The first Vietnamese American in the country was elected to public office 16 years ago when Tony Lam won a seat on the Westminster City Council, making history for a refugee group that fled after the Vietnam War and settled in Orange County.
Lam's election made national headlines and Vietnamese leaders had high hopes that he would become the bridge to help connect mainstream America and the Vietnamese.
At the time, demographics hardly helped Lam: Only 2,000 Vietnamese Americans in Westminster were registered to vote, and Vietnamese Americans made up only one-fifth of the city's residents.
Since Lam's election, Orange County has become the center of Vietnamese American political power. And this year, Westminster could become the first city in America with a Vietnamese-majority council. It would be a milestone for the small, conservative city transformed by refugees into the thriving business and cultural enclave of Little Saigon.
Today, one-third of Westminster's 96,000 residents are Vietnamese American. And they make a sizable voting bloc: Nearly 40% of Westminster's registered voters are Vietnamese American, according to a 2006 Asian Pacific American Legal Center study.
The county now has 10 elected Vietnamese American officials, including an assemblyman and a county supervisor.
A handful of others could join their ranks in November, when 13 Vietnamese Americans compete for public office in Orange County in contests that include school boards and city councils, the same number who ran for local office in 2006.
"I think the fact that there are many candidates is quite significant given that Vietnamese Americans have not been here very long," said Linda Vo, chair of the Asian American studies department at UC Irvine. "Vietnamese Americans are, in some ways, still newcomers to the political process."
Vietnamese Americans have made political gains in central Orange County in part because the community continues to grow and non-Vietnamese voters have become more comfortable with Vietnamese candidates, Vo said.
The growing clout of Vietnamese American voters became clear in a 2007 special election when two little-known Vietnamese candidates eclipsed a field of far better-known politicians running for a seat on the Orange County Board of Supervisors. Some political observers saw it as a watershed moment for Orange County, an election that forecast change in a county with a reputation for electing white, wealthy politicians. In June, three Vietnamese candidates campaigned for the same seat.
