Here’s the fleshed-out story I’ve filed on the ongoing clash between Assemblyman Van Tran and Supervisor Janet Nguyen, Little Saigon’s two highest-ranking leaders. I blogged about the subject yesterday, which attracted a heated complaint from Nguyen Chief of Staff Andrew Do.
Do’s complaint was that the blog entry was biased and that I have an ongoing bias in favor of Tran and against Janet. He expressed this in a phone message, a phone conversation, and a lengthy email which he himself described as a “diatribe.”
Click below if you want to read it.
Let me set the scene before I present Do’s email.
Around 2 p.m. yesterday, I put out a bunch of calls to talk to people about the rift between Janet and Tran, including calls Do, Tran, and Scott Baugh. I spoke with Nguyen endorser Dick Ackerman. Tran and Baugh returned my calls, and I posted the blog item at 4:27 p.m. yesterday based on those three conversations (the blog timestamp is an hour off, trying to fix that).
A little after 5 p.m., I got a phone message from Do expressing his feeling that this post item was biased and I should have waited for response from his office before posting the item.
We then spoke briefly before he had to go on a radio show, and he reiterated his feeling that I was biased. We agreed to talk more in the morning.
He sent me a lengthy email last night outlining that bias and discussing my characterization of Tran. I’ll resist the temptation to rebut his criticisms, except to say that I don’t have an interest or benefit in favoring either side and I’m trying to be even-handed. I hear these kind of complaints from time to time, from both sides of any given issue, but only occasionally with the vehemence expressed by Do.
Do and I had a longer interview this morning for the story I was working on. He again reiterated his feeling that I have had an ongoing bias against Janet and in favor of Tran.
“I know that I run the risk that you may publish my diatribe here, “ Do wrote in his email. “If you do, I only hope that you will not edit my comments.”
I have cut and pasted the entire email.
martin,
since you protested about my characterization of your reporting as one-sided and cited two opinions vouching for the objectivity of your posting, I will only ask one rhetorical question and cite some facts that would put van tran’s comments in proper perspective, read believability.
1. question: during this entire campaign season, say from 1/1/08 to today, how many times have you contacted me or Supervisor Nguyen to get her opinion or rendition of the facts in dispute or the political issue, especially those in Little Saigon, that was being discussed?
2. facts: it would help if you would post what really happened, as opposed to unverified statements communicated to you from only one source, which is van tran. keep in mind that the whole tenor of your posting relates to the benevolence on the part of van tran to “reach” out to Supervisor Nguyen, such as was promised by him at the central committee’s endorsement meeting.
at that meeting, van implored the committee to not take sides and not “exacebate” matters. he went on to dramatically announced in godfather-like fashion, “if janet wins in june or november, as the senior elected officials in that area, i will be the first, the first (repeated and emphasized to great melodramatic effect) to shake her hands and work with her.” a month after this statement, van tran and his band of elected cronies went on a scorched earth strategy accusing Supervisor Nguyen in Little Saigon of being a communist sympathizer. this was done on radio programs, in newspapers, through their community propaganda machine, in political mailers, and on his ASSEMBLY LETTERHEAD. now that he got his lunch handed to him (times six for all the races he has lost on tuesday), he tries to hide his defeat behind his false bravado by getting you to post this paean to his generous nature.
first, van tran did not call either the Supervisor until past 1:30 p.m., or so, while we were at lunch between events. i did not get any call, or at least any voicemail, from him.
second, you talked to everybody that you probably felt mattered, (tran, baugh, and senator ackerman), that is everybody but the victim of van tran’s bs. you conveniently left out Supervisor Nguyen’s input, which is really odd because she is actually involved in the dispute you’re talking about. you think once you’ve decided what is good by consulting everybody you think who matters, that decision will be delivered to the Supervisor via your posting?
third, even now you spent most of your posting talking about van tran’s accomplishments. count how many words you actually spent talking about what Supervisor Nguyen has accomplished and the tremendous injustice she has suffered at the hands of the trannies. i am not even naive enough to ask you to count the number of words you have posted about how Supervisor Nguyen has felt through all of this.
