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.
