Never mind 2009, the big year in O.C. politics will be 2010. That is when I suspect that Assemblyman Van Tran will finally go up against a real candidate. He will be termed out – and the only available opportunity will be to take on popular State Senator Lou Correa. That will be quite a war, but Correa should beat him handily. Tran does not have the pull he used to.
One of the reasons Tran lost his groove is the advent of Supervisor Janet Nguyen, who has quickly become the New Van Tran. Nguyen will have a free shot at Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez. How will the Jannie turncoats in the DPOC deal with that?
I expect that Sanchez will beat Nguyen, but I would not put it past Nguyen to recruit Latinos to run in the primary against Sanchez, as Democrats, and in the general as third party candidates, to dilute the Latino vote.
As for Tran, he will be in deep trouble if Nguyen’s Chief of Staff, Andrew Do, files for the 68th Assembly District. None of Tran’s allies on the Westminster City Council have resumes like Do’s, who is a former O.C. Deputy District Attorney. Do will trash Tran’s allies and likely move on to Sacramento.
But who knows? We saw that Nguyen and Do can be just as unethical as Van Tran, during the recent restaurant ratings scandal. And their support for the expensive remodeling of the Supervisors’ lobby, while laying off County workers, was equally uncool.
It would not surprise me at all to see Nguyen join forces with Tran in order to get the Vietnamese vote out in 2010, to benefit them both in their respective campaigns. Tran will be agonized to see Nguyen run for the congressional seat he wants, but it makes more sense for her to take on Sanchez as the First Supervisorial District overlaps more of the 47th Congressional District than the 68th Assembly District does. Nguyen also nullifies Sanchez on gender.
Correa, by the way, is pushing hard for former State Senator John Burton to become the new Chair of the California Democratic Party. I am told that Burton will be helping Correa in his battle against Tran. The Democrats simply must retain the 34th Senate District, even if some of them have issues with the moderate maverick Correa.
Between now and the 2010 primary, all of these folks will be doing one thing – raising as much money as they can.
Expect Nguyen to back lame Santa Ana Councilman Carlos Bustamante in his quest to take over the O.C. Planning Department. I hear that the Irvine Company wants Busty in that position so they can work with a Planning Director who will do whatever they tell him to. That certainly sounds like Busty. If true, I would expect the Irvine Company big wigs to toss a lot of cash at Nguyen…in return for her support for Busty.
Hey Art, what happened to Vern Nelson?
“I hear that the Irvine Company wants Busty in that position”
Art,
You do realize that former Santa Ana Mayor and Usual Suspect favorite Dan Young is the President of Community Development for the Irvine Company. That puts him in charge of all residential development within Irvine Ranch.
It would not shock me to find out that Young and others are pushing for Bustamante.
#1,
Vern is on leave right now while attending to personal matters. We hope he will be back soon!
If Janet does indeed run against Loretta it could create quite a problem for the Jannies in the ranks of the DPOC.
These folks worked furiously behind the scenes to undermine the campaign of Hoa Van Tran, not that the campaign did not have many problems of its own creation. They did this to insure Janet would be victorious.
Folks like Alicia Berhow and “the planner” poisoned the well for Hoa Van Tran at every turn. DPOC head Melahat Relafei brought folks like Misha Houser and Courtney Rychel into the fold just to make sure their plans to insure Janet’s victory would be successful.
These folks felt that Van was a greater threat than Janet. Boy were they wrong.
Lets hope they are purged as a result of this.
Tran will most likely go after Lou Correas seat. Or he might go after Loretta. Either way he is in an all or nothing race. I wouldnt be surprised if janet jumps into what ever race tran does simply to give him a primary run and exhaust his resources.
Either way, I think Janet will be in a race for Trans seat or for Lorettas seat simply because she can do it and keep her BOS Seat. Its a free ride. Lou will have a lot of making up to do if he wishes to get the support of Labor and the DPOC. Both groups are feeling buyers remorse with Lou and may very well stand out of Janets way should she go after him.
The Jannies in the DPOC will have a perplexing situation on their hands for sure.
Below you will see a comment by Chris Preevatt concerning janets victory in the BOS race last year. if you review the posts concerning janet even the ones Chris calls “Critical” you will see that Prevatt clearly supported and still supports janet Nguyen as the lesser of three eveils, or a Devil You Know situation. For example, his criticism of Moorlach is persistent, yet his criticism of Janet Nguyen is non-existent.
Now I have always maintained that if he chooses to support janet Nguyen, that is fine and nothing technically wrong with that. But he should have the guts to stand up and say that outright.
I would invite all readers to review Chris’ posts at Lib OC to compare for yourselves the tone and timber of chris’ handling of janet nguyen. Its a good academic exercise for developing your journalistic intelligence and critical thinking skills to better digest your consumption of blogosphere content.
Chris Prevatt, on June 4th, 2008 at 9:07 am Said:
Sean,
The celebration is that the Democrats did not elect an unqualified and incomperent idiot to the Board of Supervisors. While for me Janet was a bad candidate to represent the views that progressives, liberals, and Democrats beileve in; she was far better than the other two choices.
I do not believe that Democrats should act like sheep and vote for a candidate based upon a D after their name or whose brother-in-law is running a campaign. The need to vote for the best of those on the ballot. Unfortunately, sometimes that may not be the Democrat.
Paul,
Now that we have seen Janet Nguyen in action, you have to wonder if Hoa Van Tran was not the better candidate…
Art and Paul,
To be sure there were many things at play in regards to the support for Janet by the DPOC folks.
