Candidate Profile: Paul Hegyi

I've been meaning to write something about Paul Hegyi who is running for the open Assembly District 10 seat, but I needed several Orange County connections, since after all, this is Red County/OC Blog.  I browsed Hegyi's website yesterday and called a few people to search for those connections and it turned out he is very well connected to the OC GOP political insiders.

Paul as many might know is the Chief of Staff to Asm. Van Tran.  Prior to his current position, Paul worked for Shirley Horton and was an intern for then Asm. Mark Wyland, now a state Senator in south county OC.  In 2006, he managed the campaign of Tony Strickland for Controller and was victorious in the GOP primary.

So far Paul raised nearly $53,000 in the first 6-month of this year.  This is a decent amount of money for a first-time candidate.  However what is worth mentioning is his low burn-rate - $6,022 - mostly on accounting services and office expenses.

The Paul Hegyi for Assembly campaign is being run by Duane Dichiara and Jennifer Jacobs of the award-winning Coronado Communications.  This is the same political firm that gave Tom Harman the razor thin margin of victory in the 35 SD Special Election last year.  Readers will also be interested to know that Paul and Cynthia Determan, Harman's District Director, worked on a Missouri congressional campaign together in 2004.

Paul has many friends in Orange County who are very supportive of his campaign, a few of them are also bloggers on this website: Adam Probolsky and Jon Fleischman.  They along with Tran organized a small fund raiser for Hegyi at Buck Johns' office two months ago.

As a first-time candidate, Paul's candidacy received a lot of stellar endorsements from conservative legislators like: Asm. Todd Spitzer, Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth and Tony Strickland.  In addition, Michael Schroeder and Shawn Steel, two former CRP Chairmen, just endorsed him yesterday in a press release.

For a candidate who is running for an Assembly district covering the Sacramento/Lodi/Stockton area, Paul Hegyi sure does have a lot of Orange County connections.

Comments

[Jon Fleischman]

Clarification. Paul is a great American, and would indeed, be a great Republican legislator. But it was Mrs. Fleischman who co-hosted an event recently for Paul Hegyi. As an elected officer of the California Republican Party, I have committed not to endorse any candidates in California partisan primaries.

Jon

[Bryan]

Here here on Paul's credentials. Good luck, Paul!