fourth, it “remains to be seen” if Supervisor Nguyen will make a good and effective leader for the community. asking that kind of loaded question and then quoting that kind of disparaging response without giving Supervisor Nguyen’s a chance to give her take on van tran’s qualification to judge good and effective leadership is classic partisan reporting. it’s not like your piece was just an interview with van tran. you had no problem quoting other people in your posting.
lastly (i’m too tired to go on), your pattern is you post comments from the trannies first, putting us always in the position of having to respond and risk appearing defensive in doing so. you also prefer to put out for public consumption political takes that are favorable to van tran and portraying them to be common wisdom, so that Supervisor Nguyen or I have to do the kind of work i’m doing right now in writing this to you, which is to appear like we are some insecure acolytes.
i know that i run the risk that you may publish my diatribe here. If you do, i only hope that you will not edit my comments. but my only purpose in writing these comments to you is to hope that you will treat Supervisor Nguyen and the issues surrounding Little Saigon politics more fairly. i feel that you write comments about the van tran/janet nguyen dynamics without adequate actual knowledge of that community. you tend to prefer filtered information through whichever informants you contact, or those who take the time to contact you to spin you. you hold tremendous power as a reporter for an influence publication in Orange County, i hope you carry that same high standard to your writings about Little Saigon politics.
Andrew H. Do
Attorney at Law
Can we get some grown ups to represent us?
Andrew Do:
Two words for you: Grow up! This is a game for adults, not a cry baby and an amateur like yourself. Also, are you an elected official or a hired hand? Know your place and stay there.
Why aren’t you even practicing law instead of working for a 32-year old who has a nasty temper?
So first Janet was the victim of Ken Maddox, then Van Tran, then Jimmy Camp’s lies and now the Orange County Register is out to get her too.
And what a sore winner this guy Andrew Do is. It shows a real lack of professionalism. Trannies? BS? What kind of professional sends this to a reporter?
Assemblyman Van Tran was trying to save the community from someone who won’t be a good representative of the Vietnamese-Americans’ concerns or the Republican Party - two things he cares about deeply.
The OC GOP may get what they wished for with Janet, but the experience of Maddox, Tran, and Jimmy Camp will one by one happen to the rest of her supporters.
Enjoy the bed you have made. Something tells me the party won’t be better off for it.
Still, I give Assemblyman Van Tran credit for trying to exact some political justice on someone who so clearly stabbed him in the back.
We’ll see if Janet ends up being the young, female, minority conservative superhero that the New Majority and Lincoln Club thinks she is.
Andrew Do is an immature person who doesn’t know when to shut up.
After reading this “diatribe” from Andrew Do, one has to be so petty to do a word count, as he demanded, to be fair, since Janet Nguyen wasn’t “quoted” in the piece as his protestation indicates. What kind of a joke is this? Unbelievable!
Do need to grow up.
Andrew Do sounds like a whiner of the worse kind. Give it a rest. You look petty, small, and vindictive.
Well, no matter how “petty” Mr. Do sounds, his words ring pretty true. And Dinh Dao, I love your questions. Indeed it appears that Van Tran set himself up as being unable to resolve such a horrendous accusation and would therefore not be able to support a “communist sympathizer”.
It appears to be a purposeful move.
Perhaps some reconciliation could take place if he assured his public that indeed Janet is not a communist sympathizer, but was just in the same place at the same time as someone who does business with Vietnam, like so many others in the Viet community do. Indeed he will have to take a couple of steps backwards to fix this. But is he a man of his word or not? Will he congratulate Janet and support her now?
That was his vow at the Central Committee meeting. Well Van, you are a politician, you can reconcile this, and the sooner the better.
[...] may have seen this item yesterday, in which newly reelected Supervisor Janet Nguyen’s chief of staff, Andrew Do, lays [...]
I agree with Dinh Dao, in general. You have to be in the heat of the election to understand how manipulative were the Tran’s camps - Sad to say, Janet had to resort to the same tactics to respond. (I wish she hadn’t had to, to lift herself higher). For those reading into the email, Andrew Do’s comments were the insider’s reactions to what happened to his boss. Imagine that you are being falsely attacked with the detrimental communist label from all sides and all pistons of the Tran political machine, from Tran’s official assembly man letterhead down to the most dirty, and opportunistic anti-VC protester, accusing Janet Nguyen with illogical evidences, to a supposedly uninformed community. I am glad that Janet Nguyen was able to hold herself together.
