Gov. Newsom signs bill to help sustain outdoor dining

• October 13, 2023

In an effort to keep the al fresco momentum going, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new law this week that will allow much of the outdoor and patio dining launched during the pandemic to continue across the state.

Assembly Bill 1217, which was authored by Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino) and is a predecessor of Gabriel’s AB 61, supersedes city and county ordinances that might restrict outdoor dining or impose additional fees. It will also allow for continued flexibility when it comes to outdoor dining approvals, including streamlining application processes and waiving some fees.

In 2020, programs like LA Al Fresco and San Francisco’s Shared Spaces allowed restaurants to serve diners without having to wade through the typical byzantine processes required. Most notably, Laguna Beach’s pedestrian-only promenade on Forest Avenue, which was created in June 2020 to help local businesses affected by COVID-19 restrictions, has since turned into a nearly-permanent fixture.

As life returned to a semblance of normalcy, some of the state’s cities and counties moved to return to their past expectations of complicated permitting processes and numerous fees. AB 1217 would change that, while helping allow for the continued conversion of parklets, alleys and sidewalks to new dining spaces.

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“Outdoor dining has become an important lifeline for restaurants,” said Madelyn Alfano, former chair of the California Restaurant Association Board of Directors, in a written statement. “It’s something that we have all come to love and enjoy.”

“Many restaurant owners have invested lots of money to build beautiful outdoor dining spaces to increase their capacity for private events and recoup some of their losses from these difficult past few years, said Alfano, who also owns San Fernando Valley restaurant Maria’s Italian Kitchen.

Assembly Bill 1217 will remain in effect until July 1, 2026.

​ Orange County Register 

Friday the 13th: Here’s a look at the superstition

• October 13, 2023

For now, consider yourself lucky. This is the last Friday the 13th you’ll have this year. The number 13 and Friday have been intertwined in irrational fear for centuries. Today seems a good day to look at bad luck.

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

Say what? Someone with Paraskevidekatriaphobia has an irrational fear of Friday the 13th. A Gallup poll in 1990 showed that only 9% of Americans believed that Friday the 13th was unlucky. The irrational fear of things associated with the number 13 is called triskaidekaphobia.

“Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.”

–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Out of your Frigga mind

The origins of negativity associated with Friday and number 13 are not certain, but Friday has had a bad reputation in several ancient religions and cultures. The Norse goddess Frigga was a goddess of love, beauty, magic and death and Friday was named for her. Many Christians vilified the day named for a figure associated with witchcraft.

“I’m a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. “

–Thomas Jefferson

Mark your calendar

In Italy, Friday the 17th is related to bad luck and 13 is often considered a lucky number.

Tuesday the 13th is considered to be a day of bad luck in Spanish speaking countries.

“Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it, and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: Hard work – and realizing what is opportunity and what isn’t.”

–Lucille Ball

Traffic superstition

The British Medical Journal did a study in 1993 to examine if Friday the 13th was bad for your health. They studied traffic accidents on Friday the 6th and Friday the 13th over years and found that accidents increased as much as 52% on the 13th.

Maybe the Dutch are luckier than the British, because a Dutch study in 2008 found that Friday the 13th had a slight decrease in traffic accidents than the average totals on a Friday.

Here are 13 superstitious ways to bring good luck on Friday the 13th.

Picking a penny up that’s heads up
Looking at the moon over your right shoulder
A ladybug landing on you
A picture or statue of an elephant facing the door
A bird flying into your house
Hang garlic
Wear your birthstone
Listen to crickets
Find a four-leaf clover
Cross your fingers
Put sugar before liquid in the cup
If you see three butterflies
Wear clothes inside out

Friday follies

Friday has a negative connotation in many ways.

Jesus was crucified on a Friday. In British tradition most public hangings were carried out on a Friday. Sailors before the 18th century often refused to set sail on a Friday.

What’s in a number?

The number 13 has long been vilified, and some believe because it comes after a number that is very popular, 12: 12 months, 12 noon, 12 midnight, 12 signs of the zodiac, there were 12 gods of Olympus and the same number of apostles of Jesus.

