Vietnamese Show Clout in Funding

The growing political and economic muscle of the nation’s Vietnamese community is on display in two Orange County elections, in which a pair of candidates -- including one who is expected to become California’s first Vietnamese American state legislator -- has attracted nearly $1 million in contributions.

Most of that money has gone to Van Tran, a Garden Grove councilman running as a Republican for a seat in the Assembly. Tran has gathered about $800,000 both from traditional GOP donors and from Vietnamese Americans locally and across the country. About a third of his cash came from outside Southern California, including money from fundraisers in Philadelphia, Dallas, Washington state and Virginia.

Andy Quach, a Westminster councilman who is running for mayor, also has raised a substantial amount of money -- about a quarter of the $177,000 he has taken in so far -- outside the area. Vietnamese American donors in San Jose, Sacramento, Oakland and San Francisco have contributed.

The money is testament not only to the perceived electability of the candidates but also to the economic and political vitality of the ethnic group from which it was raised, political experts said. Following a well-established pattern for immigrants, Vietnamese Americans have grown increasingly active in politics.

“These are candidates who have made it economically, and that moves them toward political participation,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior scholar at the School of Policy, Planning and Development at USC. Their donors “are people who want to see these candidates succeed. It’s not quite like buying access. It’s gaining visibility and credibility in the political system.”

Thanks to a Republican voter majority in his district, Tran, an attorney, is expected to become the first Vietnamese American in the state Legislature. His Democratic opponent is businessman Al Snook, a perennial candidate who has raised $2,650.

In Westminster, the election of Quach, a business consultant, is less sure; he is facing incumbent Mayor Margie L. Rice and Ha Mach, a real estate broker. Rice has raised about $40,000 and Mach has raised less than $5,000.

About one-third of the money Quach raised through Sept. 30 came from Westminster and Garden Grove, cities that are home to Little Saigon, a business and residential district that has the largest concentration of Vietnamese outside Vietnam. The area has about 135,500 of the roughly 450,000 Vietnamese who resettled in California after the fall of Saigon in 1975, and about 1.1 million such emigres nationwide.

Eight candidates with Vietnamese surnames are on the ballot in Westminster and Garden Grove, where ethnic Vietnamese constitute 31% and 21% of residents, respectively. That’s double the number who ran in 2000.

In Santa Clara County, home to the nation’s second-largest concentration of Vietnamese Americans, there are five such candidates on the ballot.

While the numbers may not be significant -- by comparison, there are 42 Latino-surnamed candidates on the Orange County ballot -- what is significant is that several “have serious credentials, are raising serious money, mobilizing a serious bloc of voters and carrying a serious chance to win,” said Christian Collet, a researcher with UC Irvine’s political science department.

A victory for Tran would be “a high-water mark for a community that has been more famous for casting aspersions than it has for casting ballots,” Collet said, a reference to the throngs demonstrating in Westminster five years ago against a store owner’s display of Vietnam’s communist flag.

Instead of protesting, he said, “tens of thousands [will be] voting to send a homegrown activist to Sacramento.”

Tran has come a long way from his first political job in 1985 as a 20-year-old working for then-Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove). Dornan was bounced from office in 1996 by a Latina, Democrat Loretta Sanchez, whose strategy included wooing Latino and Vietnamese American voters.

Tran, eyeing the seat of termed-out Assemblyman Ken Maddox (R-Garden Grove), raised the bulk of his money -- $600,000 -- last year to fight off a primary challenge from fellow Garden Grove Councilman Mark Leyes, whose backers include Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle, a longtime friend. Tran got 57% of the vote to Leyes’ 43%.

Once he won the nomination, he set to helping Quach and other Garden Grove candidates, including Janet Nguyen for the City Council, Trung Nguyen for school board and Bill Dalton for mayor, running against Leyes.

Seeking money from Vietnamese Americans was part of a broader fundraising strategy, said Tran, who emigrated from Saigon as a 10-year-old in 1975.

“It’s a natural constituency, and I can raise quick money because I’ve worked with the community for nearly two decades,” Tran said. “The point was to diversify [the fundraising base], and I’ve done that. I have well over 3,000 individual donors, and I’m very proud of that.”

Among individuals who gave the maximum allowed by state law -- $3,200 each for the primary and general elections -- virtually every name is Vietnamese, including donors from Stockton and Sacramento, as well as Orange County.

Some of the donations to Quach are larger because Westminster has no limits on campaign contributions. His donations include $10,000 from a family that owns jewelry stores in Westminster’s Asian Gardens Mall and $7,900 from a company with grocery stores in Westminster, Garden Grove and San Jose.

Many of the donors sought him out, said Quach, who came to the U.S. in 1980, at age 7, after his father had been jailed for five years by Vietnam’s communist government. He said that, for many contributors -- particularly those from out of town -- donating wasn’t seen as a way to gain access but as an exercise of their right of free speech.

“Every ethnic American, at the end of the day, has a great love for this country,” he said.

The fundraising efforts of Tran and Quach follow a well-worn playbook that has worked in other ethnic communities, USC’s Jeffe said. For example, former Gov. George Deukmejian sought support for his 1982 race from ethnic Armenians; state Treasurer Phil Angelides, a veteran Democratic officeholder, has long networked among ethnic Greeks, she said.

“The Vietnamese American community is following the pattern that most underrepresented groups have followed to be players in the political arena,” she said.