If Tran did as he said to put the past behind him, why didn’t he show it at the previous Supervisor election with Janet Nguyen defeating Trung Nguyen? How sincere is he? All talk.
Dirty political games will only last so long, especially in this small community. We are so tired of false accusations. The people spoke with this supervisor election result. Republican party should take note
Martin, please walk the town, expand your contact circle. You will see Tran and his people does double talks, one version in Viet community, and another one in the mainstream. I am sure you don’t want to be 1 sided.
Andrew Do’s just paid a small price of being mocked after having dared to sent an email to Martin to be posted on Total Buzz. In the good old days during the Vietnam War in South VN, such an arrogant attitude would be dealt with accordingly as many good men ended up with their ill fates for speaking out against their bosses. I wonder had the VN war been reported fairly by the American media (like the way Martin, his cohort and the OC Register tried to defend Van Tran), perhaps we (the South Vietnamese) wouldn’t have lost the war.
Ironically, the whole Little Saigon politics seems to reflect the political landscape of Saigon of the old days. While some South Vietnamese leaders were been preferred and praised by American politicians in D.C., the Saigonese just considered them a bunch of incompetent yes-men. In the past few years, O.C. politicians and local press have exalted Van Tran as a kingmaker or brilliant leader, unfortunately most Little Saigon folks thought of him some sort of Godfather more or less (of course except his henchmen). But to me, Van Tran really evokes the petty image of some Montagnard ethnic congressmen who once sat in Saigon House of Representatives just for the purpose of a good showcase.
Case in point:
Janet Nguyen could not even speak for herself in this own story about her. Everything is given to Andrew Do. SUPERVISOR ANDREW DO.
I don’t favor the other side but at least the other side Van Tran spoke up for the story. Why can’t Janet Nguyen do the same?
Oh, I see, it’s assistant Janet Nguyen to SUPERVISOR ANDREW DO.
Congratulations, SUPERVISOR DO, if you hire me for your staff I can handle the “diatribe” for you.
I can also speak my own mind instead of hiding from the OC Register.
I also don’t need you to feed me data during Board of Supes meetings.
Martin,
You are so naive and not knowlegeable about the issue you have wrtten about. I agree with Lem. Go to Nguoi Viet Daily News that some of you at the OC Register have tried to defend for when it is protested because of the flag in the spa and ask how Van Tran’s man, Cuong Manh Bui, did dirty tricks on Janet. Also, why didn’t you ask the so called “Coalition Against Resolution 36,” another arm of the Trannies, and the three signers of the piece, Tung Xuan Nguyen, Nhon Ky Phan and Son An Trong Tran, and Nguoi Viet Daily News, particularly Toan Qui Do (aka Dung Nhan Ngo, Lien Phan, Bot Huu Vuong, Truc Duc Tran), Dat Huy Phan and Anh Bao Do (the OC Register columnist) to get some real things? After the so called “opinion” but “intented to kill” the incumbent OC Supersisor’s political life was run on this partner of the OC Register, Lan Quoc Nguyen, Trung Nguyen, Dina Nguyen and even Van Tran himself and others in the camp jumped in to attack Janet (to death if they can) and so on….More info? Go to bolsavik.com! What would one expect Janet to do while Van Tran did make her defendless and while the election was only more than two weeks away? The best thing for Janet is, and for us too if we were his her situation, nothing but to fire back. That’s very simple. And Martin, why don’t you write your story then but wait until after the election? Now, everyone must look professionalism? Can you repeatedly and intentionally hurt someone very badly and then say sorry and ask him or her to forget everything? What Andrew Do does is normal. He is defending not only for his boss but for the rightness. Won’t you do the same? I think you should do more homeworks before touching on the issue of a community that you have not understood much. If you think it’s necessary, it’s time for the OC Register to have a Viet interpreter so he or she can help you.
Let’s get over it, Andrew. It’s a new day.