Well, look who just got a new outfit for the election! How very ... unexpected!
When I say that I didn’t believe that this would ever happen, I’m not playing some cheap political game. I had a lot of respect for Michele Martinez before she joined the Santa Ana Borg after her Mayoral bid and enough residual respect to favor her over Tom Daly if they both made the runoff in AD-69. But I never expected things to come to this.
As the OC Weekly reports this evening, Michele Martinez appeared on Vietnamese-language television for a fawning interview from none other than Van Tran.
She was hoping for Loretta Sanchez’s endorsement just a few months ago — and now she’s making smiley faces at Loretta’s Chief Character Assassin, the chief of the team that tried to suppress the Latino vote in previous elections. The Head Trannie. It’s stunning.
This is one of those signal moments that embeds itself deeply into the political memory of a community. Even the chance to win in June was not worth the years for which she might be paying for this one. Should she and Tom Daly somehow get past Julio — less likely now than ever — she’s actually given Daly a talking point that he can use to ingratiate himself with the Latino community: “well, at least I haven’t gone onto TV and made nice with Van Tran.”
In case Michele hasn’t yet figured it out, Loretta Sanchez — she with the longstanding good ties to the Vietnamese community — is going to be running in a district that largely overlaps AD-69. She’ll be out campaigning. If Julio makes the runoff, this just makes Loretta’s stake in his campaign that much stronger — because he hasn’t sucked up to Van Tran. If Michele and Daly make the runoff, she will want Loretta to come to her aid — but that just got less likely because now she has sucked up to Van Tran. That means that, for Latino voters who want the most Latino Assembly district in the state to be represented by a Latino, Michele just became a worse bet to keep it.
I don’t know who advised her to do this, but she should check to see whether whoever it is has been making cash contributions to Daly’s campaign. Maybe she just thought that no one would find out.
Oh well — even if Michele decides that she’s pissed off the Latino community and that it won’t help her in June, she surely won’t get involved in some scheme to depress the Latino vote.
Surely not. Right?
From the OJ archives, on the immigrant-bashing and homophobia of Mr. Tran
(articles both by editor Vern Nelson, and pre-Borg Pedroza.
Similar pieces by Sean Mill were deleted at his request last year.)
- Van Tran, You Moron! (first in a series)
- Hot off the Transom: Newt Gingrich Endorses Van Tran!
- Ken Arnold Catches Do-Nothing Assemblyman Van Tran Doing Some More Nothing
- Van Tran Keeps the Hate Going As He Rips the Overturning of Prop. 8
- Still Waiting: Does Van Tran Want to End Social Security and Medicare?
- Peas in a Pod: Van Tran and Sharron Angle
- Van Tran Calls Us a Lying Leftwing Blog That Lies
- Tran Welcomes Tea Party Express endorsement, proving he’s on the fringe.
- Loretta Slams Van on His Per-Diem Scandal. OOF! and another article on the same topic
- Mexican Haters John and Ken Endorse Van Tran!
- Remember when Van Tran Flew His Trannies to the Border, at Taxpayer Expense?
- Van Tran Re-iterates his support for Arizona’s Crackdown on Immigrants
- Van Tran adopted by national GOP’s “Young Guns.” Loretta tosses back head and laughs.
- More similar articles here.
Funny thing – I don’t really want to pile on, but there’s another thing I remember Michele saying during the brief hour we had together – “I love Latino culture, I want to learn more about it.”
She’s really only a little more Latino than Tom Daly is. Or about as much as I am Irish.
Wow what an f-ing pig she is.
There’s no call for that sort of comment. She may be wrong, but she isn’t a “pig.”
It couldn’t be that Van took a more journalistic angle and gave her a softball interview to show he is not some partisan attack dog while playing journalist? And Michelle is reaching out to a key voting block.
Not everything is a conspiracy…
Bear in mind that Michele generally does not talk to the press if she thinks that it will be in any way oppositional. One can reach out to the Vietnamese community without going through Van Tran and thereby whitewashing his past actions. Does she even think that what he has done in the past is wrong? That would be a good interview question — if she’d sit for one.
Let’s see … it’s true that Van Tran has been a divisive figure, and likes to tell Viets in Vietnamese that they can only be represented by a Viet. There are other things. He’s homophobic as most Republican politicians, but I was glad his campaign against Loretta didn’t really get racial. I am glad Loretta beat him. But still…
I’m starting to wonder, from a couple of things you’ve said, if you have him confused with Tan Nguyen, who sent out those letters to voters with Latino surnames trying to scare them from voting? Now THAT was a REAL douchebag.
I thought that Tan Nguyen was tied into the Tran network (although I’ve also heard that Tran denied it, just like I understand that Tran denied all sorts of things related to the apparently drunk-driving car crash with which he and a subordinate were involved.) If it’s established that Tan Nguyen had nothing to do with Van Tran, and that Tran has had nothing at all to do with voter suppression, then I do need to change parts of the story.
No, they ran against each other in ‘010 actually, Van beat him in the GOP primary. We even have a funny picture of Van holding a “Jail Tan Nguyen” sign, which he later tried to pretend he was tricked into holding.
Remember that Jose? Didn’t you have something to do with that?
I should go look for that pic… It was what made hijm so mad at us, that he called us a Lying Leftwing Blog that Lies about Vietnamese Politicians.
There’s the Trannies, there’s the Jannies … Tan was sort of a lone wolf.
Yeah, just click here everybody… http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2010/04/van-tran-calls-us-a-lying-leftwing-blog-that-lies/
Ah, brings back memories…
Greg diamond, she is a pig. An ex dope dealing pig.
