Picture Courtesy of the Bolsavik Blog
Our friends at the Bolsavik Blog are reporting that “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.”
Tran and Nguyen used to be friends and allies. In fact Nguyen once worked for Tran. She and her husband, Tom Bonikowski (who is pictured above, on the right) even honeymooned with Tran and his wife, at a resort in Mexico. But they had a falling out when Tran tried to tell Nguyen how to run her first City Council campaign.
Nguyen arranged to have Bonikowski appointed to the Garden Grove Planning Commission last year. There are rumors that she intends to run him for the Garden Grove City Council. He owns a Lee’s Sandwiches franchise in Stanton that has had a very bad time with OC Health Department inspectors.
Nguyen got her former Chief of Staff, Andrew Do, elected to the Garden Grove City Council in 2008, as an alleged carpetbagger. He resigned this year after the Black April debacle that he apparently oversaw, when Nguyen pulled a permit to run the Black April event in Little Saigon, only to have the Westminster City Council overturn her and assign her to a bad time slot.
Tran, incidentally, is now running for Congress, against incumbent Loretta Sanchez. Nguyen has been rumored to be interested in that seat for years. It is highly unlikely that she will do anything to help Tran win, even though they are both Republicans.
Nguyen will be running for reelection in 2012. There are rumors that Assemblyman Jose Solorio, who terms out of the state legislature that year, will be running against Nguyen, in a battle royale that surely will favor Solorio.
I’m glad Van & Janet are friends again. All is right in the world.
The Nguyen family dynasty will be short-lived. She won’t survive re-election and Mr. Nguyen can’t cut bologna.