Lots of the political blogs today have been talking about Trung Nguyen’s landslide 7-vote lead/win over heartbreakingly-close 2nd place finisher Janet Nguyen.

What I haven’t seen yet is any of the major accolades that should go to Team Trung for pulling this off.

They were under funded. They had a candidate that didn’t start with the name id of others. They didn’t get the inside-baseball support, nor mountains of independent expenditure support from the unions.

What they did have was a great team that developed a fantastic plan. And they stuck to it. They campaigned extensively within the Vietnamese community, and yet didn’t cede votes in certain conservative blocks of the electorate – positioning Trung to grab some anti-illegal immigration votes and some anti-tax votes here and there amongst base Republican votes.

I guess some lesson can be taken from observing Trung’s race. Campaigns needn’t try to be all things to all people.

Lead Consultant Joe Giardiello deserves at least a park or something named after him by apparent Supervisor-elect Nguyen. On-Site guys Saulo Londono and Truong Diep. Pollster Gene Ulm. Advisors Mike Schroeder and Brian Park. And of course the Godfather, Van Tran.

In talking with various insiders in Orange County throughout the past week, opinion was fairly evenly split between Tom Umberg, Carlos Bustamante, and Janet Nguyen (who still, 7 votes from victory, ran a strong race in her own right — much credit also to my fellow FR Blogger – Adam Probolsky) – largely in that order of who was most likely to win. Hardly anyone predicted Trung.

So, congrats Mr. Supervisor on proving the critics wrong, and on a race well run. 

A unanimous Republican Board in “America’s most Republican County” is a beautiful thing.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 8th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.