Dig deeper, however, and the sudden resolution to the nine-month-old ordeal becomes more mysterious.

First, the simple part of the story. On Wednesday, the Irwindale City Council voted to drop both the lawsuit and nuisance declaration they’d been hanging over Huy Fong Foods, a sriracha hot-sauce manufacturer. The decision brought cheers from business leaders and residents, both of which have a big stake in the continued presence of the company in California.

Still, at first blush, the local reaction is at odds with what many reports presented as a citizen-driven outcry against Huy Fong. In fact, the South Coast Air Quality Management District only received 61 complaints about supposed bothersome odors, as the Pasadena Star-News reported; what’s more, 41 of those complaints came from the same four households. The city of Irwindale filed just 13 declarations from residents, according to the Star-News, one of which came from City Councilman H. Manuel Ortiz’s son, Manuel Ortiz Jr.

Although no one has publicly alleged that Huy Fong was the victim of an “inside job” attempt to bring it down, the abrupt end to Irwindale’s drive to shutter the sriracha plant sheds new light on the character of the claims that kicked off the city’s efforts.

Power players

Tellingly, Gov. Jerry Brown’s involvement in the surprise happy ending is also cloaked in some mystery. On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported, Brown’s Business and Economic Development Office hosted a closed-door meeting between city officials and Huy Fong CEO David Tran. When the doors opened, Irwindale Mayor Mark Breceda revealed he wanted the City Council to give up on any action against Huy Fong.

But as the Los Angeles Times noted, the Tuesday meeting was preceded by a very public tour of the Huy Fong facilities — the first time Irwindale officials made good on Tran’s repeated invitations to step inside his factory. The Times counted City Manager John Davidson, Mayor Mark Breceda, and Councilman Julian Miranda among the visiting party, which included cameramen, reporters and two “representatives” from the governor’s office.

Although the Times learned that the meeting following the tour did not include any attorneys, no more specific information was divulged about Brown’s representatives. They were simply described by officials as “observers.”

The Washington Post, however, reported the identity of one of the two figures — Leslie McBride, Brown’s deputy director of business investment services.

Still, the names of the biggest players resolving the sriracha crisis may remain anonymous. The Post, citing a nameless “adviser with knowledge of the meetings,” only identified the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development and the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation as key to brokering the truce between Tran and Irwindale.

Whoever caused those groups to take action, the upshot is clear. Tran and Breceda went on record with the Times with uncharacteristic and carefully chosen terms of praise for one another. “We understand each other, and we’re going to be working together,” said Tran. “We’re looking forward to being partners for a long, long time,” said the mayor.

Playing politics

According to Breceda, Irwindale changed its tune because Tran finally put his planned remediation measures into writing.

The bigger picture, however, is one in which Brown had to intervene to prevent sriracha from becoming an embarrassing and distracting political football with statewide and even national relevance during an election year.

A growing chorus of Republican voices — both in California and Texas — had rallied around the Huy Fong cause, portraying Tran’s plight as typical of entrepreneurs held back or penalized by California’s oppressive regulations.

Perhaps even more importantly, traditionally Democrat-leaning groups had begun to lobby Sacramento. Ruben Guerra, chairman of the Latino Business Association, went so far as to personally hand out bottles of Tran’s product to state legislators, according to the Times.

Now, Brown has turned sriracha from a liability into an emblematic success story. At a stroke, he has managed to defuse the conflict, take an issue away from Republicans, and satisfy the concerns of Asian-American, Latino and business groups.

With the appearance of ill-considered subterfuge still swirling around the initial allegations against Huy Fong, however, it wasn’t difficult for Brown to sweep in and ensure a reasonable outcome.

After a small number of complaints over the factory’s alleged smell, the city of Irwindale recently voted to declare Huy Fong Foods, makers of the popular sriracha condiment, a public nuisance.

For state Republicans, that’s an election-year gift. GOP candidates and organizations are going public in support of David Tran, Huy Fong’s proprietor. Tran now counts among his champions GOP gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari and the Republican Party of Los Angeles County.

The RPLAC has released a statement urging the Irwindale City Council “to take such actions as necessary to keep Huy Fong Foods in Los Angeles County,” praising Huy Fong’s growth, job creation and local economic dynamism.

Further afield, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz also has voiced his support for sriracha, although his solution to the company’s woes is to propose that Huy Fong relocates to his own state. Cruz’s comments follow the bold overtures of Texas Rep. Jason Villalba, R-Dallas.

As yet, Tran has been cordial but coy in his response to the enthusiastic Texans. That has likely persuaded California Republicans that Tran isn’t headed for the exits. But their strong incentive is to help strengthen Tran’s disposition to stay.

Minority outreach

California Republicans have struggled for years to boost support among ethnic minorities. Fears of further losses have been stoked by the recent remarks of Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks, likening California’s immigration ordeal to a war.

Donnelly currently is leading Kashkari in the June primary contest for governor. The new Top Two system almost certainly will give Gov. Jerry Brown the top spot, with Donnelly currently leading Kashkari for the second spot for the November runoff.

At the same time, moderate and liberal Republicans find value in shifting attention away from their corporate and financial affiliations. Those ties turn off many voters, including some conservatives, who are still troubled by the economic and political impact of the economic crisis and government bailouts.

One way to do that is by emphasizing minority outreach. There, the challenge is to target potential voters who aren’t already caught up in thorny issues like immigration that don’t play well to the state’s divided GOP.

One such group, Asian Americans, currently votes reliably for Democrats. Numbering more than 16 million nationwide, the group makes up at least 4 percent of the national electorate — and in 2012 gave Barack Obama a bigger margin than he won among Latinos, as Politico reported.

Statistics like these have frustrated Republican analysts. Party leaders are well aware that the group tends to align with Republican voters on cultural issues such as the importance of traditional family and the role education and enterprise play in upward mobility.

A Pew study from 2012 found that Asian Americans are better educated, wealthier and more focused on work and familial ties than Americans as a whole. But it also found the group relatively more satisfied with the country’s direction.

Entrepreneur

Given Tran’s plight as a Vietnamese-born entrepreneur, his background and predicament make for a perfect cause for Republicans.

That’s especially true of more “establishmentarian” party members. The identity politics challenges surrounding minority outreach help explain Kashkari’s sudden enthusiasm for the “stand with sriracha” campaign.

Kashkari, a former Goldman Sachs whiz who went on to mastermind the controversial Troubled Assets Relief Program bailouts in 2008, took to Twitter last week to urge support for Huy Fong. Tran’s legal and regulatory struggles help Kashkari cast his campaign, as he put it, as a fight against “regulations killing jobs.” That takes the spotlight off of his personal political history as a member of the East Coast corporate and federal elite.

The Irwindale City Council is set this week to adopt a resolution formalizing the nuisance declaration. As the pressure on Huy Fong Foods increases, Republicans are poised to ratchet up their own rhetoric as well.

Public support for Huy Fong likely will work to the GOP’s advantage. “Sriracha is more than a hot sauce,” Frank C. Giradot wrote in the Pasadena Star-News. “Sriracha equals the American Dream.”