When Van Tran first ran for assembly in 2004 he invested huge energy and money into registering Vietnamese voters into the Republican party. Some have estimated he registered over 10,000 new Vietnamese voters. Predictably, during his mud wrestling primary, his opponent accused Van of being "Vietnamese". It was an ugly primary, appealing to left over red neck feelings of a by-gone era. Van’s opponent using Vietnamese national colors to "show" that Van Tran wasn’t a regular Republican backfired. Van won the primary in central Orange County going away. But he did need the 10,000 new Vietnamese voters.

Just 3 years later, Republican Vietnamese voters astound all political pundits. 

Experienced pols assumed with 7 Republicans running in a 10 person field for 1st District Supervisor, and, worst than that, 3 Vietnamese Republicans were going to "divide" the fledgling Vietnamese vote. In other words, it would be Supervisor Umberg. 

The results in this winner take all Special election yesterday,  is that he two top candidates are Janet and Trung Nguyen . No relation. Janet now has the lead, but as of this morning Trung has 27.1% vs Janet’s 26.5 %. Some 3000 late absentee votes need to be counted and Janet leads by 52 votes. We will find out shortly who is Mr. or Ms. Supervisor. But the last name will be Nguyen.

But the big news is great for Republicans and Vietnamese. The dems marshaled all resources behind former assemblyman Umberg, including union money and paid workers. But Vietnamese voters dominated this election by producing over 53% of the total vote. 

Scott Baugh, the ebullient Orange Co Republican chair told me that his central committee decided early on not to play king maker. Since Umberg was the only democrat candidate, the OCRCC went negative. They spent $20,000 attacking Umberg to hi-propensity Republicans, Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman raised over $25,000 in an i.e. to raise the Umberg’s negative consciousness to democrats and declines to state. Given that Umberg, a well known and one time popular office holder in central Orange count, got only 19% of the vote,   Baugh’s  efforts were brilliant.

Republicans have a precious practical lesson to learn. Old,  inept and clueless outreach strategies by the Republican establishment need to be totally re-vamped. There is gold in those minority communities. Van Tran paved the way. The key is to develop messengers within those communities. Van helped   Van supported Janet Nguyen to get elected to his Garden Grove city council seat. Van soon recruited and helped Trung Nguyen’s campaign for school board. Both of those elections took place after Van’s successful race in 2004. 

Congratulations to Nguyen. . And to Scott Baugh and Dick Ackerman.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.