Told you to free Hoa Tran
May 23, 2008
The Reg’s Martin Wisckol posted his interviews — three same questions for the three First District Supervisorial candidates. Janet Nguyen here, Dina Nguyen here, Hoa Van Tran here.
Told you to let Hoa speak.
See what he says about the next sheriff.
He can enunciate his position much better than his so-called “message control” one-french-fry-short-of-a-happy-meal henchman.
(Granted that he didn’t do his homework about some of the biggest issues facing the Board of Supervisors. But then again neither did Dina. But whatever Hoa needed to say, he said it, and said it well.)
Too bad Hoa allowed himself to be controlled.
Sorry Hoa, if you let people to do that do you, you have no one to blame but yourself when your campaign self-destructs.
You know what people say about not dating where you work? Yeah, the same thing applies to the running of your campaign.
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.
She’s got it
May 22, 2008
The TRO, that is.
Courtney Rychel won a temporary restraining order that keeps Edgardo Reynoso away from her (50 feet or something, not sure) at her home, her place of work, among other things. 
Read here. A hearing on the preliminary injunction is scheduled for June 6.
And Rychel works at the offices of the Democratic Party of OC.
So, get this:
Hoa Van Tran is the only Democratic candidate for OC supervisor.
But his campaign manager Reynoso is barred from coming near the party’s office.
A woman staff member of the Democratic Party of Orange County today seeks a temporary restraining order against the campaign manager for embattled supervisorial candidate Hoa Van Tran (read collected posts here), accusing the campaign manager of trying to run her off the freeway.
Courtney Rychel is right now in the Superior Court’s Department C54 waiting for a hearing on her application for a TRO against Edgardo Reynoso (pictured), the man who has been speaking on Hoa Van Tran’s behalf for the last several weeks or so, with the result that nobody has heard directly from Hoa.
Link to case calendar here.
In her application, Rychel alleges that Reynoso, driving a champagne colored Lexus, tried to run her off the road at theramp between the 55 freeway and the I-5.
Also present and waiting in the courtroom is Chris Prevatt of TheLiberalOC.com. The Bolsavik had to leave, though, so doesn’t know whether the application is granted or denied. You can check back here and/or at TheLiberalOC.com for further development.
Free Hoa Van Tran
May 22, 2008
Did Hoa or did Hoa not pay BC Communication?
May 21, 2008
Jubal at OC Blog/Red County pointed this out in his post here examining Hoa Van Tran’s amended financial disclosure:
Back in March, when Hoa filed his initial financial disclosure, signed by his treasurer Phu Do Nguyen, it lists only three items of expenditure, one of which was a $750 payment to “BC Communication” and marked as OFC (”Office Expenses”). See PDF here, page 11.
In the amended disclosure, PDF here pages 12-16, there’s no listing of that payment.
So, assuming the amended disclosure is correct, how did the payment to BC Communication make it to the first one?
Really, you list only 3 payments and you manage to include some payment you didn’t make? In other words: 33% of the payments you listed are payments you didn’t make?
To err is human, to grossly err is still human, but also weird.
Two of Hoa Van Tran’s campaign workers were arrested on attempted murder charges, reveals the Register in a story by Tony Saavedra and Peggy Lowe here.
The two, Jorge Luis Valle (pictured, on the left) and Cesar “Youngster” Valle (on the right), are currently held at the notorious Theo Lacy jail. Jorge in his booking form filled out under occupation: “President.” See it here. What the hell?
Jorge faces chages of attempted murder, discharge of firearm at a dwelling, and street terrorism. Cesar is accused of being an accessory after the fact. They both face enhancement for being gang members.
The arrest happened on April 9, just a few hours after the two came back from a Hoa Van Tran fundraiser at the Original Mike’s in Santa Ana. The picture above was taken at that fundraiser. Apparently Jorge was arguing with someone and then shortly after shot at their car.
The only Democrat in the field of three candidates, all Vietnamese, running for the OC Board of Supervisors, Hoa has been dogged with negative news for several weeks now, and except for this one all of which was his own doing and very much avoidable.
The same day the news came out about his campaign workers’ arrest, Hoa fixed another of his problems (maybe) by filing an amended financial report, PDF here.
Something significant about the Register story:
Hoa is still not allowed to speak for himself. The Register couldn’t get anywhere close to the candidate; Edgardo Reynoso, the campaign consultant and the person who recruited the two alleged gang members/attempted murderers, did all the talking on his behalf.
The Bolsavik once got to interview Hoa directly, here. That was when Misha Houser (quoted in the Register story) was still working there. At a later scheduled interview here, Reynoso ran interference and would not let Hoa speak. Literally waving off Hoa every time he started to say something.
