Assemblyman Van Tran & His Tactics

For the last few weeks, there have been postings in various Vietnamese-American e-mail groups by Van Tran's cohorts attacking County Supervisor Janet Nguyen as a communist sympathizer.  This is a very strange tone by Assemblyman Van Tran even for his many hard tactics against Nguyen, considering that he is facing a primary against Quang Pham in June 2010 for the right to challenge the incumbent Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D)

Everybody knows in Little Saigon that Tran has many times used the McCarthyism tactic against people whom he feels that could potentially be his political threats.  Last year, he personally sent out 20,000 mailers from his state assembly office as an open letter to the community.  The mailer had his picture and the official letter head of the state assemly.  The letter urged the community not the vote for Janet Nguyen for she is a communist.  Why she is a communist?  Because she received political donation from a businessman who has business in Vietnam. 

Previously, he had asked his henchman, Cao sinh Cuong, to call in the Garden Grove Unified School District to force them to rescind their nomination of Nguyen Lam Kim Oanh as the first Vietnamese-American superitendent ever.  Cao called in and accused Kim Oanh of being a communist agent.  The school board, knowing the anti-communist ferver of Little Saigon, decided to remove Kim Oanh from the position after they had announced her appointment.  Kim Oanh has now sued Cuong for libel and defamation.

So why Van is still on the offensive with Janet Nguyen?  Does he not realize that without Janet Nguyen's support for his congressional candidacy, he has little chance to win.  Nguyen's district is 40% of  the congressional district 47. 

Van is a controversial candidate within in his own community.  His political machine and its intimidating tactic to have complete political control of Little Saigon has the OC Register called him the "Godfather of Little Saigon" and his cohorts are referred in the community as as the "Gang of Seven", including the two infamous Trung Nguyen and Andy Quach. 

The community is ambivalent about Tran and it shows in his lack of fund raising support within his community.   It does not help when people found out that his biggest campaign contributors are David, Duong, Victor Duong and Hoang Kieu.  The three most celebrated businesmen doing business in Vietnam with their multimillion dollars ventures.  Of course, Hoang Kieu earlier this year even had the Vietnam communist government recognized him in a special ceremony with the State President Nguyen minh Triet. 

His name recognition in the mainstream media so far is his ethnicity, his freedom flag issue, his anti-communist resolution against communist agents doing business in Wesminster,   his interference with the DUI investigation and his wife's conviction of one of the largest automobile & medical insurance frauds in the state of California.

For Van Tran to realistically have a chance in D47 where there is only 12% Vietnamese-American voters, he needs to learn that this is a race that if he loses, his political career is over.