The Orange County Republican Party Central Committee is scheduled to vote on endorsements for local races tonight — and on the agenda is Phat Bui, a Garden Grove council candidate who openly backed Democrat Derek Tran during the 2024 congressional race that ousted Republican incumbent Michelle Steel.

A photo provided to North OC Pulse shows a Tran campaign sign displayed in front of Bui's Garden Grove home during that race. Tran won CA-45 by fewer than 3,000 votes.

Who is Phat Bui

Bui is a Republican and former Garden Grove councilmember who served from 2014 to 2022. He also served as president of the Vietnamese National Community of Southern California. In 2024 he ran for Garden Grove Mayor. He is now running for Garden Grove City Council District 4 in November 2026, challenging incumbent Joe DoVinh alongside Amanda Mohr and Hieu Nguyen.

The 2024 press conference and the yard sign

By October 2024, with the CA-45 race in its final stretch, Steel's campaign was circulating mailers labeling Tran — a Vietnamese-American Army veteran with a U.S. military security clearance — as a Communist sympathizer. A separate mailer, Bui says, targeted him the same way.

On October 10, 2024, Bui held a press conference to call out what he described as Steel's use of anti-Communist accusations as a political weapon against Vietnamese-American opponents.

The Tran yard sign went up. Tran won.

Tonight's vote

Whether the OCGOP Central Committee endorses Bui will signal how the party handles candidates who crossed the line in 2024 in one of Orange County's most politically active Vietnamese-American communities.