From Vietnam to GOP Convention

Every day, no matter where he goes, Ky Ngo carries two things in his briefcase: an autographed photograph of Ronald Reagan and George Bush and a manila folder stuffed with documents about his ailing 23-year-old brother who has been refused permission to leave Vietnam.

The two things symbolize a political passion that has impelled Ngo, who came to the United States two days before Saigon fell to the Communists in 1975, to become Orange County’s first Vietnamese-American delegate to a Republican National Convention.

This month, Ngo will be one of three delegates to the convention from the 38th Congressional District. The others are Rep. Robert K. Dornan, the congressman for the district and a member of the Republican Party’s delegate selection committee, and Brian Bennett, Dornan’s executive assistant.

For Ngo, attending the convention is the culmination of nearly six years of political activism in the Vietnamese-American community, during which he has lobbied tirelessly on behalf of the Republican Party.

Volunteer Worker

In 1982, Ngo helped organize a Republican voter registration drive in the Vietnamese community. In 1984 and again in 1986, he volunteered for both of Dornan’s congressional campaigns. And now Ngo is executive director of the Asian American Republican Headquarters, where he said he works eight hours a day, seven days a week--all without pay.

His family and friends provide financial support so that Ngo can afford to do his political work on a volunteer basis.

“He is a tireless worker,” Bennett said, explaining why Dornan chose Ngo as a delegate. “It was just important to us that we have an activist--hard working, in the trenches--a Vietnamese-American in the delegation. And he fit that mold to a T. He really deserves it.”

Dornan has been courting the Vietnamese vote since his first run for Congress in 1984. According to Bennett, about 9% of the voters in Dornan’s district, which encompasses Little Saigon, are of Vietnamese descent. And 95% of them are registered Republicans.

Like the great majority of Vietnamese immigrants in Orange County, Ngo says he is a Republican first and foremost because he is an anti-Communist. And he is anti-Communist, he said, because of what happened to his country. “I came here because I lost freedom,” he said. “I volunteered because I want to come back to my country some day. I want to speak about what I think about Communists, and I think the Republicans can help me on these things.”

Ngo and his sister, who worked for a U.S.-run orphanage in Saigon, fled their country in a United States military aircraft, leaving both their parents and several brothers and sisters.