Madison Nguyen's Victory Celebration at M Cafe

Madison Nguyen and Friends just sent out an evite to her "June 8 Victory Celebration" as stated in the email.  It will be at 8:00 PM at M Cafe (1645 Burdette Drive).  This is one of those infamous Vietnamese-American coffee bars where the waitresses are always wear next to nothing.  M Cafe is a play-on-word referring to young lady in a submissive way.  For an interesting view of Vietnamese-American coffee bar culture in San Jose, see the link below:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/cafe-quyen-san-jose


On the other campaign front, South Bay Labor just sent out another hit piece against Minh Duong.  How many negative ads can Nguyen and South Bay Labor have against Minh Duong?   Is it worth it to have a negative campaign against a nice person?    The answer is yes since nice people always finish last in politics.   Of course Nguyen with her $93,000 budget can really do anything she wants.

Vietnam Future: Choices and Obstacles

You are invited to attend an engaging discussion on Vietnam and the current state of civil society. We will welcome philanthropist Doan Phung as well as Dang Huong Giang, executive director of Action for the City. Dang Huong Giang will speak about the burgeoning group of local, grassroots organizations in Vietnam focused on civil society, and Doan Phung is going to speak about the Vietnamese American community's role in this development. We look forward to seeing you at this special reception.

WHAT: East Meets West Foundation Reception - Vietnam's Future: Choices and Obstacles

WHEN: Wednesday, June 9th 6:00-8:00 PM

WHERE: 1611 Telegraph Ave, Suite 1200, Oakland CA 94612

RSVP: John Anner, janner@eastmeetswest.org or (510) 763-7045


About Doan L. Phung, PhD:

Doan and his wife have worked with more than 18 charity organizations since the early 1960s. They also run two charities of their own, the Fund for the Encouragement of Self-Reliance (FESR) and the Vietnamese American Scholarship Fund (VASF). Their work in Vietnam has been recognized by the United Nations with the UN-HABITAT Civil Society Innovation Award in 2008.

Doan uses his own money to support charity activities in human rights, anti trafficking, micro-credit, clean water, medical missions and education. He currently promotes establishing a think tank that works towards a future for Vietnam that is peaceful, democratic, and economically viable.

About Dang Huong Giang:
Dang Huong Giang founded Action for the City in 2006 to promote sustainable urban development. Action for the City, a registered local non-governmental organization in Hanoi, encourages citizens to minimize consumption of resources, carries out communication campaigns on reduction of transport emissions, and promotes green spaces and organic urban agriculture. Giang has been an active advocate for civil society in Vietnam for the past decade as a senior trainer and consultant for the Center for Community Empowerment and as Education Program Manager for Catholic Relief Services. Giang holds an MA in sociology from Catholic University of America, Washington, DC.

Concensus For Little Saigon Area Races - June 2010 Primary

The concensus of political pundits from the Vietnamese-American voters for relevant candidates are as follows (Note that the concensus reflects view within the VA community only and might or might not represent the general conventional wisdom):

Little Saigon in Orange County

68th District, Assembly

- Phu Nguyen (D)
- Allan Mansoor (R)

47th District, US Congressional

- Loretta Sanchez (D)
-Van Tran (R)

Orange County Clerk-Recorder

- Hugh Nguyen (R)



Little Saigon in San Jose

City Council D7

-  Madison Nguyen (D)
-  Minh Duong (R)

City Council D5

-  Xavier Campos (D)
-  Magdalena Carresco (D)

Santa Clary County District Attorney

-  Jeff Rosen (D)

San Jose Mayor

-  Thomas Nguyen (D) will pick up about 7,000 votes.  But Chuck Reed, the current mayor will win at minimum 60%.

US Senate

- Carly Fiorina (R)

California Governor

- Meg Whitman (R)
- Jerry Brown (D)

D7 Council Race is for Madison Nguyen to Lose

Recently, Councilmember Nguyen has been heard on local radio both in Vietnamese and American shows crying openly and blaming the people who are running against her really putting too much stress and not allowing her to do her work, after all she is a just a woman trying to do her job.

 In Vietnamese radio and print media, she has been complaining loudly that the accusation that she is not supporting the community is not true and the stress has forcing her to put on hold of having a family.  At 35 years old, she sobbed openly on air that she really wanted to start a family.  This is not the first time that the voters have heard Nguyen on the radio crying for sympathy.   She did it during the recall campaign and it worked well.