In Norse folklore, number 13 got a bad name after their 12 gods had an uninvited guest that instigated a blind god of darkness to shoot an arrow and kill the god of joy.

Judas the apostle was the 13th guest to the Last Supper.

Also, 13 is considered Pagan because there are 13 months in the pagan lunar calendar.

Thirteen is avoided on hotel floors, room numbers, and office buildings. Many cities avoid the use of 13th street.

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Good luck at the box office

There have been 12 Friday the 13th films. The last version was in 2009. The 12 films had a total budget estimated around $81 million and have made over $374 million in the U.S.

Sources: History Channel, The Ohio State University, Live Science, Imdb

​ Orange County Register 

Boos!Letter: Pomona Fairplex transforms into the Fearplex for Halloween

• October 13, 2023

​ Orange County Register 

Teacher dead, 2 people wounded in France knife attack

• October 13, 2023

By John Leicester, Samuel Petrequin and Jeffrey Schaeffer | Associated Press

ARRAS, France — A man of Chechen origin who was under surveillance by French security services over suspected Islamic radicalization stabbed a teacher to death at his former high school and critically wounded two other people Friday in northern France, authorities said.

The attack was being investigated by anti-terror prosecutors amid soaring global tensions over the war between Israel and Hamas. It also happened almost three years after another teacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded by a radicalized Chechen near a Paris area school.

President Emmanuel Macron said France had been “hit once again by the barbarity of Islamist terrorism.”

“Nearly three years to the day after the assassination of Samuel Paty, terrorism has hit a school again and in a context that we’re all aware of,” Macron said at the site of the attack in Arras, a city 115 miles (185 kilometers) north of Paris.

A colleague and a fellow teacher identified the dead educator as Dominique Bernard, a French language teacher at the Gambetta-Carnot school, which enrolls students ages 11-18. The victim “stepped in and probably saved many lives” but the two wounded people — another teacher and a security guard — were fighting for theirs, according to Macron.

The French leader said police thwarted an “attempted attack” in another region of the country after the teacher’s fatal stabbing. He did not provide details, but police said a man armed with a knife was arrested coming out of a prayer hall in the Yvelines region west of Paris. The man’s motives weren’t immediately clear, police said.

The suspected assailant in Arras was arrested. The National Police force identified him as a Russian national of Chechen origin who was born in 2003. The French intelligence services told The Associated Press the man had been closely watched since the summer with tails and telephone surveillance and was stopped as recently as Thursday for a police check that found no wrongdoing.

Sliman Hamzi, a police officer who was one of the first on the scene, said the suspected attacker, a former student at the school, shouted “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great” in Arabic.

Hamzi said he was alerted by another officer, rushed to the school and saw a male victim lying on the ground outside the school and the attacker being taken away. He said the victim had his throat slit.

“I’m extremely shocked by what I saw,” the officer said. “It was a horrible thing to see this poor man who was killed on the job by a lunatic.”

Macron traveled to Arras along with the interior and education ministers. Macron stopped for a moment before the blanket-covered body of the teacher, which was in the parking lot in front of the school. A puddle of blood was visible as forensic experts worked around the body.

Macron then went to see students from the school in an adjacent building.

School attacks are rare in France, and the government asked authorities to heighten vigilance at all schools across the country.

Julie Duhamel, an official with the the Unsa teachers’ union in the Pas-de-Calais region that includes Arras, told Franceinfo that teachers had flagged the suspect’s radicalization “a few years ago.”

The suspected assailant’s telephone conversations in recent days gave no indication of an impending attack, leading intelligence officers to conclude that the assailant decided suddenly on Friday to act, intelligence services told the AP.

Police said the suspect’s younger brother was taken into custody for questioning on Friday.

An older brother was arrested in the summer of 2019 by the DGSI — France’s counter-terrorism intelligence service — on suspicion of being involved in the planning of an attack that was thwarted, and is in jail, French intelligence said.

The older brother also was a former pupil at the high school targeted Friday, according to legal records from his trial earlier this year on terror-related charges. Investigation records show that during a school class in 2016 about freedom of expression, the older brother defended a terror attack in 2015 that killed 12 cartoonists at the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

The older brother is serving a 5-year prison term for terror offences. He was convicted this year of involvement in a plot for an armed attack around the presidential Elysee Palace in Paris that was thwarted by the intelligence services. Other members of the radical Islamist group were also jailed for up to 15 years. He was the group’s only Chechen.

