Excellence in Political Reporting
ABOUT THE WORK: If Brandon Vang won, he’d be the second Hmong councilmember ever elected in the City of Fresno’s 140-year history.
It’d been a decade since Fresno’s first Hmong elected leader termed out. Now in 2025, Vang was seeking the city council seat for southeast Fresno, where a concentration of Hmong refugees settled in the late 1970s following the CIA-led Secret War in Laos.
Vang won the election outright, but by a hair. A 50.19% vote got him the District 5 council seat, and squashed the possibility of a runoff election, too.
But his success was also surprising: it came after southeast Fresno was peppered with thousands of mailers falsely claiming that Vang had “engaged in statutory rape.” After local reporters, including myself, confirmed that Vang had never been charged with a crime in his entire life, there were many unanswered questions.
Who sent out thousands of attack mailers in an attempt to ruin Vang’s character in the eyes of voters leading up to the March 18, 2025 special election?
No one knew.
That’s because the political action committee responsible for the mailers never filed mandated political forms, as required by California state law.
The PAC ended up getting fined $1,000 by the Fresno City Attorney’s Office, which led to the PAC finally filing paperwork the next day. One form identified its treasurer as a man who I found lived more than 200 miles away from Fresno.
But in April, when the dust settled the month after the special city council election, the PAC turned in a new, amended filing — now naming prominent political consultant Alex Tavlian as its treasurer.
On top of revealing new information for Fresnans in the wake of false attack mailers, the investigative reporting also changed how people were talking about that 2025 special election.
Omar S. Rashad is the investigative reporter and assistant editor at Fresnoland, where he has covered everything from local government and public spending to immigration and health care. His accountability reporting in Fresno, California has so far triggered a lawsuit against the City of Fresno, led to city leaders reforming Fresno City Code and revealed the sources of out-of-town political money seeking to influence the outcomes of local elections. His reporting has also appeared in High Country News, The Seattle Times, CalMatters and the San Francisco Chronicle.
New or renewing members will be acknowledged at Gala and may not be reflected here.