It’s officially election season—two San Jose city councilmembers sparred via email this week following a Vietnamese New Year flag raising ceremony held Monday at City Hall. Kansen Chu sent the first email to Madison Nguyen, accusing the vice mayor of sponsoring an event that featured “campaign activity” by his challenger, Tam Truong, in this June’s election. Nguyen disputed this in her own email and concluded that Chu is grandstanding.

Kansen Chu had a productive holiday season, mainly, the council member says, because he didn’t take a vacation. Fundraising for the District 4 City Council race later this year, Chu says he raised $45,000 for his campaign in the final two weeks of the year.

Contrary to rumors circulating at City Hall, Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen says she did not tell police officer Tam Truong to run for a District 4 City Council seat against Kansen Chu next fall. Instead, Nguyen says she was introduced to the Dick-Tracy-turned-political-candidate through a friend of a friend. (Isn’t that what Facebook is for?)

‘Tis the season for people to ponder making a political run, and a newcomer to the scene intends to shake up San Jose’s City Council. Fly has learned that Tam Truong, a 30-year-old detective for the San Jose Police Department, picked up filing papers from the City Clerk’s office this week and plans to challenge District 4 Councilmember Kansen Chu in the fall. What makes Truong such an intriguing candidate, aside from being young and well educated, is who he intends to align himself with.

Four San Jose councilmembers want City Manager Debra Figone to explain how she hires and ensures diveristy in senior staff positions. Few outside searches take place for qualified candidates, and just as few minorities currently hold director-level positions. As a result, Councilmembers Kansen Chu, Ash Kalra, Nancy Pyle, Xavier Campos and Don Rocha sent a memo to the city’s Open Rules and Government Committee asking for data. They also want a discussion on hiring practices to take place at the council level.

After asking the city’s workforce to accept 10 percent cuts in compensation to help avoid a fiscal disaster, councilmembers Kansen Chu, Xavier Campos and Nancy Pyle voted Tuesday against docking their own pay.

The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Association of Santa Clara Valley and co-sponsor Kansen Chu, a San Jose city councilmember, will be holding a community meeting at 6pm tonight at San Jose City Hall (200 E. Santa Clara St.) in the Council Chambers. The meeting will will focus on child welfare.

The city’s fearless and occasionally politically tone-deaf leader, Chuck Reed, was riding high after successfully placing pension reform and binding arbitration on the ballot with a carefully stitched-together coalition that seemed to spell the end of organized labor’s control of the San Jose City Council.

The afterglow was short-lived, however. Reed threw the new majority into chaos with his divisive endorsement of gay marriage opponent Larry Pegram for a council seat, just a day before a California court overturned Prop 8.

The last time Dr. Patrick Phu Le showed up in the news, it was for being arrested after attacking a press photographer he accused of being a communist spy. Now, the longtime Vietnamese community activist and current candidate for the District 7 seat on the San Jose City Council has exactly one week to move to San Jose if he still wants to run.

Critics of the SJPD claim that the recent arrest of Vietnamese student Phuong Ho, which happened to be captured on camera by his roommate, is indicative of a larger problem concerning the amount of force being used by the police. Even Mayor Chuck Reed has expressed “significant concerns about how and when force is used” by the police.