I still remember the strange, late night I ran into Andrew Do inside the historic Santora Arts building in downtown Santa Ana about a decade ago, as he was walking with a guitar slung across his back after guitar lessons, with a big smile, looking like John Denver.
Do was seemingly out of politics, having abruptly resigned from the Garden Grove City Council in 2011 and politically disappeared after serving as a high level chief of staff to then-County Supervisor Janet Nguyen.
He seemed happy to be out of politics.
That memory is a far cry from last month’s images of FBI raids at Do’s home in Tustin, one the county supervisor shares with his wife – a top OC Superior Court Judge – along with raids at their daughter’s nearby home.
It all stems from contracts his office approved with Viet Society America using – a nonprofit aimed at feeding the elderly – after county officials ended the initial contract.
County attorneys allege nonprofit leaders – including’ Do’s daughter – embezzled the money and bought houses. While Supervisor Do isn’t named in the lawsuit, his daughter is, and both their houses were raided by the FBI last month.
[Read: Orange County Sues County Supervisor’s Daughter and Nonprofit Over Missing COVID Money]
Neither Do nor his family have been charged with any federal crimes.
But his political career seems over – just a few months ahead of when he was supposed to quietly disappear again, terming out of office.
[Read: FBI Executes Searches on OC Supervisor, His Daughter & Others in Missing COVID Money Case]
The chorus of calls demanding his resignation is also growing.
I’ve reached out to Do to hear his side of the story, but haven’t heard back.
It all reminds me of the last time he abruptly disappeared from public office.
The Outsider
Do was instrumental in getting Janet Nguyen elected in 2007, during a hard fought, tight special election where Nguyen – who didn’t speak great Vietnamese at the time and had few political connections – depended on Do to defend her in Vietnamese media and in several recounts against the campaign of Trung Nguyen.
When Janet Nguyen eventually won her supervisor’s seat, Do went on to become her chief of staff, starting his long journey learning how to pull the levers of the county bureaucracy as a politician.
The same year, he won election to Nguyen’s vacated seat on the Garden Grove City Council, where he grew up after his family fled Vietnam in the wake of the Fall of Saigon.
Do attended UC Davis and Hastings College of Law before entering politics.
He made his way back to Orange County by working both as an OC public defender and later a deputy district attorney.
In 2010, he abruptly left Nguyen’s office, going back to his law practice in Anaheim, saying “It’s just time,” adding that “the chief of staff position was never something that I thought I’d stay there for eight years.”
[Read: Another Chief of Staff Opening on the Fifth Floor]
The next year, Do abruptly resigned his Garden Grove council seat after questions were raised about his home in Tustin – a running issue in his career – saying he needed to spend more time on his struggling business.
At the time, in addition to working as an attorney, he co-owned a Lee’s Sandwiches franchise in Stanton with Nguyen’s husband, Tom Bonikowski.
“I owe it to my family and my employees, who depend on their jobs, to make my business work,” he told the Orange County Register.
I remember thinking when I saw Do with that guitar that he was one of the few smart ones who knew when to get out of the political game.
Then he came back.
Meanwhile, Janet Nguyen ran into a buzzsaw of controversy when she took over the county’s health plan for the poor, CalOptima.
In 2013, the agency’s professional leadership was decimated while she fundraised from a lobbyist she allowed to rewrite CalOptima’s governing rules.
“CalOptima Burns While Majority of Supervisors Fiddle,” was the title of the grand jury report that resulted from the controversy.
[Read: OC Grand Jury Issues Scathing Report on CalOptima]
The next year, Nguyen would leave the county going on to win a State Senate seat after Lou Correa termed out of office.
The Comeback
In 2015, Do successfully ran for Orange County Supervisor with Nguyen’s backing to fill out the remainder of her term.
Despite being out of politics for some time, he won after running a tough campaign with a margin of just 43 votes over Correa, who after the loss would go on to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Do became a central pillar of the Orange County Republican Party’s diversity outreach in 2016 along with then-county Supervisor Michelle Steel and then-Assemblywoman Young Kim – something that sources tell me gave Do unusual sway within party circles and the county bureaucracy, along with an ability to withstand controversy.
Both Steel and Kim would go on to win Congressional seats.
While always capable of a nicely polished speech, the ensuing public version of Andrew Do on the governing dais often times seemed meaner, with a short temper and a nasty public tone that often had little patience for public oversight or engagement.
[Read: Santana: OC Supervisors Hate Listening to Real Live Taxpayers]
Do specially took issue with Voice of OC reporting during the COVID pandemic for aggressively tracking public spending – derisively referring to our newsroom as “The Noise of OC” for submitting too many public records requests.
Nguyen and Do also had a very public falling out when he ran for reelection in 2016.
Do handily won re-election over then-Santa Ana Councilwoman Michelle Martinez that year after campaigning on increasing homelessness response efforts, positioning himself as the spearhead of the county’s effort to transform an abandoned Downtown Santa Ana bus terminal into a homeless shelter.
The Insider
According to those who worked with him, Do became the ultimate office insider at the Hall of Administration, just by showing up, clocking in more hours in the offices than any other supervisor.
Over time, he grew to dominate the bureaucracy, understanding how the process of government works and most importantly, how to pull its levers.
Right from the start, Do was aggressive on campaigns and often questioned on ethics, triggering numerous controversies, investigations and even changes in state law because of his aggressive tactics.
He was repeatedly investigated for residency issues – with numerous complaints that he didn’t live in the First Supervisorial District, but instead in North Tustin in the house he owned with his wife, OC Superior Court Assistant Presiding Judge Cheri Pham.
