And 389 ballots later

Diep Truong, the young assistant to State Assemblyman Van Tran, is 59 votes short of winning a seat in Westminster City. He garnered 9,875 votes and is currently in third place behind a relatively unknown candidate. Next step is the provisional ballots and of course recount. If he is still behind by 58 votes, his chance of overturning the result in the recount is quite slim.


He was the only Vietnamese-American in the race and was well funded by Van Tran and his groups. Westminster is a city where 1/3 of the population is Vietnamese descendants. Diep Truong is currently a member of the Westminster Ciy Traffic Commission.


According to the Red County Blog as written by Jubal:

Westminster Watch: Truong Diep Running Strong Campaign

.........He's hired a talented campaign consultant in Joe Giardiello of TCB Consulting, who ran unknown Trung Nguyen's near-victorious supervisor campaign in 2007. He has racked up an impressive list of endorsements: Republican Party of Orange County, the Lincoln Club of Orange County, the California Republican Assembly, Congressman Ed Royce, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, Senator Tom Harman, Assemblyman Van Tran, Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, Westminster City Council Members Andy Quach and Tri Ta, Westminster School District Trustees Mary Mangold, Dave Bridgewater, and Andrew Nguyen.

Truong's campaign has put out five mail pieces thus far, -- here's the first one -- with more to come in the remaining two-and-a-half weeks of the campaign, including one touting his endorsement by OC District Attorney Tony Rackauckas. His campaign has launched two rounds of robocalls -- one from the OC firefighters, and another from Sen. Tom Harman -- and another is in the works.

Fundraising is the life's blood of an effective campaign. Some candidates are good at it, others are not -- and there are the rarer candidates who are political astute, possess a coherent political philosophy and are good fundraisers.Truong falls in the latter category. As of Sept. 30, he had raised $49,560 in 2008, plus $3,300 raised at the tail-end of 2007, and showed $47,990 cash-on-hand. During the last two weeks Truong has added another $14,000 to his total.............