Friday’s attack had echoes of Paty’s slaying on Oct 16, 2020 — also a Friday — by an 18-year-old who had become radicalized. Like the suspect in Friday’s stabbings, the earlier attacker had a Chechen background; police shot and killed him.

Martin Doussau, a philosophy teacher at Gambetta-Carnot, said the assailant was armed with two knives and appeared to be hunting specifically for a history teacher. Paty taught history and geography.

“I was chased by the attacker, who … asked me if I teach history. (He said), ‘Are you a history teacher, are you a history teacher?’” said Doussau, who recounted how he barricaded himself behind a door until police used a stun gun to subdue the attacker.

“When he turned around and asked me if I am a history teacher, I immediately thought of Samuel Paty,” Doussau told reporters.

Prosecutors said they were considering charges of terror-related murder and attempted murder against the suspect.

The attack came amid heightened tensions around the world over Hamas’ attack on southern Israel and Israel’s blistering military response, which have killed hundreds of civilians on both sides.

French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on Thursday ordered local authorities to ban all pro-Palestinian demonstrations amid a rise in antisemitic acts.

France is estimated to have the world’s third-largest Jewish population after Israel and the U.S., as well as the largest Muslim population in Western Europe.

France’s National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament, held a minute of silence for the victims at the opening of its Friday session.

Macron said the school in Arras would reopen as soon as Saturday morning, and he urged the people of France to “stay united.”

“The choice has been made not to give in to terror,” he said. “We must not let anything divide us, and we must remember that schools and the transmission of knowledge are at the heart of this fight against ignorance.”

Leicester reported from Paris and Petrequin from Brussels. Angela Charlton in Paris, Nicolas Vaux-Montagny in Lyon and Michel Spingler in Arras, France, contributed.

​ Orange County Register 

No. 10 USC at No. 21 Notre Dame: Who has the edge?

• October 13, 2023

No. 10 USC (6-0) at No. 21 Notre Dame (5-2)

When: 4:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Notre Dame Stadium, South Bend, Indiana

TV/Radio: NBC/790 AM

Line: Notre Dame by 2½

Notable injuries: NOTRE DAME: PROBABLE: S Thomas Harper (concussion protocol), WR Jaden Greathouse (hamstring), RT Blake Fisher (hand), USC: QUESTIONABLE: WR Zachariah Branch (undisclosed), LB Mason Cobb (undisclosed, possibly rib)

What’s at stake: Bowl-game – and potentially College Football Playoff – implications. Not quite as dramatic, and certainly plenty more fluid, than when Notre Dame came to the Coliseum at the end of USC’s 2022 season in the Heisman capper for Trojans QB Caleb Williams, but facts are facts: The Trojans and Fighting Irish drag heavy chips on padded shoulders to a rainy Notre Dame Stadium on Saturday. USC is 6-0, in a record that’s impressed few amid tight games against Colorado and Arizona and never-ending chatter over the defense; Notre Dame is 5-2 and reeling after a disheartening loss to Louisville. Each program can make a national statement Saturday.

Who’s better? Hey, here’s the first time this question in this space has a sort-of unclear answer! Notre Dame’s offense was rolling behind running back Audric Estime and Wake Forest transfer quarterback Sam Hartman – and then hasn’t scored more than 21 points in three consecutive games. USC has more depth at skill positions, but that’s offset by a drastic gap in defensive results, particularly as Notre Dame wields a strong cornerback duo in Benjamin Morrison and Cam Hart. The edge here – just as in last year’s battle for the Shillelagh – may come down to Williams and uncorked bursts of on-the-fly glorious spontaneity.

Matchup to watch: Ah. So many. Let’s get specific: Estime vs. USC’s linebacker group. The Trojans have had zero cohesion at the ILB spot, and may have even less Saturday as captain Mason Cobb was absent from media viewing periods at practice Tuesday and Wednesday. Freshman Tackett Curtis got literally bowled over on one play last week by Arizona’s Jonah Coleman, who ran for 143 yards, and Estime is an explosive 227-pound back who’s run for 692 yards in seven games. Perhaps we’ll see more of Eric Gentry, who’s been highly productive in limited snaps over the past few weeks.

