With a Republican win in Tuesday’s OC Supe Contest, years worth of efforts from the Orange County Republican establishment paid their first big dividend: a Republican in the only seat the Democrats really have a reasonable shot at ever holding.
Millions of dollars and countless thousands of hours had been invested in registering new Republican voters, in signing up Permanent Absentee Voters, and in making what was once s solid Democrat seat, competitive again.
We’ve now had another day to absorb Trung Nguyen’s victory, and to come to the realization that there is a near statistical impossibility of Janet finding 8 votes to change the election outcome. Lots of attention is now turning to “the next step,” that being actually keeping the seat when it comes up in two years.
Surely, no split field will exist this time: it will be the epicenter of probably the most expensive Supervisor’s race in Orange County history. Another Vietnamese face to compliment Assemblyman Van Tran can only do great things for the Republican Party in Central County.
But wait. Not so fast.
Word spreading is that runner-up Janet Nguyen isn’t merely content with letting her narrow loss hold, much like Al Gore in 2000. Instead, it seems she’d rather blow up the house and cripple Trung out of the gates.
From what’s been flying around among those “in the know” is that very soon Janet plans to file NOT TO ASK FOR A RECOUNT, but rather to outright CHALLENGE THE ELECTION ITSELF IN COURT.
Presumably she’ll bring forward allegations of fraud or other malfeasance. Headlines will follow of “Trung Being Investigated” and “One Nguyen Says Another Cheated” and “Janet Says Trung Kicks Cats” or whatever other Hail Mary Janet is left to try.
Look. If this sort of evidence existed, are we really expected to believe that it is just a coincidence that it materialized just as soon as the conventional wisdom began to sink in that a recount was nearly certain to fail?
Much more likely, Janet’s legal team concluded that she had no shot at a recount. And so, not missing a beat in playing the part of the Al Gore- sore loser, she instead insisted on pushing forward with something, even if her actions hold no hope for her overturning the results of the race, and only will likely result in giving the Democrats, the Unions, and other assorted liberals just the present they need to begin their two year campaign against Trung.
Trung hasn’t even had time to fill his desk with pens and pencils yet, but already Janet seems to be trying to give his seat right back to the Democrats.