Alicia Berhow was clearly working on behalf of the Orange County Business Council which supported Janet. It was clearly a conflict for her to be involved in the DPOC’s endorsement committee while working for OCBC which supported Janet.
Alicia’s pocketbook clearly was at play while she worked furiously to have Hoa stripped of the party’s endorsement. An effort in which she and her lackies failed I might add.
Melahat on the other hand was driven by her hatred of Edgardo Reynoso, Lou Correa’s brother-in-law and Hoa’s campaign manager.
It was Melahat that sent Misha and Courtney to destroy Hoa’s campaign from the inside. In doing so it benefitted Janet.
“The planner” is a well known Jannie and he just did what he does best, try and stir the pot and poison the well. Just look at his actions in regards to Michele Martinez as well as his underhanded attempts to go after other councilmembers.
These folks are all Jannies, albeit for different reasons.
Art,
Hoa Van Tran as a candidate is not really the issue. The issue was and always has been the path and resistance or lack of for janet to achieve her post. I was never under the impression that janet would lose her race for BOS the second time around. What concerned me was allowing her to go unchallenged.
In hindsight, the best option would have been to leave that race to its own ends. However, the consesus at the time was that an outright win by janet in that race would have left her free to run candidates in other races to shore up her influence and essentially become the very person that sends shockwaves of fear through Prevatts jelly like spine. Essentially janet has become the new van Tran.
This was stoked and made exponentially worse by Chris’ handler Phil Becerra who poked and prodded Prevattt and sent him into a frenzy with coordinated attacks on Hoa Van Tran with marc Sussman, and Prevattt. Other Prevatt handlers placed spies in Hoas office to undermine him as a means of revenge on Edgardo.
Note that Courtney Rychel who filed a police report claiming that Edgardo ran her off the road has come to an agreement to walk away from her charges and the lawsuit. The whole thing was a myth. A false police report was filed. Now Im not a lawyer of a Deputy DA; But I think that is a felony. To conspire to fabricate such a story and to so far as file a police report I believe is a felony.
Hoa Van Tran made some serous mistakes. But they were ameatuer mistakes that any first time candidate could easily make. Notice the difference between Prevatts hounding of Hoa on his campaign finance reports, and his treatment of Janet for essentially the same issue(s).
I have never defended Edgardo. And I do not plan to. What I have always maintained is that to wage a Proxy war that basically cleared the path for janet and resulted in her having a free hand to get Andrew Do elected is a serious issue.
To that end, does anyone remember Prevatt calling into question Andrew Do’s residency issues? What I am getting at is that the lack of ccriticism of candidates and issues in an equal fashion is tantamount to a defacto endorsement of these candidates and their behavior.
The DPOC and OC Labor have taken issue with Lou Correa since he first took office in 1998.
Despite their lukewarm (sometimes non-existent) support, Lou has won every election he has entered since then – for Assembly, County Supervisor, and State Senator. And they haven’t all been easy – he beat Bruce Broadwater, Brett Franklin, and Kermit Marsh in 2004 for Supervisor. And in 2006 he beat Tom Umberg and Lynn Daucher to win his present position.
So, tough elections aren’t new to Correa. And he manages to win them without much help from the Party or Labor.
Correa gets plenty of help from Labor, don’t kid yourself, and we understand that he needs to respond to all his constituents so labor sometimes gets his vote sometimes we don’t. He’s still light years better than the Republican choice for labor and that’s why we will continue to work for him even if we don’t like all his votes.
Publius,
You are correct. Lou tends to be the object of Ire from Labor and the DPOC during the primaries and then he will get their support when he is the lone dem standing in the general.
I always find it ironic and amusing the abuse heaped upon him by these individuals and groups only to receiev their help later on.
You know I thought I’d never see another campaign like last years Hoa Van Tran campaign until I witnessed John McCain’s this past year. You gotta admit, love him or hate him you didn’t know what was going to happen next in his campaign the whole time.
You guys must have some good stories about wacky campaigns.
My favorite up until this was one of Jack Scott’s up in Pasadena where he was running a good campaign with a comfortable lead, clearly the better candidate, when at the eleventh hour the Indians hit him with a half dozen hate mailer hit pieces. Apparently Jack had voted against or spoken against gambling and they waited and sandbagged him at the last minute in his next campaign. Jack won but I’d never seen anything like that. Completely out of the blue.
Chris Leo once told me the Democratic Party of Orange County is a mess and Lou Correa knows it. That’s why he doesn’t count on their help. I also remember hearing a story about how Lou Correa cried the night the DPOC refused to demand a recount the first time he ran for assembly and lost to Morrisey.
Could this be the reason why Lou has thumbed his nose at the Party, ran for Senate and left a vacancy at the Board of Supervisor’s? He single handidly empowered the Vietnamese Community whose political power can only grow and now threatens two seats (Congressional and Senate).
I foree the Democrats losing more seats in 2010.
What Lou did was what Lou did. There could have been a viable candidate for the BOS seat to replace Lou but from what I understand some electeds scuttled that.
Then that left the door open for janet. And with the help of the usual suspects, Phil Becrra, Chris Prevatt, Claudio Gallegos, Melahat, and Alicia, janet had no resistance and feathered her nest even further by having a free hand in getting Andrew Do elected.
I was wondering do you think its possible to get a hard list of who the Usual Suspects actually are? Here I think a certain group are the Usual Suspects but then no its a different group. I thought it was a select group on the smaller side but clearly I was wrong Phil yes but really all these others they were not on my soft list this is very confusing.