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.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Narrowing the Gap

Democrats are increasingly narrowing the lead Republicans hold among Orange County’s 55,000 Vietnamese American registered voters.

*

Also contributing to this story was Dick Lewis, a political consultant based in Newport Beach.