In the meantime, her supporters have been unleashing a withering attack against Minh Duong.  The biggest attack so far, besides Minh Duong is a communist sympathizer, is claiming that the business dispute between Minh Duong and his one time political consultant shows that he is not a goog businessman.   The case is in court at the moment with Minh Duong stating that the consultant's billing is bogus and without merit. 

As an incumbent, Nguyen has raised close to the maximum limit of $95,000 for her campaign.  That is twice as much as Minh Duong.  And with a tremendous advantage with name recognition and support from the powerful South Bay Labor Council, the Democratic Party and the majority of the city council, she is clearly a favorite to win it all.   LSI predicted that she would beat back the recall,  LSI now predicts that she would win the primary unless the voters decide not to have the unproductive status quo of controversy and budget deficit while allowing special interest groups controlling the city hall at the taxpayer's expense.

V-Times to Minh Duong: Communist Sympathizer (Part II)

An interesting article written this week by Lam van Sang of  the weekly newspaper V-Times (One of a very few newspapers that  does not have a website) titled : "The Past History of Minh Duong" raised issues with Minh Duong about his contract disputes with a political consulting group in Southern California.  But it also took a swipe at him for being a communist sympathizer.  The reason as Sang stated - "he is known for not having or wearing the Freedom   Flag during public parades".    The Freedom Flag is of course the old Republic of Vietnam flag before 1975 before the current communist government replaced it with the now official yellow star and red color flag. 

Minh Duong, unlike other candidates, does not wrap himself around the Freedom Flag.  His dad of course was a Vietnamese veteran and he does not think he needs the flag waving jingoism to solve real issues facing the city and its people.  He occasionally wears a small pin that has both the American Flag and the Freedom Flag side by side.  Here is a picture of him at the recent Tet Parade in San Jose.  Notice, he certainly was not wearing the Freedom Flag around his neck or on his body like other candidates.

Is Minh Duong a Communist Sympathizer?

An article recently written by Vietnam Daily, one of the oldest and most profitable Vietnamese-American newspapers in San Jose, raised a question whether Minh Duong is a sympathizer of the communist government in Vietnam.  The article was disguised as an interview of another D7 candidate.  The crux of the article was to attack Minh Duong.  One of the main points of the attack is since Minh Duong received the endorsement of the Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce, the same organization that supported Hon Lien, the council candidate of D4  in 2006 who is well known to have close tie with the communist government, then Minh Duong must have close tie and work with the communist government.  

Minh Duong has yet to response to such interesting feat of logic.

The article can be seen at http://www.vietnamdaily.com/

District 7 Drama - Charlie Ly and Madison Nguyen

With a little bit more than a week to go, the city council race is heating up in D7 with Minh Duong and his supporters taking the beating literally.  First it was Minh Duong's mom who had her car's window smashed in front of Minh Duong's house.   Then Dr. Ho Vu, a supporter of Minh Duong, happened to park his car in front of Minh Duong's campaign office recently.  Within a few hours, his window was also smashed.  The police was called to the scene and case report was filed.

There have been a lot of email by Charlie Ly attacking Minh Duong both in Vietnamese and in English.  He flooded the mainstream media,  ethnic media as well as different political organizations about Minh Duong and his business disputes.  The  interesting thing is Charlie Ly lives in San Bruno which is not even in the same county as San Jose.  Sign-in record showed that he visited Madison Nguyen's office at least 3 times last year.  He knows his way around the city with his email pinpoint to various department heads of the city  as well as of Santa Clara County.  Some of his innuendos are  politically twisted but kudos to him since it would take a person of knowledge and free time to go through public record,  find the information and then twisted them to become negative political issues.

And thene there was an incident in which Charlie Ly was caught putting Madison Nguyen sign illegally on somebody's lawn without permission.   The owner confronted Charlie Ly, he immediately yelled at her and threatened to beat her up.  She promptly took out her phone and took a picture of him.   She had filed a complain with the police.  Here is a picture of him running away as she took picture of him after he had threaten to beat her up.

Both Minh Duong's mom and his wife are scared since they are worried for their safety with all the vandalism and threats by anynomous e-mail posting.   But again this is small town politics and these types of intimidation happen.  What suprising is why beating up on Minh Duong and his family since he is clearly not the front-runner?  Why would Charlie Ly from San Bruno spend so much time and effort attacking Minh Duong?  

A footnote:  Here is another picture of Charlie Ly in one of the communty meetings in December 2009 when he suddenly erupted into profanity and proclaimed certain people in the meeting are agents of the communist government