In California's conservative Little Saigon, a progressive unravelling among Vietnamese Americans switches up Orange County politics and raises the stakes for Republicans

• The race in California's 45th House district has put a spotlight on its conservative Vietnamese American voter bloc in Little Saigon. 
• Vietnamese American voters have long leaned conservative while the Asian American vote nationwide for decades trended Democratic. 
• But experts and voters say the Vietnamese vote isn't monolithic. 

WESTMINSTER, California – Drive down Bolsa Avenue during election season and there's no denying that the Vietnamese American identity is well represented on the ballot.

Colorful signs that clutter every major street corner and line the strips of grass in front of modest, beige stucco mini-malls feature candidates with Vietnamese surnames: Ho, Nguyen, Ta.

Home to the largest Vietnamese diaspora, Little Saigon is an ethnic enclave of expatriate Vietnamese located in the heart of suburban Orange County, California, just a few miles south of Disneyland. Centered in the city of Westminster, Little Saigon has fingers into the adjacent cities of Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, and Santa Ana. 

"When we talk about representation, the Vietnamese community is very well represented, especially in the last ten years or so," Julie Vo, policy director at the Orange County Asian & Pacific Islander Community Alliance, told Insider. Westminster is the first city in the nation to have a Vietnamese American majority on the council, she added. It's also the first to elect a Vietnamese American mayor.  

Aside from being an ethnic hub, Little Saigon — located in the 45th Congressional District — is the center of the region's political gravity. The enclave's large concentration of Vietnamese voters is crucial to elections, especially in a battleground district where races are decided by only a few percentage points. The Vietnamese vote was instrumental in Republican Rep. Michelle Steel's success in 2020 when she defeated then-incumbent Democrat Harley Rouda by about two percentage points.

Due to cultural and historical reasons, Vietnamese voters — in Orange County and elsewhere — have long leaned conservative while the Asian American vote nationwide has for decades trended Democratic. In 2020, more than half (53%) of voters in Little Saigon backed Donald Trump while the rest of Orange County supported Joe Biden by a 10 percentage point margin. Out of the six ethnic groups in the 2022 Asian American Voter Survey conducted this summer, Vietnamese Americans were the only enclave with a higher favorability rating for Trump (49%) than Biden (41%). 

But these figures fail to explain the whole story, according to experts. What often goes under the radar is that the Vietnamese vote, let alone the Asian American vote, isn't monolithic. The political transformation of the Vietnamese community in Orange County – powered by young, independent, and issue-based voters – is breaking the surface. 

"One of the things that we've seen about the Vietnamese community pretty consistently is there's this perception of the community as being reliably conservative," Dan Ichinose, research director of progressive engagement organization OC Action, told Insider. "But what we've seen pretty clearly is that the Vietnamese community is home to diverse political perspectives." 

Little Saigon's Republican beginnings 

Here in Little Saigon, where an abundance of traditional shops and eateries dot the three square mile stretch centered along Bolsa Avenue and the perpendicular Brookhurst and Magnolia Streets, the residents of Little Saigon — many of whom fled communist Vietnam — take comfort in the sights, tastes and sounds that remind them of home. 

But before these public spaces popped up, anti-communist sentiment was the glue that held the neighborhood together. The first wave of refugees fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975 and the next wave — the "boat people" who fled by sea — followed a couple of years later.

First-generation Vietnamese who escaped a Communist-led country would be more averse to progressive or liberal politics, said Madalene Mielke, president of the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies. They're also deeply religious, she told Insider, and hugely invested in the idea of the American dream. 

"You're talking about people who are now voting in America who come from a place where they didn't have democracy," she said. "There's distrust in government from the country they originally were coming from." 

It's people like Marie Suchy, 47, whose mother was rescued in Operation New Life, a US Air Force airlift effort that evacuated Vietnamese from South Vietnam before and after the government's collapse and flew them to Guam. Her mother went into labor during the evacuation and Suchy was born shortly after on April 29, 1975, the day before Saigon fell.  

She's always voted Republican because of her family history and conservative upbringing, and she'll be voting no differently this year. 

"I was raised in an era where it was mostly conservative views," Suchy told Insider. "I pay for everything on my own, and I don't make a lot. I don't have a college degree. But I have earned my way to be where I'm at right now. I feel like many people in today's society feel entitled, and that entitlement needs to go away."

Vietnamese Americans' conservative bent could also be explained by Orange County's history as a conservative bastion, a place once described by Ronald Reagan as where "all the good Republicans go to die." 

"Part of what it takes to be accepted politically would be to be conservatives," Sara Sadhwani, professor of politics at Pomona College, told Insider. "Having settled in Orange County at the time that they did, Orange County, until very recently, and still now, as we can see in the competitiveness of this race, has been a Republican stronghold." 

But things are changing. 

Young progressives unraveling the political fabric

While the first generation of Vietnamese immigrants has, for the most part, stayed loyal to the Republican Party, the second and third generations who have no memory of Vietnam's communist regime, are progressive. 

More than 65% of Vietnamese age 49 and under in Orange County were registered as Democrats as of Election Day in 2020. 

"We see generational differences between refugees for whom anti-communist politics are important and native-born children whose politics are more informed by their experiences growing up here," Ichinose said. 

