UPDATED: An Introduction to the First Supervisorial District Race

By
Greg Diamond
– December 14, 2014Posted in: "The OC", Fresh Juice

UPDATE, 6:20 p.m. Monday January 15

Steve Rocco did not file.  Mark Lopez isn’t marked as not having filed, but also isn’t marked as having filed, so either he was very very late or he’s very very out of the race.  It looks like Lou Correa and (I think) Chuyen Nguyen will be the two Democrats in the race; Chris Phan and Andrew Do will be the Republicans; and I have no idea where Lupe Moreno affiliates these days.  Progressives didn’t even try.

ORIGINAL POST

Filing closes tomorrow for the January 27, 2015, election that will replace new State Senator  Janet Nguyen on the OC Board of Supervisors.  Two hours later, the Democratic Party of Orange County will assemble to, in all likelihood, endorse former State Senator Lou Correa for the position; the Republican Party of Orange County is expected to do the same with Janet Nguyen’s once and then returned Chief of Staff Andrew Do.  The third candidate in the race is Garden Grove City Councilman, Deputy DA, and former JAG officer Chris Phan, who was the first to announce his intention to run to replace Janet if she won the election.  As my ability to write about the race may be compromised after the probable endorsement of Correa, I thought that it would be best to get in my interview with Phan now, which is in a companion post.  But first, let’s get the lay of the land.

Aside from these three likely front-runners, the other candidates in the race are Mark Lopez (who ran against Miguel Pulido this year but dropped out of the race in favor of Roman Reyna); Chuyen Van Nguyen (one of the older generation of Vietnamese activists and apparent a friend of Phan’s former Garden Grove City Council colleague Dina Nguyen, part of the coalition that has backed Van Tran in the past); anti-immigrant Minuteman leader and Tea Partier Lupe Moreno; and perennial candidate Steve Rocco, who is not expected to be a factor in the race and will not be further discussed in any detail.  Lopez, Moreno, and Rocco are probably running for their own reasons; Nguyen, who has never before run for elected office, is likely running to take votes from older Vietnamese away from Phan and/or Do.  Only Phan braved Friday’s storm to complete his registration application; other candidates could still join the fray and none of the six candidates who haven’t finished registering for the race will necessarily do so.  The likelihood is the at least Correa and Do will do so.

Correa is either a moderate or conservative Democrat, depending on the issue, who has tended to stay out of the main intraparty (and even some interparty) fights over the past few years.  I don’t think that he endorsed, certainly not early, in the infamous 2012 primary pitting Tom Daly against Julio Perez and Michele Martinez, which split the party deeply.  I’ve found no indication that he endorsed Bao Nguyen against old-school Dem (and Republican favorite) Bruce Broadwater in the recent election.  He’s been rumored for over a year not to have been supportive (except perhaps on a perfunctory level, and I’m not even sure about that) of Jose Solorio’s challenge to Janet Nguyen for his own State Senate seat, speculation being that he wanted to run for her Supervisorial seat when the moved up.  In the recent Anaheim City Council election, he gave some support to fellow Democrat Dr. Jose Moreno, who could not afford flyers, but gave substantial support to Republican “bad government” advocates Kris Murray and Gail Eastman, supporting their unquestioning allegiance to police and fire interests (who, along with prison guards have formed one leg of his major source of donors) on the same late-hit flyer where their colleague Jordan Brandman flat-out endorsed them over Dr. Moreno.  All of this makes any claim that he might want to make on Democratic party loyalty a bit ironic.

Correa has support from the Orange County Labor Federation and the Orange County Employees Association, including from some real liberals, despite regularly shunning the non-public safety unions when it has suited him.  (Former OCLF leader Tefere Gebre used to do a bit comparing Correa to Solorio that it would probably be better for me not to quote, which was along the lines of “at least he’s honest about where he stands” but much funnier.)  On the issues, sometimes he votes with most Dems, although sometimes only after much more struggle than should have been necessary; other times, most notoriously on the bill to allow the Insurance Commissioner to vet and veto unreasonable jumps in health insurance premiums, he has played a major role in killing them.  He was one of the Senators who led the charge against a state-based single payer health insurance system in early 2013, which is when I wrote the linked and justifiably unkind article about him that contained one of my favorites among my photo captions:

When the political body is infected by a foreign object, such as a plan to offer health insurance sufficient to cover the poor and middle class, the immune system sends out special blood cells, called LouCo-cytes, to defend against the invaders. An excess of these cells can lead to a dangerous condition known as “LouCorrhea.”

(Note: It’s actually “leukocytes” that can lead to “leukorrhea,” which I knew was a word for some kind of medical condition when I wrote that piece — but I didn’t know, or even imagine, its precise definition.  Whoops!  It may be that this much-harder-than-intended jibe is why the former Senator has never, ever, said a single word to me on all of the occasions, starting not long after this article, when we’ve been in the same room just a few feet away — something I find amusing.  Every time I’m snubbed, I wonder why he just doesn’t call himself “Luis” if he’s going to use his middle name at all.)

Anyway, some of the county’s biggest advocates of single-payer health care are being asked to endorse Correa on Monday night — and most probably will.

Maybe it’s inevitable; Democrats are humiliated by the absence of of a Democrat on the County Board of Supervisors since Tom Umberg finished third behind Janet Nguyen and Trung Nguyen (who went to a recount) in the race to replace Correa when he left the Supes for the State Senate.  Dems, and Labor, want a Democrat on the Board — some out of pride, some because they want to position a conservative Democrat to be the one to replace Loretta Sanchez when she finally runs for higher office (like Governor or Senator or Vice President.)

As for Andrew Do, I’m told that he can be volatile, but I can’t find the video.  He’s endorsed by Pat Bates, Mimi Walters, and Ed Royce, which is pretty much all I need to know about him beyond his being Janet’s right hand man (most of the time.)

First, who’s going to be sucking the votes away from Correa?  With the space for a candidate on the Left wide open in what ought to be a district where one could imagine cobbling together a liberal plurality, if Lopez is liberal, and campaigns a whole lot, he could take a bite out of Correa’s total.  (Not nearly enough to win, though.)  Lupe Moreno may get votes from some Latinos who don’t know anything about her other than her name — and won’t they be surprised if they learn about her, if so!  And Rocco got 10% of the vote in his last race, suggesting that some people will vote for him out of sheer perversity if nothing else.  But the biggest drag on Correa is not so much going to be his opponents as the sheer low propensity of Latinos to vote, which will be even more significant in a special election.  Unions could in theory be a player here, but last month’s election suggest the limits of their reach.  Yes, they can spend money, but Correa’s a known personality, and there are too many people to attack if they wanted to go negative, and too few needles in the haystack (that is, people who will end up voting) to target very effectively.

Phan and Do will be competing for many of the same voters in high-participation Garden Grove and Westminster, but there’s a real question as to whether Janet’s mysterious persuasive power can transfer to her Chief of Staff.  Phan has to be happy to have a shot at riding on the wave of Bao’s coalition, even if Bao (given less slack than, say, Brandman) can’t endorse him.  (Or maybe he can, if he wants to.  Who’s going to stop him?)  Chuyen is going to get a lot of older, culturally conservative voters, which may end up hurting Do more than Phan, who will do better with younger Viet voters.  Do’s reach is probably also limited to the Vietnamese areas, while Phan — younger, hipper, cleaner, and both a Deputy District Attorney and a military veteran — is more likely to appeal to non-partisan voters and whites.

Of course, much of this could change when filing closes on Monday — so look for a follow-up.  For now, Chris Phan’s interview is coming right up!

About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)