Trung Nguyen
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[edit] Biography
Trung Nguyen (Nguyễn Quang Trung in Vietnamese) is a U.S. politician currently serving as a Trustee on the Garden Grove Unified School District Board of Education.
Born in Vietnam, Nguyen and his family resettled in Southern California in 1975, just before his 18th birthday. Realized that education was the key to success, Nguyen graduated from UCLA with a Bachelors Degree in Electrical Engineering and a Masters Degree in the same subject field from CSU, Los Angeles. He later went on to earn a Jurist Doctorate from Western State University’s Law School in 1992.
Immediately after graduation from college, Nguyen began work as an engineer at Xerox Corp., a job he held until 1990 when he left to attend law school. From 1993 to 2000 he managed his own legal practice firm and specialized in various fields such as intellectual property, medical malpractice, family law, and contract & litigation.
Nguyen worked alongside then-Garden Grove Councilman Van Tran in various lobbying efforts relating to human rights, refugee rights, and community empowerment.
Since 2000 Nguyen has been employed by the Aerospace Corp, a federal research and development center funded by the Department of Defense. His daily work has an impact on national security policies and a space program which provides protected communication to war fighters and policy makers.
In 2004, Nguyen was elected as a Trustee to the Garden Grove Unified School District. He was elected by the board as its Vice President.
[edit] Special Election 2007
As one of the ten candidates in the race to replace Lou Correa who was elected to the state Senate on November 2006, Trung Nguyen's campaign concentrated mostly in the Vietnamese-American community. He was outspent by Little Saigon rival Janet Nguyen (no relationship) by a 2 to 1 margin in the final days of the campaign.
Both the Nguyens were not candidates back by the two party establishments yet they finished 1st and 2nd among in the field, while Tom Umberg, the Democratic Party candidate, and Carlos Bustamante, the Republican Party candidate, finished a distant 3rd and 4th.
On Election Night, Trung Nguyen was down by 52 votes, yet the following days, after all the late absentee and provisional ballots were counted, he was ahead by seven votes and was certified as the winner.
Janet Nguyen contested the election result, claiming voter fraud and requested a recount. By picking up several under votes and disqualified a handful of Trung Nguyen's ballots, Janet Nguyen came out ahead after the recount, also by seven votes.
Trung Nguyen and his legal team brought the matter to court and claimed that the recount process was not complete and asked Judge Michael Brenner to throw out the recount result. The court rule in favor of Janet Nguyen and denied Trung Nguyen's request.
