I recently interviewed Amy Phan West, a councilwoman in Westminster, who is looking to unseat incumbent Democrat Derek Tran in California’s 45th congressional district, which includes parts of Los Angeles and Orange counties. She is a Republican. 

During our talk, Phan West’s policy proposals were either undermotivated or malformed, but more troubling than that, her beliefs demonstrated an indifference to facts, and a paranoid and conspiratorial disposition with respect to the threat of communism, her colleagues in Westminster’s government, and the federal government itself, leading me to believe that she is unfit for Congress. 

Land Woes

Starting off, she suggested fixing the housing and homelessness crisis by selling off federal lands controlled by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

“I believe we have the housing crisis, right? And the homeless problem in the state of California. And how to fix that, for me, I’m thinking of releasing BLM land … The government, the federal, own 90% across this nation. And if we just release 3-5% across this nation, we can fix the housing crisis.”

I’m not sure where Phan West got her statistics, but the federal government does not own 90% of the land in the U.S. – it owns approximately 28% of it and BLM lands account for only about 10%. 

BLM lands are typically not desirable for development for the sort of housing that would lower housing costs because they tend to be in remote areas with difficult terrain and building out the required infrastructure would inflate costs. 

There is little indication that releasing 3-5% of BLM lands would do much to ease the housing crisis and there are a host of other problems with this proposal, including building in wildfire-prone areas, but we’ll leave it at that. 

Immigration

Phan West has expressed a desire to fix the immigration system so I asked about what sort of reforms she had in mind. Unfortunately, her response was vague, instead claiming that she’ll do as her constituents desire – frankly, she seemed unsure of what her position actually is on the matter. 

“I believe there is a process, there is a right way to do it … I want to hear the voice of the people in my district on this matter. I haven’t completely hear everyone’s voice on this. But as for what I’ve been hearing is that people want the legal access … They don’t want the illegal immigrant coming here, taking jobs away from those who are citizen … But then whatever fits in my district and my constituent wants, that’s what I will do.”

I asked if she supported deporting illegal immigrants who have lived in the country for many years without criminal records. Here again, her response was confusingly vague – she stated that we need to “look into it” to determine “the best way and the fair way” but added that Americans are frustrated that they are losing their jobs to illegal immigrants. 

Phan West then added, “But then also, if you’re here, you know, you came here, you know, my question is, why don’t you want to take the citizenship to be a citizen of a country that you came here and you love … might as well be a part of it, right? Do it the right way. And if you’re here for a long time, you have no criminal record, why don’t you take the test? It’s so easy. You know, it’s basically learning the Constitution.”

Contrary to Phan West’s naive claims that it’s “easy”, unless you’re a high-skilled worker or already married to a U.S. citizen, obtaining a green card, let alone citizenship, can take years or even decades. One would hope that someone who is advertising on her campaign website that she aims to fix the immigration system would know a bit more about it. 

Issues on the Westminster City Council 

It’s never a good sign when I have to ask a candidate about their ability to get along with others but this is the case with Phan West. In her time in Westminster’s city council, she has had an awful relationship with all but one of her fellow councilmembers, with meetings often devolving into chaotic and explosive exchanges, leading to them voting to censure her – she then proceeded to call them “Chinese communist dictators”. 

Her antics became such a problem that her fellow councilmembers also had to sue her and fellow councilmember NamQuan Nguyen to stop them from disrupting meetings and speaking when they did not have the floor. 

According to Phan West, her fellow councilmembers are jealous of her and she’s not the problem:

“I think what it is, is with local elected official, I think the sad thing is … what I’ve realized is that locally they have only a few power, right? Low power. And yet they’re freaking out over it and they feel threatened by that power …  For me, I’m like, this is so petty. If you’re jealous of me, insecure about your position, then that’s on you. I can’t change your insecurity … Is that they have the majority and they’re controlling and they don’t want that power be taken away or for me to ever shine. And I mean, that’s on them, whatever.”

