Bao Nguyen beat the odds just to make it onto the November ballot as a congressional candidate.
And if he beats fellow Democrat Lou Correa next month, it will be an upset of upsets even for the Vietnamese-American community, an ethnic enclave that has pushed several underdogs to victory over the years.
“Bao Nguyen’s a new-generation, millennial Vietnamese candidate who did really well to come in second in the primary,” said Jodi Balma, a political scientist at Fullerton College. “But he’s far behind Lou Correa.”
In the eight-candidate primary, Correa won 44 percent of the primary vote while Nguyen received 15 percent.
The two are vying to replace Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Orange, who is stepping down to run for U.S. Senate. While both are Democrats running in the heavily Democratic central county district, there are clear differences in policy, fundraising, endorsements, experience and personality.
Correa, 58, is a political veteran who served continuously in the state Legislature and on the county Board of Supervisors from 1998 to 2014. He was among the most moderate Democrats during his 14 years in the Legislature – particularly on social and environmental issues – and has touted his ability to work across the aisle.
“This is a Democratic district but people don’t care if you’re a Republican or Democrat,” he said, noting that he’s supporting a Republican candidate for Anaheim City School District and that the county supervisor and state senator representing the district are both Republicans. “The people want somebody who can get the job done.”
As of the most recent filing period, Correa had raised $591,000 to Nguyen’s $197,000. While his bipartisan attitude has occasionally attracted the scorn of Democratic leaders, he won the endorsement of the California Democratic Party.
Nguyen, 36, holds that endorsement against both him and the party, portraying Correa as a career politican who’s part of the establishment machine at a time when an overhaul of the political system is needed. Correa has backed Hillary Clinton for president from the outset. Nguyen – mayor of Garden Grove since 2014 – was a Bernie Sanders supporter and has been endorsed by Progressive Democrats of America, whose agenda closely mirrors Sanders’.
“I represent the change voters want to see – holding government accountable to serving the interest of the people, not that of big corporate interests,” said Nguyen, who served on the Garden Grove Unified School District before being elected Garden Grove mayor in 2014. “And I hope they’ll support the underdog.”
HISTORY OF UPSETS
In his young political career, Nguyen has gotten accustomed to running from behind.
On election night in 2014, he trailed incumbent Garden Grove Mayor Bruce Broadwater by some 400 votes, but prevailed by 15 votes after late mail ballots were tallied.
In June’s top-two open primary, Nguyen was in third place on election night, trailing by about 1,300 votes. He ended up qualifying for the fall ballot by more than 1,800 votes. In both the 2014 and June races, he was the underdog.
Nguyen faces an even steeper climb in next month’s election, as reflected by Correa’s 29 percentage point advantage in the primary.
“Lou just has a huge advantage,” Balma said.
But Vietnamese candidates have produced their share of election surprises, starting with Tony Lam’s 1992 landmark election to the Westminster City Council and Van Tran’s 2004 victory that made him the first Vietnamese in the state Legislature.
Some of the most dramatic wins have come against Democrats and Latinos.
In the 2007 race for the county supervisor spot vacated when Correa was elected to the state Senate, two Vietnamese Republicans made the runoff over a better-known Democrat and a Latino favored by many GOP leaders. The eventual winner by seven votes, Janet Nguyen, was elected in 2014 to the state Senate over Latino Assemblyman Jose Solorio, a Democrat.
In the 2015 special election to fill Nguyen’s supervisor’s seat, the better-known Correa faced former Garden Grove Councilman Andrew Do and lost by 43 votes.
The Correa-Do race followed the pattern of Vietnamese voters turning out in large numbers when one of their own was on the ballot. While Latino voters accounted for 36 percent of the district’s registered voters and Vietnamese made up 25 percent, Vietnamese cast 44 percent of the ballots and Latinos just 19 percent, according to the voter research firm Political Data Inc.
But Bao Nguyen is not the typical Vietnamese candidate.
Unlike Lam, Tran, Do and Janet Nguyen, Bao Nguyen is a Democrat. Vietnamese under 37 in the county are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans, but those over 45 are more staunchly Republican – and are traditionally more likely to vote than their younger counterparts.
But perhaps the biggest ethnic issue working against Nguyen involves the boundaries of the current district. Much of Little Saigon – including Nguyen’s current home – were in the district until the 2010 redistricting. Just 13 percent of the new district’s registered voters are Asian – and just 7 percent are Vietnamese – while 47 percent are Latino, according to Political Data estimates.
Nguyen currently lives just outside the district. District residency is not required of congressional candidates.
IMMIGRANT CONNECTIONS
Since his successful campaign for state Assembly in 1998, Correa has emphasized his deep roots in the blue-collar community. He grew up in Anaheim, where his mother worked as a hotel maid and his father held a union job on an assembly line making boxes. Both emigrated from Mexico.
Correa was the first in his family to graduate from high school, going on to earn MBA and law degrees from UCLA. He’s lived in the district nearly his entire life.
Nguyen, who’s endorsed by the Sierrra Club, has attacked his opponent for a voting record that has landed him a 54 percent lifetime rating from the California League of Conservation Voters. But Correa, who’s endorsed by the Orange County Business Council, emphasizes a balance of business and jobs needs with environmental concerns.
“I was lucky I made it through high school and college,” Correa said. “Many of my friend and neighbors that I grew up with are struggling to achieve the American dream. They’re living paycheck to paycheck. People want good jobs. People want a good education for their kids so they can move up and achieve the American dream.”
While both candidates favor abortion rights, only Correa supports requiring parental notification before a minor gets an abortion. Unlike Nguyen, Correa has opposed expanding the state’s definition of assault weapons.
Another difference is Nguyen’s support for legalizing recreational marijuana. Correa has remained neutral. Both candidates support Medicare for all Americans and free public college tuition.
Nguyen, who was born in a Thai refugee camp after his parents escaped from Vietnam in the late 1970s, says his immigrant experience has been key to his world and political outlook.
After short stints in Nashville and San Jose, his family settled in Orange County where his mom worked as a maid and cared for children while his dad’s odd jobs ranged from collecting recyclables to working as a teacher’s aide.
When he was 12 and going through the citizenship process, Nguyen says an immigration official asked him if he wanted “Bob” or another “American name” on his citizenship certificate.
“My name is American,” he said he told the official.
Nguyen went on to get degrees in political science at UC Irvine and Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Colorado’s Naropa University. Along the way, he became engrossed with the Latino experience and has been active in the Latino community. He speaks Vietnamese and Spanish, and worked as a union organizer until the end of 2015 when he left to focus full-time on being mayor and running for Congress.
“The Vietnamese American experience is very similar to the Latino American experience,” he said, pointing to challenges related to immigration and assimilation. “The issues I’m passionate about bridge different communities.”
Contact the writer: mwisckol@ocregister.com
