Manh Nguyen Edged Lan Diep for Second Place

The official results barring a recount request indicate that  Diep lost to Nguyen by 13 votes.   The runoff in June will be between Manh Nguyen and Tim Orozco.

Nguyen already called Bob Dihllon to ask for his endorsement.  So far, Dhillon politely brushed him off.    Nguyen also had his Vietnamese supporters calling Lan Diep to pressure him to give him the endorsement.  The message to Lan Diep was if you want to be a viable candidate and get the Vietnamese-American votes next time around, you better endorse Manh Nguyen.

With only about 4,000 registered Vietnamese-American voter in D4,  Nguyen knows that he will need to get the votes outside his ethnic base.   LSI has not reviewed the final numbers yet, but from the returned absentee ballots,  about 3,000 Viet-Americans went to poll in this election.  The high turnout is much better than the average 25% turnout for the whole D4.

ALLEN MING CHIU		325	3.19%
KHOA NGUYEN		794	7.79%
MANH NGUYEN		1,947	19.11%
RUDY NASOL		504	4.95%
TIM OROZCO		2,243	22.01%
ALEX TORRES		579	5.68%
JOHNNY LEE		388	3.81%
THELMA BOAC		320	3.14%
BOB DHILLON		1,157	11.35%
LAN DIEP		1,934	18.98%
Total		10,191

Diep or Nguyen for Second Place? A Tight Race

With 86% of the ballots counted,  Diep and Nguyen are still battling it out.   After 8,376 votes cast, here is the result for the night -

Candidate                     Votes                 Percent

Tim Orozco                  1,855                 22.15%
Manh Nguyen               1,591                18.99%
Lan Diep                       1,584                18.91%

Only 7 votes separate Nguyen and Diep and still about 1,600 ballots to be counted, it will be a tight race and we will not know the result until tomorrow after 5 PM.

The night will be long for both the young and the old. 

Diep or Nguyen for Second Place

With about 80% of the ballots counted, the trend is favoring Tim Orozco and Lan Diep.

Candidate                        Votes                Percent

Tim Orozco                     1,630                21.20%
Manh Nguyen                 1,481                19.26%
Lan Diep                         1,476                19.20%



Earlier in the evening, the first set of reports showed Diep trailing Nguyen by 36 votes.  Now Diep is closing the gap to only 5 votes.    Meanwhile Orozco is widening his lead margin by 2%.

It will be a battle between Diep and Manh down to the wire.

                  

Early Results - San Jose City Council D4 Election

There are still about 3,000 more ballots to be counted, and the results are tight among the top three contenders as expected.

Lan Diep, the lone Republican candidate, raised over $64,000 and received over $100,000 of PAC money from Chamber of Commerce.  Manh Nguyen garnered over $70,000 and spent another $74,000 of his own media resources (as in-kind contribution).   Tim Orozco is the candidate with the full support of Labor.  

LSI is expecting two Vietnamese-American candidates in the runoff but the night is too young to tell.

ALLEN MING CHIU		236	3.50%
KHOA NGUYEN		555	8.24%
MANH NGUYEN		1,324	19.65%
RUDY NASOL		380	5.64%
TIM OROZCO		1,406	20.87%
ALEX TORRES		373	5.54%
JOHNNY LEE		260	3.86%
THELMA BOAC		224	3.32%
BOB DHILLON		692	10.27%
LAN DIEP		1,288	19.12%
Total		6,738

Lan Diep, The Front Runner for SJ D4

Of the 8 candidates actively running for San Jose D4 city council seat, it is now clear that the Attorney Lan Diep, 31, is the front runner.   With the endorsement of the Mercury News and a host of other business associations in San Jose along with his large support from the Vietnamese-American voters,  he likely will be in the runoff. 

Who will join him is a toss up between the journalist Manh Nguyen and Tim Orozco.  If the Viet-American turnout is high, Manh Nguyen will be in the runoff.



