Garden Grove : Dornan’s Chief Aide to Leave for New Job

Brian Bennett, longtime chief of staff in Washington to Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), is leaving the congressman’s office to take a job with Southern California Edison Co.

Bennett, 33, will be the company’s chief lobbyist and community spokesperson for Orange County and parts of Los Angeles County. He cited an “overwhelming desire to come home to California” as his reason for the shift.

“I was really unhappy living in Washington, D.C., and I can’t do the job that needs to be done for Bob out here,” Bennett said, speaking from Dornan’s district office. Bennett called Dornan “a good friend and a great boss.”

“I’m going to miss him a lot,” he said.

Bennett will assume his new duties Sept. 26, a day after he returns from his last official duty as a congressional aide: a two-week trip to Vietnamese refugee camps in Thailand and Hong Kong. It will be Bennett’s second trip to the camps. Dornan’s district includes a large Vietnamese community.

Bennett has long wanted to run for office in Orange County, and was the second choice of the county’s Republican Central Committee to run in the seat that had been vacated when Assemblyman Richard E. Longshore (R-Santa Ana) died last year. The first choice, Curt Pringle of Garden Grove, went on to win the office.