She Won't Be Just a Delegate at DNC

By MAI TRAN

Aug. 13, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Mai Cong’s eyes widen and her smile spreads from cheek to cheek when she talks about going to the Democratic National Convention.

The four-day event that starts Monday at Los Angeles’ Staples Center is her second political convention, but from her manner, it’s clear that she still is dazzled at the prospect of hobnobbing with the likes of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), and the whirlwind of gossip and parties.

“The ambience is something surreal,” said Cong, head of the Vietnamese Community of Orange County, a prominent nonprofit social services organization that offers services such as citizenship classes, senior programs and meals for the elderly.

Cong, one of only three Vietnamese delegates from California attending this year’s Democratic Convention, is among 25 Orange County representatives who will crowd the Staples Center aisles. Others include attorney John Hanna and his wife, Cynthia, former executive director of the Democratic Foundation of Orange County; Santa Ana Mayor Miguel A. Pulido; longtime activist Lillian French of Santa Ana; and United Auto Workers official Bruce Lee of Fullerton.

“You feel uplifted and alive,” Cong said in her Santa Ana office, which is festooned with myriad commendation plaques and a huge framed photograph of her standing beside President Clinton. “It makes you want to do something.”

Beyond the balloons, confetti and laughter, Cong has a mission: lobbying policymakers and elected officials for improved health care for the poor and for the protection of human rights for immigrants. “In this country, we can’t be passive,” she said.

Cong, 62, and her husband, Dinh Le, 66--who represent the 46th Congressional District, held by Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove)--are among a record 54% of delegates who are ethnic minorities attending this year’s convention.

Of those, 40, or 9.2%, are of Asian or Pacific Islander heritage. That number is up slightly from the 1996 convention in Chicago, where 8%, or 30 delegates, were of Asian background. But the number of Vietnamese American delegates has remained the same: Cong, her husband and Dang Pham, a delegate from Northern California.

Nonetheless, she is planning to do what she does best, outreach and advocacy. Connections she has made this way have helped her build the nonprofit agency into one of the largest social services organizations, with three branches serving thousands of Vietnamese in Orange County each year.

Cuong Manh Bui, a financial consultant who used to manage the checkbooks and handle taxes as a volunteer at Cong’s organization for 13 years, said he respects Cong for her tireless efforts and approach to mainstream politics.

“She’s had a passion to build the Vietnamese community for more than 20 years,” said Bui, of Westminster, who has since launched his own financial business. “She is successful because she knows how to . . . bring money into the [nonprofit] center, which spills into the community. She’s a diamond, a treasure for the community.”

Cong was a self-employed investor in Vietnam when she fled Saigon by plane two days before the city surrendered to the North Vietnamese forces in April 1975. She arrived at Camp Pendleton and got a job the next day working as a clerk at an Irvine tire store. A short time later, she landed a job with the Orange County Social Services Agency, which was seeking bilingual speakers to work with the influx of Southeast Asian immigrants arriving in Orange County with the fall of South Vietnam.

After several months, she transferred to the mental health division, where she developed programs for immigrants and worked for 20 years until her retirement in 1998.

“It opened my eyes and made me contribute back to America, which has been very good to us,” said Cong, who lives in Santa Ana.

In her role at the social services agency, and later at the mental health offices, Cong quickly became an advocate for Vietnamese refugees, who had become targets for attack as undeserving welfare dependents. In 1979, she opened a resettlement support agency in the warehouse of a grocery store in the Westminster area that now is Little Saigon.

There, armed with a two-year federal grant, Cong set down roots for the agency, which has mushroomed into a main office, with a business and economic development center branch in Westminster and a health center in Santa Ana, where doctors and nurses help the medically underserved. The organization has about 50 employees and 30 volunteers, and operates on a $1.6-million budget, most of which comes from state and federal grants.

Cong’s journalist husband, Le, spotted her while covering Orange County’s Asian American community for a local newspaper. He quit his job two months later, retired, and married Cong 12 years ago. He has since become Cong’s supporter, advisor and right-hand man, writing press releases and training new volunteers and employees. They both receive retirement benefits from their former employers, and they spend their days volunteering at the centers and their evenings strolling in their neighborhood.

Le is working on a book about his experiences covering the Vietnam War. Cong does some consulting work on cultural issues.

In Chicago in 1996, Cong and Le met with friends and familiar faces from Washington and the state level. Cong remembers skipping a workshop by state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), whom she’s never met, because his name reminded her too much of the Vietnam War. Instead, she attended the women’s caucus, where there were discussions on education and health care.

This time, Cong and Le are looking forward to meeting and greeting, and advocating for issues important to Vietnamese Americans, particularly those involving trade, and social and medical care for the elderly.

“We have to be active to let people know we’re here, and to get what we need,” she said. “The connections we make . . . can become something bigger. The convention is the best place to network.”

With that in mind, on Monday she’ll be searching for Massachusetts’ Sen. Kennedy, to whom she’s written letters of support for his health care bill. She plans to attend the women’s caucus, the Asian caucus and Loretta Sanchez’s fund-raiser for voter registration efforts.

And this time, she’s packing sharp pins.

“I’m going to pop all the balloons that come down,” Cong said, with a big smile and her hand raised like a kid waiting for a balloon to fall. “There were so many of them last time, I couldn’t breathe.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

And the O.C. Delegates Are. . .

Orange County delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles are:

* Patrick Birkett, Laguna Niguel

* Kory Braden-Hittelman, Lake Forest

* Mai Cong, Santa Ana

* Raymond Cordova, Garden Grove

* Nadia Maria Davis, Santa Ana

* Lillian French, Santa Ana

* Alexandra Gallardo-Rooker, Paramount

* Cynthia Hanna, Santa Ana

* John Hanna, Santa Ana