These days, central Orange County is a hotbed of political activity.  The nucleus of the craziness is the bigger-than-life double-contested-primary race to see who will succeed State Senator Joe Dunn (D-Lives out of the district) in the 34th State Senate District.  One of the candidates in the contested GOP primary for that seat is Assemblyman Van Tran.  Tran’s Senate candidacy sets the stage for a GOP primary in his 68th Assembly District seat, which he has represented for only one term.

As has been mentioned on the FR before, there are two candidates running in this Republican primary (in the 68th, Democrats need not apply).  One is long-time GOP activist and donor Jim Righeimer.  The other is Janet Nguyen, who is a member of the Garden Grove City Council, and works as an executive with the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce.

Perhaps the latter credential partially explains the fact that I just got off of the phone with FR friend Michele Zschau, Vice President of the California Chamber of Commerce…. THE BIG NEWS…

The California Chamber of Commerce has endorsed Janet Nguyen in her bid to succeed
Tran in the State Assembly.  This announcement is significant news for two reasons — the first is that the Chamber doesn’t endorse in contested legislative primaries.  Well, that is to say they didn’t, until now.  Zschau told me that the Chamber has made an exception to their long-standing rule in the case of this endorsement.

The other reason it is notable is because their first legislative endorsement is of Nguyen.  Of course, Nguyen is a member of the Chamber "family" in that she works for the LB Chamber (so this might be akin to the Dental Association’s big endorsement of dentist now-Assemblyman Bill Emmerson in a contested GOP primary last cycle). 

Zschau assured me that the reasons for their endorsement went well beyond the fact that Janet works for a local chamber — she cited her position on the city council, and said that "Janet brings a unique perspective with her advocacy of a strong economy and job creation as well as her life experience to the legislature and her constituency."

First and foremost, this is definately great news for Janet’s campaign.  Especially since Zschau says that the full force of the Cal-Chamber would be brought to bear in behalf of their endorsed candidate.

That said, it does beg an interesting question, which is what happens when this new ‘endorsing GOP candidates in primaries’ policy reaches its logical conclusion…  You see, the Chamber folks won’t win every race into which they wage…and that means that you will start to see a group of Republicans in the legislature with a political axe to grind with them.  It will be interesting to see how that plays in the long run.

I also find it interesting that they chose to weigh in on a race where you could argue that there are two pro-business candidates.  If anything, Jim Righeimer’s co-authorship of Proposition 226 (Paycheck Protection I back in 1998) shows his fortitute in standing up against the special interest unions – traditional adversaries of the State Chamber and its legislative agenda.  Well, we’ll see how this plays out.  But for now, a notable endorsement for Janet Nguyen – congratulations!

This entry was posted on Monday, February 27th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.