In his first re-election campaign in 2016, he triggered controversy by using $1.2 million in taxpayer funded mailers during his election cycle – something that prompted not only outrage, but a change in state law.
[Read: State Will Not Pursue Enforcement Over Do’s 1.2 Million Taxpayer-Funded Mailers]
In that same election cycle, he also drew criticisms for reimbursing his chief of staff with campaign dollars while he worked on Do’s campaign.
[Read: Ethics Experts Question Campaign Work by Supervisor’s Top Aide]
He also had his defeats.
In 2017, he unsuccessfully sought to become chairman of CalOptima but was rebuffed by his colleagues – still reeling from the headlines when Nguyen took over the agency.
Becoming the Chairman of the Board
Do would go on to serve as chairman of the county supervisors twice – in 2018 and 2021 – as well as three stints as vice chair.
He was slated to become chairman this year but declined.
It’s one of the longest leadership runs on the supervisors’ dais.
In 2018, Do publicly spoke at length upon becoming chairman about his commitment to good government, giving back and contributing as an immigrant to the broader community.
[Read: Andrew Do is Chosen as OC Supervisors’ Chairman for 2018]
“Selflessness and service,” is what Do said gave meaning to his work every day.
“Success isn’t just one big project,” he said, stressing it’s incremental progress that’s key to serving the public. “Leadership is about building a legacy.”
After Steel thanked Do for his leadership and help as her vice chair, Do jokingly asked, “Is it time for me to demand the gavel now?”
He thanked his wife, sitting in the front row, saying as a judge, she’s proof “In America, if you work hard enough, you can be anything you want to be.”
Do often talked about how his experience watching the fall of Saigon shaped his public life, noting he dreamed about America by reading the Sears and Roebuck catalog, seeing people camping, planning for the future, getting consumer items delivered to their homes.
“It’s a freedom you can only imagine … a privilege you can only dream about,” he said.
“I learned how fragile government is … how the people can be victims of bad government,” he said. “What we take for granted … can be disrupted by one event.”
Do also recognized his law partners, saying without their encouragement he would not have gone back to politics.
“They knew that’s my passion,” he said, “and I have the potential to contribute.”
As chair, Do would later spearhead the dismantlement of the homeless encampments along the Santa Ana riverbed and the resulting lawsuit in federal court with U.S. District Judge David Carter.
During his tenure as chairman, Do also was a key vote in downsizing the staff and powers of then-Auditor Controller Republican Eric Woolery (who later died of heart issues) along with the Performance Auditor.
[Read: OC Supervisors Move to Take Away Independent Oversight]
And when current Auditor Controller Andrew Hamilton – another fellow Republican – started asking questions about transportation auditing at the local transit agency this year, Do proposed a full performance audit of Hamilton’s shop during the annual budget deliberations.
[Read: Santana: OC Transit Officials Want to Gut Oversight on Local Road Taxes]
Do was easily reelected in 2020, defeating Westminster School District Board Member Sergio Contreras.
Do’s biggest financial backer that year, by far, was the union representing OC sheriff’s deputies, which spent more than $855,000 promoting him – the most any group or individual has spent supporting any candidate for the 1st District seat in years.
Do voted in 2019 for $151 million in raises for deputies, and moved $24 million from departments like the OC Health Care Agency to pay for sheriff cost overruns.
[Read : OC Moves Millions From Health Agency to Help Cover Sheriff Overruns]
Those decisions would have major impacts the next year.
Pandemic Politics
During the pandemic, Do was in key leadership positions on the OC Board of Supervisors, serving again as vice chair in 2020 with then-Supervisor Michelle Steel and the next year as chairman with Supervisor Doug Chafee as his vice-chair.
During his reelection, Do ran on a campaign that he led the county toward addressing homelessness and safely reopening businesses during the coronavirus pandemic.
He also took credit for overseeing nonprofit delivery to vulnerable communities.
Contracts like the Viet America Society – which would eventually land the FBI on his door.
During the campaign, Do repeatedly declined to comment on the longstanding allegations he was illegally living outside the First District, in a larger home he and his wife own in North Tustin.
[Read: OC Supervisor Andrew Do Accused of Residency Fraud Again as He Runs for Re-Election]
He also faced investigations from state agencies in 2020 over whether or not he used his campaign accounts to launder money, but was later cleared due to insufficient evidence he broke the law.
[Read: State Launches Money Laundering Investigation into Andrew Do and OC Republican Party]
In 2022, he was fined $12,000 by state regulators for trying to steer public lobbying contracts to his campaign donors.
[Read: Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do Faces $12,000 State Fine Over ‘Pay to Play’ Politics]
Despite the controversies, Do actually found a way to continue exerting leadership on the dais by courting a key Democrat on the board of supervisors, Doug Chafee – who triggered the ire of the local party by often voting with Do’s board majority.
[Read: Did Orange County Supervisor Doug Chaffee Just Lose Re-Election?]
Yet last year, the controversies started to mount.
Last November, Do failed to disclose that his wife was a judge when he was called to speak as a witness at a trial, which triggered a controversial mistrial.
He also resigned his seat last year on the board of CalOptima, Orange County’s public health plan for the poor, amidst a state audit over executive pay hikes and other hiring practices that raised questions over a program he was involved with.
[Read: Top Official Resigns From OC’s Health Plan for the Poor Following Revelations of State Probe]
This January, Do was scheduled to become chairman of the board again as he was vice chair last year.
But – just as the controversy regarding the Viet America Society grew – he publicly declined and proposed instead leaving Wagner in place.
Do’s old mentor and current foe, Nguyen, is now running to replace him on the county supervisors dais against Democrat Frances Marquez – a race that Do continues to influence even though once again seemingly on the sidelines.
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