Supervisor Janet Nguyen’s Chief of Staff pulls papers for the Garden Grove City Council

The cat is out of the bag. O.C. Supervisor Janet Nguyen’s Chief of Staff, Andrew Do (pictured above on the left, next to Nguyen, picture courtesy of Red County), has pulled papers to run for the Garden Grove City Council, according to Red County. Now things will really get interesting in Garden Grove.

There are two seats available on the Garden Grove City Council this November. One is going to be vacant, as Councilman Mark Rosen is going to term out. The other seat is currently held by Councilman Steve Jones. He was appointed to the Council after Nguyen moved on to the O.C. Board of Supervisors. Jones is an ally of Assemblyman Van Tran.

An anonymous blogger at Red County surmised that Do would have Nguyen’s support and he summed up Do’s chances thusly, “This endorsement will likely position Andrew as the frontrunner for the open seat because of Janet’s continued strong showings in Garden Grove in the last 3 elections. As many Red County readers know, she came in first in 2004 for council, carried the City in the Special Supervisorial election, and beat her opponent in her re-election (even with her opponent’s Garden Grove Councilmember ballot designation).”

Do worked previously as a prosecutor. Apparently he worked in the Orange County District Attorney’s office for eight years. He is a product of Garden Grove schools and he graduated from Bolsa Grande High School. He has a degree in economics from U.C. Davis and a juris doctorate from the U.C. Hastings School of Law. Do has also taught at C.S.U.F.

Do sounds like an outstanding candidate, particularly when compared to the other announced candidates. One of them, Democrat Tram Linh Ho appears to be promising but so far has not separated herself from Van Tran, whom her father has worked for on many development deals, as a contractor. Another Democratic candidate, Paul Lucas, is currently working at a Costco. He previously lost to Tran two years ago, in an Assembly race, and later got in hot water for providing Tran with a letter that slammed Nguyen. Tran used that letter to try to convince the O.C. GOP to not endorse Nguyen, but the effort failed, costing Tran a lot of the Republican support he used to enjoy.

There are reports that another Tran acolyte, Trung Nguyen, is not going to run for the Garden Grove City Council, although previously he was thought to be a candidate as well.

The only bad news regarding Do is that, according to Red County, he has “retained veteran consultant, Dave Gilliard.” That is the GOP consultant who ran the overtly racist and anti-Mexican State Senate campaign for Assemblywoman Mimi Walters. Gilliard has also run campaigns involving Diane Harkey for Assembly, Jeff Miller for Assembly, and he has run Supervisor Nguyen’s supervisorial campaigns. Garden Grove does have a fair amount of Latino voters, so hopefully Gilliard won’t pull one of his stunts and make Do look like an anti-Mexican.

I have met Do on more than one occasion and have found him to be intelligent and polite. I think he will be a terrific addition to the Garden Grove City Council. Perhaps now Lucas will do us all a favor and pull out of the race for the Garden Grove City Council.