Look: criticize her for things she does. If (as I’ve heard, though not from her) she used to deal drugs, then go ahead and call her an ex dope-dealer. That’s fair game. But unless you truly think that she’s of the species Sus scrofa domestica (or others within the genus), you don’t actually think that she’s a pig. You’re using that as shorthand for actions or characteristics. Talk specifically about those. We have too much general name-calling in Orange County politics.
Ok maybe I was a little harsh in calling her a pig if I’ve offended any actual pigs out there I apologize. Pigs actually have a lot of value to mankind unlike Michelle. Pigs are quite tasty as we all know bacon rules. Nothing like a big crock pot full of pigs knuckles in a spicy red sauce. Maybe a better name for describing Michelle is cockroach. Yeah that’s it. And yes vern I did take that picture of van tran holding the jail tan nguyen sticker at a tea party event in Santa ana and he wasn’t tricked into anything and he even asked me if I had any more stickers. I gave him 2 more but kept one in case I saw tan there. There was a lot of scary freaks at that tea party event.
Jose: I approved the comment but took out the new animal reference. (Trust me, it’s funnier this way.)
Ha, Van is so slimy. Remember, he pretended that he was tricked and had no idea what he was holding. Just in honor of Van, and Jose, I will post that photo again. And like I said in a story at the time, holding that sticker was the coolest thing Van Tran ever did.
Looking back on it, 2010 was kind of a scary latino-bashing year. Everyone was excited one way or the other about Arizona’s SB 1070. OC towns were declaring themselves Rule of Law Cities. Tan Nguyen was trying to get to the right of Van Tran with his latino-bashing celebrity. Mayor Mansoor in Costa Mesa was turning the screws on Mexicans however he could, while running for assembly. Sheriff candidate Bill Hunt proudly brought Joe Arpaio to town twice. Deb Pauly tried unsuccessfully to get in on it, before her big Muslim meltdown. Even the GOP gubernatorial candidates, Queen Meg and Little Poisoner, tried to outdo each other on immigration toughness. Fortunately all these candidates except Mansoor failed big time.
You don’t hear anything like as much latino or immigrant bashing any more. Now it’s all about public employees.
The LibOC asks: “What Made Michele Martinez Team Up with Van Tran?”
They figured that between the two of them they might be able to muster one personality.
So … did it work?
Thanks vern! I do love that picture. And greg diamond, there’s nothing Funny about censorship who do you think you are art pedroza?
You wound me, sir.
The alternative was spiking the entire comment. If you’d prefer that I do so, let me know, but it would be a pity.
I don’t consider redacting specific references within pure invective to be a serious threat to free speech. Free speech is about ideas. “Michele M. is a lemur” (not what you said, I realize) barely qualifies as such. (If I were the government, though, I’d leave it in.)
Yes if you’re going to alter or censor my comments just delete them like pedroza used to do here on this blog before he banned me from commenting completely.
OK, then your original comment is going away and taking the rest of this thread with it.
Whoops, I changed my mind — your original comment includes your claim that Van Tran willingly took from you the bumper sticker (or whatever it was) in that picture, which is newsworthy, so rather than deleting the comment I restored it to its initial form, containing the word “cockroach.” So: you win. Your whole comment stays, and this part ain’t going away:
So congratulations on getting me to reinstate your pissy little insult of Michele, you juvenile scum-sucker.
“Cockroach” is a particularly redolent insult, you snot-faced imbecile, and not only because it’s what one Israeli leader termed the Palestinians when calling for their eradication (or maybe it was just their transfer to other territory, which would have made them more like “termites.”) If memory serves it was also, you warthog, a term to describe Tutsis by Hutus when they were going on the radio soliciting for people to engage in genocide. How lovely to see it used here to derogate someone. You’re in such good company!
I can’t tell you how pleased I am to see someone called a cockroach here — and to be ethically forced to retain that slur, you piss stain, because I think that the rest of your comment belongs in the public record and you won’t allow me to redact it.
All I will do here is publicly apologize to Michele Martinez for tolerating your insult to her, distance myself from it by saying that it is apparently the work of a low-grade pinch-faced moron who gets a sexual thrill out of calling people names, and refer to the above explanation for why I think that ethically my hands are tied.
I know that Vern is happy about your being back on the site, you pustule, and I’ll be glad to see you continue to post here as well. I’m sure that your fuzzy little pinhead is able to appreciate the accordingly elevated tone of my response. In the future, I pledge, your comments here (absent Vern’s intervention), will either be kept in full or deleted in full, as per your request.
So, if you plan to call people “pigs” and “cockroaches,” you squealing brat, you had better be breaking some pretty big news elsewhere in the comment if you want it to hang around, because otherwise I’m going to send it clanging back right off your sloped and narrow forehead.
Thanks for needlessly forcing the issue; I look forward to seeing you commenting here again soon!
P.S. Before you compare me to Pedroza over this, please let me know the last time that he tried to discipline someone on this or other blogs for insulting someone who they are opposing in an election, as I oppose Michele in AD-69.
Nothing newsworthy about saying that the communist van tran took the sticker and asked for more that’s old news sean mill said that after I sent him the pic and explained what went down here and on our friend the bolsaviks site in detail. No new news there chumpstain. Another thing greg, I think you might have anger issues… color me silly but I think I’m right. I might be able to get you some help for that but there’s nothing I can do abour you’re lack of personality. Sorry
Thanks, jose. I disagree about it not being newsworthy.
I was just trying to make you feel comfortable here, old sport, given how much you seem to like insults in blog comments.