In a week when we learned that Los Alamitos Mayor Troy Edgar cheated in his ill-fated congressional campaign earlier this year, Republican Travis Allen–Edgar's opponent in a state Assembly race–picked up key, bipartisan endorsements in Little Saigon.
At a Sept. 27 event, Joe Dovinh, a Democrat, and Dr. Long Pham, a Republican, announced that they are backing Allen for the seat that will represent Westminster, Garden Grove, Long Beach, Seal Beach, Fountain Valley and Los Alamitos in Sacramento.
The move of Dovinh and Pham, both of whom also ran for the seat during the primary, is an unmistakeable slap at Edgar, who won the most votes in the June election.
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Allen, a rookie candidate, came in second, but that was before the
public learned that the mayor has a serious character problem.
“I
am supporting Travis Allen because he is the candidate that will work
to bring everyone together for the betterment of our community and
state,” said Dovinh, according to an Allen press release. “Allen is a
consensus builder and his campaign is a perfect example of how Allen can
get members of different parties to come together.”
Dr. Pham
hailed Allen–a successful, Huntington Beach financial adviser–as the
best candidate to aid small businesses, improve public education and
fight tax hikes.
Allen also enjoys the endorsement of Van Tran, the former state Assemblyman who challenged Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, an Anaheim Democrat, in the last election and lost.
Little Saigon voters could make or break the campaign for either candidate.
Hours
after Edgar told me on Sept. 25 that he had fully complied with federal
election disclosure and contribution laws in his failed 2012
congressional campaign, he filed an amendment with the Federal Election Commission that revealed a $5,668 expense. He was eight months late and still has not revealed who paid the bill.
Brandon Powers, Edgar's ex-campaign consultant, told the Weekly
that the mayor hid the expense–the largest of the failed campaign–to
mask that it had been paid for with an illegal, corporate contribution.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.