THE RAINBOW FLAG (Flickr/Benson Kua).

Is this the other shoe on the “Rainbow Flag”?

The new conservative majority on the Huntington Beach City Council voted on Feb. 7 to ask the city attorney to draw up an ordinance on flag display on city property that essentially would ban the “rainbow” flag of the LGBTQ community.

On Tuesday, the council will take up its first official vote on the ordinance. If supported by a majority, it will come back to the council for final approval two weeks later.

The first “shot across the bow” of this policy came from the Blue Shield of California Foundation which sent a letter to the council mentioning that it had cancelled its meeting scheduled at the Huntington Beach Hilton in protest.

The implication is that if the council doesn’t back off on this issue, the city will lose business from organizations and businesses angry about the policy. It’s happened in other cities and states. We shall see.

Here’s the starting gun …

It’s February 2023 and campaigning for the 2024 elections is already underway. At issue is the First District seat on the Orange County Board of Supervisors now held by Andrew Do, who is termed out.

The first two candidates are Van Tran, a former Garden Grove city councilmember and state Assemblyman, and Kimberly Ho, a Westminster City councilmember. Both are Republicans. The board is officially non-partisan.

At first glance, Tran would appear to have an advantage. He’s got a high profile, considerable experience and is an established leader of the Vietnamese community.

Ho has been on the Westminster City Council since 2016, but finished second in her bid for the mayorship in November 2022, polling about 26 percent to Chi Charlie Nguyen’s 33 percent and about 14 percent in the June 2022 nonpartisan primary for the 70th State Assembly District, finishing fourth in a field of six.

On the other hand, past is not always prologue. A lot can happen between February 2023 and November 2024.