For weeks, bloggers have been circulating this photo (and others too) of Hoa’s campaign workers flashing gang signs:
Second from left is a worker cited in the Register story: “Dopey.” Houser quoted him as saying he always packs a 22.
UPDATE: Just got information that “Youngster” is Jorge, not Cesar. You can verify that on the court’s web site, here.
More misspells, more gay porn
May 16, 2008
Chris Prevatt at TheLiberalOC.com over here caught this one: OC Supervisor candidate Hoa Van Tran’s mailer to Vietnamese voters in the First District (read its contents and get PDF images here) contains a misspell on his web site address.
See the extra “w”?
And if you follow that misspelled address?
Yep, just like fellow candidate Dina Nguyen’s misspelled URL, this one too rolls over to a gay porn site.
Except that Dina’s porn site is Asian.
Whereas Hoa’s is a Cholo gay site.
A not-so-oblique reference to photos of campaign workers flashing gang signs.
These errors have been showing up only in mailers to Viets, which suggests that the candidates may not have had as many people proofing the Vietnamese materials, as they do the English ones.
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.
Another complaint against Hoa Van Tran filed with AG
May 12, 2008
Campaign finance watchdog Shirley Grindle (photo by the OC Register) filed a separate complaint with the state Attorney General against OC supervisor candidate Hoa Van Tran for unreported in-kind contribution and unreported expenditures, says the OC Register’s Total Buzz here.
Grindle’s complaint with the AG was sent Thursday, the same day that Red County/OC Blog’s Jubal sent a complaint to the Orange County District Attorney. Now both law enforcement agencies are in on the Hoa Van Tran issue.
In addition to unreported expenditures uncovered and reported by TheLiberalOC.com’s Chris Prevatt here, Grindle also cites unreported in-kind contributions to the Hoa Van Tran campaign. Among others, Grindle cites free hotel stay for campaign manager/consultant Edgardo Reynoso. She alleges that the free hotel stay was requested by then-treasurer Phu Do Nguyen.
In talking with TheLiberalOC.com here, Grindle said “that this is more a violation of State disclosure laws and less a violation of Tin-Cup.” TIN CUP is the county’s campaign finance laws, which Grindle authored.
You can read Grindle’s complaint here. And over here, you can read more about Shirley Grindle, and also get an idea why she went to the AG and not the DA.
Anti-USC flag movement off to slow start
May 10, 2008
On Thursday, Lac Tan Nuygen found out why his rival Hung Phuong Nguyen (read here) never followed through on his threat to picket the University of Southern California over its display of the flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: It’s usually not a good idea to start a battle you can’t win.
Nuygen (and yes that’s how he modified the spelling of his name) had called for a meeting to take actions against USC, but the president of a non-profit corporation called the Vietnamese Community of Souther (sic) California drew only an audience of a dozen, including media.
So, instead of taking any immediate action, the assembled activists called for the buildup of forces.
Also present at the meeting was OC Supervisorial candidate Hoa Van Tran (pictured; photo NOT taken at the flag meeting). He took time out from his busy schedule campaigning and not amending his financial reports, to make a standing offer to give legal advice any time the activists wanted.
In late February, activists successfully forced Irvine Valley College to take down the flags of all nations hanging outside its international center that included the red-and-yellow-star flag, after a meeting during which Westminster City Councilman Andy Quach, as he told the Reg’s Martin Wisckol here, “explained to college officials what a protest could be like, based on the 1999 demonstrations in his city at Hi Tek Video.”
However, similar efforts in April targeting Mesa Community College in Arizona failed to change the administrators’ mind and the flag many consider communist is still on display there.
In a stark example of the difference between a blogger and a traditional journalist, 
Red County/OC Blog’s Jubal (pictured) yesterday upped the ante in the case of Hoa Van Tran’s financial disclosure, and filed a formal complaint with the Orange County District Attorney alleging violation of campaign laws.
In a revealing investigative post yesterday morning here, TheLiberalOC.com’s Chris Prevatt uncovered a host of payments made by the Hoa Van Tran campaign but it failed to report in its financial disclosure covering the period January 1 through March 17, 2008.
That same afternoon, Jubal faxed and emailed a formal complaint. Read it here. The complaint alleges numerous instances of unreported expenses, as well as at least one instance of expenses incurred but not yet paid that should have been, but was not, reported as Unpaid Bills.
While almost all media outlets have rules of conduct that would prohibit a traditional journalist from inserting him- or herself in the midst of a controversy, bloggers, a new breed combining various aspects of activism and journalism, suffer from no such limitations. Especially not if the blogger is open about his political affiliation and activities.
The Bolsavik is just not too sure whether that is good for the development of blogs as a form of citizen-journalism, though. In the long run, will pro-active measures such as the complaint by Jubal increase or decrease the credibility of news blogs in the eyes of the readers? A reasonable argument can go either way…
