Democrats see registration gains in vietnamese community
A political shift is underway in Orange
County's large and traditionally
conservative Vietnamese American
community, where the GOP's longtime
dominance is being eroded by a rise in
Democratic voter registration.
For the first time, the Democratic Party this election year
registered more new Vietnamese voters than the Republicans in the
county. The GOP, which once enjoyed a 4-to-1 registration margin
over Democrats in the county, has seen its lead steadily shrink over
the last eight years.
Republicans can now claim the allegiance of 39% of all
Vietnamese American voters in the county, compared with 33% for
Democrats, according to an analysis of election records. Eight
years ago, the Republicans had 58%.
Experts and community leaders say the change suggests that the
Vietnamese--especially older residents--are becoming more
concerned about issues such as Medicare, Social Security and
programs for the poor.
"When the Vietnamese first arrived in Orange County, they
came as the victims of communism," said Cal State Fullerton
professor Jeffrey Brody. "Republicans had the staunchest
anti-Communist position. So the Vietnamese and the Republicans
embraced each other."
But as hopes dimmed that they would reclaim their homeland
from the Communists, Brody says, the Vietnamese became more
concerned with domestic issues. "They saw that they stood a better
chance of getting programs that would help their community from
the Democrats, rather than the Republicans."
GOP officials hope that they will soon be able to shore up party
support among the county's 55,000 Vietnamese American voters;
they say the recent decline in Republican registration has less to do
with ideology than the effect of a two-term Democratic president
who visited California 50 times.
Tom Fuentes, the longtime GOP chairman in Orange County,
said the election of Republican George W. Bush should halt the
slide.
Several new Vietnamese voters who registered Democratic this
year said they did so because they have prospered under President
Clinton's leadership.
Katherine Do of Anaheim arrived from Vietnam in 1992. Two
years later, she became pregnant with her second child, and her
medical bills hit $22,000 after surgery, expenses that Medi-Cal
eventually paid.
Thanks largely to education policies she attributes to the
Democrats, her son's elementary school class shrank from 32
children to 16.
Prospering Under Clinton's Leadership
"I saw that my son was getting more individualized attention
from his teacher," said Do, 42, who is a classroom volunteer.
Ironically, however, reduction of class sizes in California began
under Republican Gov. Pete Wilson.
Another new Democrat, Anh Tran, 43, of Santa Ana, said she
chose her party based more on bread-and-butter issues than
foreign policy: Her husband was laid off three times when the elder
George Bush was president. But under Clinton, he has been
working at the same job for seven years, the couple bought their
first home and their college-age sons are hopping from one
part-time job to the next.
The movement in party allegiance during the Clinton
administration has been steady. When he was elected in 1992,
Vietnamese American Republicans in Orange County outnumbered
their Democratic counterparts nearly 3 to 1 (18,327 to 6,833).
Today those numbers stand at 21,570 Republicans and 18,064
Democrats--a difference of only 3,506. An additional 15,347
Vietnamese Americans are registered as independents.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Little Saigon was considered a
bastion of conservative Republicanism. The area of Westminster
became home for Vietnamese immigrants, many of whom
embraced right-wing politicians such as ex-Rep. Robert K. Dornan
(R-Garden Grove), who represented the district for years. But as
the Cold War ended, a new generation of more moderate
community activists emerged.
Brody and other outside experts say the boost in Democratic
fortunes is due in part to the grass-roots activism of Mai Cong, the
founder of the Vietnamese Community of Orange County. She
stunned many in the nation's largest Vietnamese emigre community
by co-chairing a 1992 Clinton-Gore committee in Little Saigon.
Mai and her husband, Dinh Le, a former Vietnamese army
officer who founded the Vietnamese American Phoenix Democratic
Club, can chuckle today over the community's shock when they
began actively campaigning for the Democratic presidential ticket.
But to their horror, they said, they even endured death threats from
extremists in 1992.
Dinh believes that many immigrants questioned their GOP
allegiance in 1994, when the party won the House of
Representatives. Party leaders then proposed a law denying
benefits to all immigrants until they had been in the U.S. at least five
years.
The proposal coincided with the arrival of the first wave of
South Vietnamese political detainees, former military officers and
government officials who had been imprisoned in labor camps since
the war's end 20 years earlier.
The law eventually was softened during negotiations over the
Balanced Budget Act, clearing the way for the former detainees to
receive temporary financial aid.
By Ray F. Herndon and Mai Tran - The Los Angeles Times - December 24, 2000.
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