A Vietnamese American school board member from Garden Grove who was a political unknown two months ago emerged Wednesday as the winner of an Orange County Board of Supervisors seat by just seven votes out of nearly 46,000 cast.
But an expected recount means the election may not be settled for weeks.
Trung Nguyen, a 49-year-old lawyer and engineer who was elected to his first term on the Garden Grove Unified School District Board of Trustees in 2004, won the election with 10,920 votes, compared with 10,913 for Janet Nguyen, a Garden Grove city councilwoman who was a fierce rival of Trung Nguyen throughout the six-week campaign.
"Seven votes," Trung Nguyen, no relation to Janet Nguyen, said Wednesday evening. "I'm glad it went my way. I'd like more, but I'll take what I can get."
The election places the 1st District seat, representing Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Westminster, back in Republican hands, cementing an all-Republican Board of Supervisors and ending the brief inroads made by Democrats, who held the seat since Lou Correa was elected in 2004. It also demonstrated new political strength for the Vietnamese community in Orange County.
The Nguyens beat six others in the race, including better-known candidates who had the backing of the Democratic and Republican establishments. With each of them receiving 24.1% of the vote, the two Vietnamese American candidates combined received nearly half the votes. They defeated former Democratic Assemblyman Tom Umberg, the best known candidate in the race, and Santa Ana Councilman Carlos Bustamante, a Republican favorite.
"This is a new era in politics in Orange County," said Nick Berardino, the general manager of the Orange County Employees Assn., a public employees union that supported Umberg.
Although such identity politics have been historically common in other ethnic groups and in other places, political operatives and observers said it was a new, and surprising, phenomenon in Orange County.
John Lewis, a campaign consultant to Bustamante, said that at the beginning of the race he expected the key factors to be party registration, city of residence and ethnicity.
"As it turns out, party registration and geographic base had almost nothing to do with this," he said. "It ended up being all about ethnicity. I don't think I've ever seen an election quite like this one."
The seat came open when Correa was elected to the state Senate in November.