 

Candidates for San Jose City Council D4

To the Viet-American community in California, the election season seems never to be over.   In the last 3 months, two elections were held in Little Saigon Orange County where two Viet-American candidates won the important seats of state senator and county supervisor.   To not  be outdone, Little Saigon San Jose elected Attorney Tam Nguyen to city council in November and will be deciding another city council election this coming April.  

The consensus is that the  front runners in this 8-candidate race are Attorney Lan Diep (R)  and business owner Manh Nguyen (Independent).   Not only they work the hardest, are well organized but also receive substantial endorsements and financial supports from the community.  So far, Diep raised over $42,000 and the Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce put in $56,000 of independent expenditure for him.   Meanwhile, Nguyen received over $62,000.    With an estimated 3,000 to 3,500 voters going to poll next month  are Viet-American, the chance of two Viet-Americans facing each other in the runoff in June is high.

Both Lan Diep and Manh Nguyen are actively walking their precincts with their volunteers to get out the votes.  The district has about 20% Viet-American register voters.   However, with four Viet-American candidates and Diep and Nguyen pouring money into the race,  the Viet-American voters will make up a much higher overall percentage. 

In any race, there are always number of spoiler candidates with little chance.  The two noticeable ones for this race are from the extreme of the age spectrum.   Bob Dhilon is a 72 years old real estate investor and self-made millionaire while Khoa Nguyen is a 30 years old school board trustee.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lou Correa to Viet Voters - You Are Cheaters

A week after he lost the OC Supervisor D1 race,  former State Senator Lou Correa was still upset that he would lose an election which he outspent  Attorney Andrew Do 3 to 1.  Worse, this is a district where about 43% of the registered voters are Hispanic while the Vietnamese-American voters constitute only about 25%.  Yet, he would have lost by a landslide if it was not for Garden Grove City Councilman Chris Phan and TV personality Chuyen Nguyen splitting the Vietnamese-American vote.


In his anger and disappointment, he decided to go after the Vietnamese-American voters with vengeance.  To him these people who voted for Andrew Do are cheaters.  He reasoned in a press release in Vietnamese and English for his demand of a recount  -

"My campaign has received a number of reports over the past week or so contending that people who did not really live in the First Supervisorial District registered to vote and cast ballots in this election. We have also received reports regarding irregularities in the handling and processing of vote-by-mail ballots, with campaigns collecting (and even paying for) voted ballots and returning them to the Registrar’s office or at the polls,”


Correa added that  his lawyers found  during the provisional ballot counting - "....provisional ballots being counted even though they were not signed by the voter; ballots cast by voters who appeared to have attempted to vote more than once; and voters who claimed to have moved into the First Supervisorial District just prior to the election without actually re-registering at their supposed new address.”


He emphasized -  “....the recount will allow us to investigate and determine the scope of these and any other irregularities, to analyze whether they might have affected the outcome of the election, and to decide whether further action is warranted, either in the form of a judicial action or the District Attorney’s investigation.”

As reported by Anh Do of LA Times - "......Correa said he was notified of two election-day incidents at polling places in churches in Little Saigon where Vietnamese American volunteers urged voters to cast ballots for Do. One of them, Correa said, told people, "Remember, vote Vietnamese" and then pointed to Do's name. Others, he said, stood outside urging people to vote for Do.

But what Correa failed to mention was that the Santa Ana police was called to a Santa Ana polling station  by a voter on the election day because of possible voting right violation.   The woman  complained to the police that  when she asked for help to show her how to mark her vote for Andrew Do, the poll worker allegedly urged her to vote for Correa and pointed her to mark for Correa instead.

To emphasize the seriousness of his belief that there are voter fraud in the Viet community,  he started asking the Vietnamese media to broadcast a toll free number for people to call in to report fraudulent activities

After 5 days going through the ballots and looking at every possible fraud with a team of high power lawyers,  Correa suspended the recount.   The election result stands,  Lou lost by 43 votes.

However, his portrait of the Vietnamese-American voters in the media as cheaters and unethical are receiving major backlash in the community.

Correa is eyeing for his revenge in 2016 and so the Viet community is preparing their vote.