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USC wins if: Caleb Williams continues to show why NFL teams should tank for him (hi, Sean Payton), the Trojans hold Estime to sub-100 yards on the ground (a mark he hasn’t hit in his last three games), and Hartman doesn’t spawn any more TikTok fancams.

Prediction: USC 31, Notre Dame 28. If Lincoln Riley’s Tuesday speech backing his defense held any weight, Saturday could make him look genius. The world shall see Saturday.

​ Orange County Register 

11 sent to hospitals after haz-mat alert in Buena Park

• October 13, 2023

Eleven people were hospitalized Friday morning, Oct. 13, following a hazardous-materials alert at a building in Buena Park.

Orange County Fire Authority firefighters responded just before 9:15 a.m. in the 6500 block of Caballero Boulevard, Fire Authority Capt. Thanh Nguyen said.

Firefighters got everyone out of the building and decontaminated people, Nguyen said.

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The 11 taken to area hospitals all appeared to be in “stable condition,” he said.

Firefighters were working to determine the origin of the leak and how to address it, Nguyen said.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

​ Orange County Register 

Narcan, now available without a prescription, can still be hard to get

• October 13, 2023

Jackie Fortiér, LAist and Nicole Leonard, WHYY | (TNS) KFF Health News

Last month, drugstores and pharmacies nationwide began stocking and selling the country’s first over-the-counter version of naloxone, a medication that can stop a potentially fatal overdose from opioids. It’s sold as a nasal spray under the brand name Narcan.

Coming off a year with a record number of opioid-related overdose deaths in the United States — nearly 83,000 in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics — community health workers and addiction medicine experts were hopeful that the arrival of Narcan on retail shelves might make it easier for people to get the medication.

And, ultimately, prevent more fatal overdoses.

But it’s unclear whether the move will actually expand access to Narcan. Experts worry that its unpredictable retail price, sporadic availability on store shelves, or general consumer confusion about potentially having to ask a pharmacist to retrieve it will mean that fewer people than expected will purchase Narcan to have it at the ready when an overdose occurs.

“It’s not by any means a game changer,” said Shoshana Aronowitz, a family nurse practitioner and assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing in Philadelphia. “I don’t think it’s a step in the wrong direction. I just think it’s a tiny, tiny baby step that does not deserve a round of applause.”

“We should not be under any illusion that this is going to meaningfully change things for a lot of people,” she said. “But we need to be moving in this direction. We just need to be doing it faster and with an understanding that this is just way overdue.”

The FDA approved over-the-counter marketing and sales of Narcan in March. Manufactured by Emergent BioSolutions, it started arriving in stores in early September, with a suggested retail price of $44.99 for a two-dose package with a three-year shelf life.

Enduring Barriers to Access

As an over-the-counter product, Narcan ideally would appear on store shelves in the same way as ibuprofen and cough medication.

But at several drugstore locations in Philadelphia, “over the counter” means it is stocked and sold from behind the pharmacy counter. That requires people to wait in line and ask a pharmacist to buy Narcan.

“Having to go talk to the pharmacist who may or may not know you, it’s not comfortable for people, and that’s a barrier that this is supposed to eliminate,” Aronowitz said. “It’s counterintuitive. It needs to just be on the shelf, and someone can take it.”

Keeping Narcan behind the counter will especially deter people who use drugs, said Lewis Nelson, chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine and director of the Division of Medical Toxicology at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.

“For those who don’t have substance use concerns, they might go in and just ask for the product and not be concerned about what the other person’s thinking,” he said. “But that’s a mental state that’s very hard for most of us to put ourselves into if we don’t live the life of somebody with the stigma and the marginalization that is so associated with substance use.”

Another potential barrier is related to affordability. Despite the suggested price of $44.99 for a two-dose pack, nothing is stopping individual pharmacies and other retailers from charging more. At least one drugstore in Philadelphia was selling it from behind the pharmacy counter for $72 a box.