But there are teething pains that come with trying to unravel the community's political fabric. In a nationally-watched race between a Korean American incumbent and a Taiwanese American challenger in a district where Asian American voters make up a third of its electorate, Vietnamese Americans' anti-communist sentiment is being utilized for political gain.  

Fliers sent by Republican incumbent Michelle Steel's campaign to Vietnamese voters living in the 45th District portray her Democratic challenger Jay Chen as a Communist sympathizer. Signs that say "China's Choice Jay Chen" have popped up on light poles and chain-linked fences around buildings. 

It's an artful and deliberately planned out strategy of trying to "red-bait" him, experts say.

"There's no question that this is an intentional strategy to red-bait Jay Chen," Connie Chung Joe, CEO of Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Los Angeles, told Insider. "It's going to resonate with the older immigrant Vietnamese which she's targeting." 

But that's where Steel's messaging falls short. From a larger perspective, Joe said, Steel's strategy is short-sighted because it only reaches the immigrant Vietnamese conservative subgroup. 

Lanae Jackson, senior vice president for social policy and politics at the center-left think tank Third Way, agrees. With young Asian voters whose politics are largely informed by anti-Asian racism, Steel's play doesn't resonate in the way she wants it to. 

"I think the politics around China are particularly tricky," Jackson told Insider. "Overall, when we talk about making things in America and trade policy, demonizing China is a useful political tool. But that definitely might play out differently with Asian voters, particularly those who are sensitive to the fact that hate crimes against Asian communities have been rising pretty substantially over the past couple of years." 

Younger voters identify more as progressive on issues such as healthcare, the citizenship process, protecting the environment, gun control, abortion, and social justice. 

Vincent Tran, a 27-year-old Fountain Valley resident, told Insider "red-baiting" doesn't focus on the current needs of Vietnamese Americans, such as affordable housing, affordable education, healthcare, and reproductive health. 

"All of the stuff that's being sent out right now is pretty much focused on people's nationalities and allegiances," he said. "But I think if these candidates actually spoke on issues that the community cares for, it would radically shift how we see the Vietnamese population."

Even his immigrant parents — registered Republicans — toss the fliers when they receive them in the mail, he said. Tran's father came to the US in the early 1980s as one of the "boat people," and his mother came through the Orderly Departure Program, through which Vietnamese were allowed to leave the country for family reunions and humanitarian reasons. 

"Red-baiting has been a traumatic tool that's been used in the community to ostracize people, and folks don't want to associate with it anymore," Tran said. "I think it's very disheartening because they are treating this community as a very "one issue" type community, not addressing complex issues." 

Moving away from the establishment GOP 

Former Westminster vice mayor and one-term state Rep. Tyler Diep was a registered Republican until last year when he reregistered to non-party preference. He said the aftermath of the January 6 attack on the Capitol triggered the change. 

"As we got toward the later part of 2021, I started getting a sense that a lot of Republican leaders were backtracking and downplaying the severity of what happened," he told Insider.

He'll still be voting for the Republican candidate, incumbent Michelle Steel, but it isn't because of the party she identifies with. Diep said he looks at the candidate's presence in the district and the issues they stand for. 

"I've known Michelle for over 15 years," he said. "And candidate familiarity is important. I want to see if a candidate cares about Little Saigon or not. How often do they come around? What have they done in the past to support the aspirations of the Vietnamese community abroad?"

And the fact that the Vietnamese vote isn't monolithic is well-illustrated in Diep's own family: his sister is a lot more liberal in her political views and doesn't look at the Republican Party the same way he does.

"It's not that I was trying to get her to think about what it means to be a progressive, or what it means to be a conservative," Diep said. "She picked up everything on her own, and then came to the conclusion that the Republican Party is not for her. She's not a Democrat either. She's just not ideologically aligned with what the Republican Party stands for." 

The power of independent, issue-based voters   

Both Steel and Chen would have been rarities here in Orange County, even a few decades ago. But the district's emergence as one of the most politically consequential races in the midterms and its Vietnamese American electorate — that could swing the vote — is a testament to how much Orange County has changed.

These swing independent voters make up nearly a quarter of the 45th District. Nationwide, over 40% of Vietnamese voters identify as independent. And the fact that the Asian American demographic is rapidly growing not because of birth, but because of immigration, means that they're up for grabs and that neither party can afford to rely on identity politics. 

"More recent immigrant populations of Asian Americans who are newer to voting may be more likely to flip because they aren't attached to one party or the other," Jackson told Insider. "They wouldn't necessarily have a pattern of decades of picking one side or the other to rely on, and may be more apt to look at an individual candidate."

That's exactly what Linda Nguyen did in 2020. Nguyen, who sits on the Asian Business Association of Orange County's board of directors, voted for Biden in 2020 because she had encountered anti-Asian hate sentiments on three different occasions under the Trump administration. But it was tough making that decision, Nguyen told Insider.

"I vote based on policies over candidates," she said. "It was tough because fiscally, I'm a little more conservative, so of course, I lean Republican in that sense. But it just really depends on the policies, and the anti-Asian hate sentiments led me to voting for Biden."

What's most on her mind this election cycle? Inflation and the rising cost of living. 

"That's what my friends and I are talking about," she said.

When asked whether she would support a Democrat or a Republican in 2024, Nguyen said she's not sure yet. But it definitely won't be Trump.

"That's a tough one," she said. "It really depends on the candidate, and if there was a different Republican candidate, I would definitely consider it."