As a supporter of/consultant to Supervisor Janet Nguyen I look at things like what the "competition" is up to.

Well it turns out this year that the competition is pretty weak.

According to the July - December 2007 campaign financial filings, Trung Nguyen the school board trustee that lost to Janet last year, has raised NO MONEY (other than a loan of just under $3000 from himself to his committee).

In fact he has outstanding debt of over $259,000.  Here is how that breaks down...

Rutan & Tucker: $21,000

Little Saigon Radio: $2,000

Loan from himself: $236,939

Its good to see that Trung has been making good on his debt, he recently paid Rutan & Tucker (the law firm that represented him) $2,939.34 (the exact amount of the recent personal loan he made to his committee).

It also appears that Trung terminated both Friends of Trung Nguyen (a committee he used for his failed water board race) and Friends of Trung Nguyen (a committee he used for his campaign for the Garden Grove Unified School District race in 2004).

The only other candidate of substance, Dina Nguyen who is a Garden Grove Councilwoman, has raised something like $29.00 in the last six months.  I am afraid Councilwoman Dina Nguyen is being used by outside forces--pressuring her to stay in the race simply to hurt Supervisor Janet Nguyen's chances of coalescing the community behind her re-election bid.

Councilwoman Dina Nguyen has just over $1,000 cash on hand in her council campaign account and outstanding debts of $30,000.

I fully understand Trung Nguyen's motivations, which has little to do with actually running for county supervisor--he desperately needs to raise some of that quarter-million dollar debt so he can pay himself back, maybe pay-off a credit card bill or home equity line.

Supervisor Nguyen on the other hand raised over $180,000 in the last six months of 2007 and reported over $150,000 cash on hand.  Her debts total $39,000 but she has already paid 75k toward campaign expenses, most of which will benefit her in June.

So at about four months from Election Day and about three months from the time the first vote-by-mail ballots drop, it seems like Supervisor JANET Nguyen who has lots of fund raising prospects yet to come, will be well funded.  And her "opponents" are sourly lacking in financial wherewithal.