“The higher the price, the fewer people who are going to splurge to have this with them in case somebody else needs it,” Nelson said.

That’s especially true for people with low incomes who are facing other daily financial challenges, Aronowitz said. Even $44.99 may be too steep for many consumers.

“That’s a lot of money to be spending on something if you need food today, if you have a headache and need ibuprofen today,” she said. “You think you’ll probably need naloxone, but it’s not a guarantee that you’ll need today, so why spend the money?”

Generic brands of naloxone are also available at most pharmacy stores, but consumers need a prescription from a medical professional.

Most states have also adopted some kind of standing order, which authorizes pharmacists to dispense naloxone immediately to someone even without an individual prescription.

For some consumers, purchasing naloxone via prescription could remain cheaper than buying it over the counter. Many private health insurers — and public programs like Medicaid and Medicare — cover the cost of these prescription sales.

State officials in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware confirmed to NPR and KFF Health News that their Medicaid programs, which offer health insurance to people with low incomes, will cover the cost of the new Narcan spray if a pharmacist puts the order through as a prescription.

In California, a bill is headed to Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk that would require health insurers — both public and private — to cover most of the cost of naloxone, and other FDA-approved opioid-overdose reversal drugs, in the nation’s most populous state. The bill would allow insurance plans to charge a maximum copay of $10 per package, and it would sunset in five years.

Aronowitz predicted that if cost deters people from buying over-the-counter Narcan, it will fall upon nonprofit organizations and so-called harm reduction programs, which already distribute naloxone for free, to continue efforts to distribute it to a larger population of people.

Health Departments Try to Do More

In Los Angeles County, health officials have launched a unique push to get Narcan into the hands of an overlooked demographic when it comes to the overdose epidemic: Latino immigrants.

The rate of fentanyl deaths among Latinos in L.A. County jumped by 748% in four years, according to the county Department of Public Health.

In 2016, 25 Latino residents died of fentanyl overdoses. By 2021, 551 Latinos had died. It’s unknown how many of those people were immigrants because country of origin isn’t a required data point in overdose reported data. Still, county health officials are proactively reaching out to immigrant communities with their harm reduction efforts.

While Mexico doesn’t report an opioid use epidemic as severe and deadly as the one in the U.S., overdoses in that country are increasing — particularly in border communities — and there’s a growing need for Narcan.

In Los Angeles, Martha Hernandez, a county community health worker, makes frequent visits to local consulates for Spanish-speaking nations, where she gives short, sharp demonstrations tailored to her audience, instructing them on how to effectively use Narcan.

“I go to five Latin consulates,” Hernandez explained during a recent visit to the city’s Mexican consulate near MacArthur Park. “I use myself as an example. A lot of us go to our hometown, Tijuana is the closest one, and we go and get medication, especially painkillers. [I tell them] ‘a lot of them have fentanyl in the medications’ and you’ll see their wide-open eyes, like ‘Whoa, that is true.’”

Narcan is highly restricted in Mexico, so immigrants are unlikely to know much about it. But in the U.S., Narcan’s new availability without a prescription, along with the ongoing surge in overdoses, has made consulates a new priority for enhanced outreach and training.

One common misconception Hernandez runs into surrounds Narcan’s packaging, which says “nasal spray” in large letters on the box.

“People do mistake the fact that it’s nasal [spray]; they think it’s for allergies,” she said. “That’s where you see the necessity of educating our community because a lot of people will say, ‘Oh I need it, I have allergies.’”

A Captive Audience

The main room of the Mexican consulate in L.A. feels like the lobby of a department of motor vehicles, with long waits amid rows of hard plastic chairs. On a recent morning, about 30 people sat waiting for their new Mexican passports or ID cards.

Hernandez walked in front of the assembled group, holding brightly colored public health brochures above her head.

“Simple words, colorful brochures, nice and easy. The way you approach them is the key to getting your message across,” she said.

She told the captive audience they’ll learn how to save someone from dying of an opioid overdose.

Hernandez told them Narcan is not a substitute for medical care, but it can quickly prevent an overdose from becoming fatal. And it’s so easy to use that the training can take as little as 10 minutes, she said.

