candidates from the Vietnamese Community running for the seat. The incumbent has a following and the challenger is a Garden Grove City Councilwoman who has every Local Elected Vietnamese Official endorsing her and supporting her.”

Whitacre’s “Every Local Elected Vietnamese Official” is actually euphemism for “my favorite and probably only Vietnamese friend Van Thai Tran and his allies.” They somehow represent the entire community? Or even all Viet Republicans? The Bolsavik personally thinks that the OC GOP elders ought to develop their own, independent pulse-taking line to the Vietnamese-American community. Years ago, all they ever heard was from Ky Ngo (who was the first Vietnamese-American to attend the GOP National Convention). These days, seems like all they hear from is Van Thai Tran. Don’t they know that in a free market, all individuals act in their own interest?

Now, put the following in your “Not-even-6 degrees of separation of OC politics” file:

Dina Nguyen is reputedly dating Andy Quach, the Westminster city councilman. Quach had endorsed Kermit Marsh, the current chair of the OC GOP Endorsement Committee, in the 2007 special elections for OC Supervisor. When Marsh dropped out, he endorsed Carlos Bustamante the Santa Ana city councilman. Bustamante now endorses Janet Nguyen for reelection.