Recordings of Phan West’s outbursts provided to the court show Phan speaking incessantly and yelling over others, while calling them “dictators” and “Gestapo”. The fact that they have to constantly ask her to be quiet and wait her turn to speak – like a child – suggests that she’s too immature to be on the Westminster City Council, let alone Congress.

Phan West’s attempted bribery

Adding to Phan West’s troubled record in Westminster, she was charged last year with attempted bribery of parking enforcement officers who were towing one of her husband’s cars. A judge later granted a diversion, which allowed Phan West to avoid the misdemeanor conviction and jail time in exchange for community service and an ethics class.

Here again, she did nothing wrong and everyone else is the problem. “So basically, this is political witch hunt. Political attack. It’s politically motivated.”

After elaborating that her disruption of the power and money dynamics in Westminster may have played a motivating factor in her prosecution, she suggested that there was a conspiracy against her on the part of several members of the government.

“Right now, if you know, the DA is working with the judge and the attorney. You know that, right? To work out a deal with everything. So all of them are in bed together.”

I asked her, “So you think that the judge, prosecutor, maybe other members in the council are motivating this prosecution?”“You know, in politics, like I mentioned, like even in your journalism too, right? You’ll figure out who doesn’t like you, right? And they will do anything and everything … but if there are very smart politicians … where they have other people do stuff for them so they leave no fingerprints but you know it comes back to them … in journalism, you deal with it too, right? When you know there’s people who don’t like you, they’re there to out to get you.” 

No, I don’t deal with that at all and no one is out to get me apart from the editor of this publication who is constantly cutting out my hilarious jokes. It seems that Phan West might think that it’s normal to be making enemies wherever you go – I suppose that may happen to you if you’re a generally unpleasant person. This wasn’t the only time she tried to suggest that I was probably dealing with similar persecutions as her. 

Phan West’s support for President Trump

Phan West is a strong supporter of President Trump as evidenced by her social media posts, so I asked for her evaluation of his second term so far.

After several compliments, including how Trump has stopped us from getting mocked by other countries and raving about how much freedom he has brought to places like Venezuela and soon to Iran, she opined that, “For example, with Vietnam, we, of course, are still a communist country, but we, to be honest with you, they’re smart communists. They’re kissing Trump’s butt right now. So that’s why they’re not getting attacked, right?” 

There are a couple of issues to unpack with this statement. First, she’s suggesting that her favored candidate can be swayed away from doing what is right in both her and his mind by having his butt kissed – it stands to reason that Nicolas Maduro was only a butt-kiss away from staying in power. Second, her statement implies that if Vietnam hadn’t kissed Trump’s butt, we would be attacking them right now, which she should be horrified by but apparently not. 

The Epstein Files

To cap off this tragic interview, Phan West revealed that she’s disappointed with Trump’s handling of the Epstein files because she believes that Epstein trafficked children to powerful people and politicians to blackmail them into influencing legislation. 

“I was bummed and frustrated with President Trump about the Epstein file … And really really powerful people are on it. But the reason why … they’re not going to release completely because they need a hold and leverage over those powerful people … Because you know people in D.C., you know, we’re all human beings. But when you don’t have a moral compass, they blackmail you into going to different parties, doing different things. Then they have that leverage over you. And then now you have to make legislation according to what they want. Or else they’ll expose this, right?”

Currently available evidence does not support this conspiratorial belief. 

The saga comes to an end

Indeed, Phan West holds many conflicting positions. She’s way too paranoid about communism and socialism but not enough to denounce the Trump administration buying stakes in private companies. She brings up the Constitution and the First Amendment every chance she gets but offers no condemnation that I can find on the Trump administration’s many attacks on the media. 

I can go on forever but perhaps most hypocritically of all, she wants us to be tougher on crime but she herself avoided jail time and a misdemeanor conviction by utilizing one of those soft-on-crime diversion programs. Attempted bribery and abuse of power by an elected official is a serious violation of public trust but she received only 20 hours of community service and a 2-hour ethics class. 

What a candidate! How many voters of the 45th congressional district will cast a vote to promote her to Congress? We’ll find out soon enough.

Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. You can reach him at rafaelperezocregister@gmail.com.