Pham asks, “What about Tan?”

Quang Pham sure gets around! He has his own blog, and he is part of our blog team here at the Orange Juice, and now apparently he is also blogging at OC Blog, while Jubal is on vacation. His latest post in fact takes me and my fellow blogger Tim Whitacre to task with regard to Tan Nguyen – the former Democrat who is now running against Loretta Sanchez, the former Republican, for the 47th Congressional District.

Pham wants to know why OC Republicans have yet to close ranks around Nguyen. He asks in particular if the candidate Nguyen defeated in the June primary, Rosie Avila, the conservative Santa Ana School Board member, is going to help him. I doubt it very much. Avila is already planning to run again for the 47th in 2008. I think she is still in shock over her loss to Nguyen, but honestly she did not spend any money against him. One mailer from her pointing out Nguyen’s record as a Democrat – including his campaign against GOP conservative favorite Dana Rohrabacher in 2004, would have tanked Nguyen once and for all.

Pham also wants to know if Whitacre and I are going to help Nguyen. I don’t think he will be seeking any advice from us. Nguyen paid Tom Fuentes a boatload of cash to be his consultant in the primary. If Fuentes is still advising him, he surely does not need to hear from me or Whitacre. Besides, he has yet to contact me – and I am guessing that Whitacre has not heard from him either.

My sources tell me that Nguyen won the primary in part because he focused on immigration, but also because he spent a great deal of money advertising to Vietnamese-American voters in their own media. That won’t bring him the same return in the general. Sanchez has worked very hard to reach out to Vietnamese-American voters in her district.

Nguyen is also going to have a hard time because the issues he references on his website are not bedrock Republican issues. Here is what he has to say about his issues, “There are several important subjects which are near and dear to the hearts of the voters in our district, such as immigration, securing of our borders, affordable medicines, pensions, and job outsourcing. ” Really? What about education, taxes and the war in Iraq, not to mention the situation in the Middle East? I think Nguyen needs to update his issues.

I realize that Nguyen spent $349,000 of his own money in the primary. In fact he loaned that money to his campaign. That is ironic since one of his stated goals is to get rid of our federal budget deficit. How can he say that when his own personal deficit is nearing a half-million dollars?

Let’s face it – Sanchez got almost a thousand votes more in June than all the Republican candidates combined. If more voters go to the polls in November, Nguyen will be toast. In fact, I think that is his likely fate no matter what he does prior to the general. The numbers just aren’t there.

If Nguyen wants help from me or Whitacre, he ought to start by calling or emailing us, not by having Pham write about it. I don’t know what I can do to change his fate though. The OC GOP voter registration scandal in central Orange County has hurt all of our candidates, and unless local Democratic voters elect to stay home in November, Nguyen will be a fading memory by this time next year. And, from what my Democratic sources tell me, Sanchez will be working on running for the governorship of California after she gets reelected to Congress. Maybe Nguyen can switch to the Libertarian Party and run against Sanchez for the governorship in four years.


About Admin

"Admin" is just editors Vern Nelson, Greg Diamond, or Ryan Cantor sharing something that they mostly didn't write themselves, but think you should see. Before December 2010, "Admin" may have been former blog owner Art Pedroza.