I'm a believer in the aphorism Ronald Reagan kept on his desk: "It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't care who gets the credit."

But that doesn't mean it isn't nice to get a little credit once in a while.

I raise the point after reading the OCRegister.com story that posted this afternoon about the Hoa Van Tran campaign's campaign finance disclosure violations and gang ties.

OC Blog and TheLiberalOC.com have been relentlessly digging and blogging about the Hoa campaign's hinkiness for more than a month.

The OCR story acknowledges our efforts thusly:

Meanwhile, Tuesday, county prosecutors confirmed they are investigating complaints that Tran violated state law by filing incomplete financial disclosures. However, Tran's campaign may have made the complaints moot by filing last minute amendments on Monday.

I guess that would be the complaint filed by me.

With the amendments, Tran dodged a vote by the Orange County Democrats that called for rescinding the party's endorsement. His long delay lit up the blogosphere, both Democratic and Republican, and led to complaints being filed with the district attorney and the state attorney general.

Shirley Grindle, the longtime campaign finance watchdog, filed the complaint with the state, claiming Tran violated the state law that requires disclosure on staffer payments, in-kind contributions, expenditures and loans.

I guess that would be the complaint filed by Shirley using the research done by Chris Prevatt,  posted on TheLiberalOC.com, and sent gift-wrapped to Shirley.

I don't think it is an exaggeration to say it is very unlikely any of this would be a story if it weren't for the combined efforts of TheLiberalOC.com and OC Blog.