It’s not always clear if someone is experiencing an overdose, but Hernandez told the group that they should still call 911 and administer Narcan.

“I tell them, ‘If I saw my mom on the floor, I would administer Narcan,’” Hernandez said. “Why? Because my mom will go to her sister’s house and say, ‘My neck …’ or ‘My knee hurts,’ and her sister will pop out a pain medicine [that she has]. A lot of us, being Latinos, will pop it into our mouth. How do I know what she put in her mouth?”

Fake prescription pills are partially fueling the country’s opioid crisis, especially in Western states. The share of overdose deaths involving counterfeit pills more than doubled comparing a three-month period in 2019 to the last quarter of 2021, and the percentage more than tripled in Western states, according to a new report from the CDC.

The report found those who died from overdoses with evidence of counterfeit pill use, compared with those without it, were more often younger, Hispanic, and had misused prescription drugs in the past.

Jose Magaña Lozano, 67, works in cement construction in L.A. and has lived in the U.S. for 30 years.

“I’ve only seen opioid overdoses on TV,” he said in Spanish. “Hopefully I never have to witness an overdose happen, but if in case I do see it happen, at least you know what to do, and at the very least you can help a little.”

But for younger generations who went to high school in the U.S., and who grew up during the raging opioid epidemic, the problem is all too familiar.

“I’ve actually learned it [Narcan] in high school because you’d be surprised, lots of people were doing drugs and overdosing,” said Luis Armas Ramirez, who was part of the group at the Mexican consulate in L.A.

“Latinos, we don’t really take it seriously like that, especially because it’s something very private,” he said.

Armas was excited to receive a free box of Narcan while waiting for his travel documents.

“[Narcan] is, like, crazy expensive. I believe that things happen for a reason, so if I’m seeing it [Narcan] now, God’s timing is never wrong, I may see an overdose next week, you never know,” he said.

Hernandez gave three demonstrations at the Mexican consulate and gave out a total of 45 boxes of Narcan. The next day, she headed over to the Guatemalan consulate to teach more immigrants about the increased danger of opioid overdoses in America, and how they might help.

____

Gillian Moran-Pérez contributed Spanish translation assistance to this report.

This article is from a partnership that includes LAist, WHYY, NPR, and KFF Health News.

____

(KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2023 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

Westminster attorney Jimmy Pham exits congressional race to enter state Assembly race

• October 13, 2023

Westminster attorney Jimmy Pham has dropped out of the race for California’s 45th congressional district, saying he’ll instead set his sights on a state Assembly race.

Pham, who was one of several candidates in the hunt to unseat Rep. Michelle Steel, R-Seal Beach, said he will enter the race for the 70th Assembly District seat currently held by Assemblymember Tri Ta, R-Westminster. Pham, who is of Vietnamese descent, declined to give further details on his plan at this time.

“While I appreciate the support I have received throughout this race from the community I love and the place where I call home, my heart lies in other service to move our communities forward with common sense ideals and a willingness to get things done,” he said in a news release. “I want to thank everyone who contributed or supported me and our campaign to bring effective and fresh leadership to Congress.”

The race for CA-45 has drawn several candidates, including Garden Grove Councilmember Kim Bernice Nguyen, Brea resident Aditya Pai, UC Irvine Law grad Cheyenne Hunt and attorney Derek Tran.

The district, which straddles Los Angeles and Orange counties, is home to Orange County’s Little Saigon, the largest Vietnamese enclave outside of Vietnam.

It is on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s target list of competitive Republican-held or open districts that the party’s campaign arm is expected to invest heavily in, and Democrats have a near 6% voter registration advantage over Republicans, according to the latest official state registration reports.

Last year, Steel defeated her Democratic challenger to win reelection by nearly 5%.

Pham, an immigration attorney who launched his congressional bid in June, is a Westminster resident who was born and raised in Orange County. He serves as vice chair for the city’s traffic commission and sits on the Vietnamese American Democratic Club board. He said in June he is committed to finding ways to redevelop older portions of the city and attract more tourists.

Pham, who considers himself a “moderate liberal,” also said Westminster needs more funding for public safety, first responders and the fire and police departments.

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​ Orange County Register