4 Asian Immigrant Politicians Win Elections, Place in History

Orange County’s vast and rapidly growing Asian community, which lacked a political voice during the 1980s even as its ranks nearly tripled, achieved a bit of history on Election Day as three immigrant candidates captured city council seats and another won a seat in Congress.

Among them are Westminster’s Tony Lam, who could become the nation’s first Vietnamese-American elected to political office if his slim 43-vote lead in the council race holds up after absentee ballots are tallied.

Two Korean-Americans won council seats, Ho Chung in Garden Grove and Julie Sa in Fullerton, and Orange County voters helped elect the nation’s first Korean-American to Congress, sending Diamond Bar Mayor Jay C. Kim to Washington as representative of the 41st District.

Overnight, the number of Asian-American elected leaders in Orange County quintupled (La Palma Councilman David Lim, who is of Chinese ancestry, had been the lone Asian-American elected official).

Those heady accomplishments serve as an exclamation point to the tremendous influx of Asian immigrants into Orange County during the past decade. Yet despite that tidal wave of growth, some experts said they were surprised by the accomplishments of the county’s Asian candidates.

“Many of the Asian-Americans running for office were immigrants--Jay Kim, Tony Lam among them,” said John M. Liu, a UC Irvine assistant professor of comparative culture. “The stereotype is that one would expect the subsequent generations to run, but not immigrants.”

Liu said it’s also surprising that Asian candidates are running--and winning--given the current social climate. “There is Asian bashing, we know that,” he said. “Yet these people were able to succeed.”

Eileen Padberg, a Republican political consultant, said Tuesday’s victories for Asian candidates are only the beginning. “I think it’s a harbinger of things to come,” she said. “The advent of term limits will allow more minorities and women to take office. I think that’s healthy. America needs to be more diverse--and certainly so does Orange County.”

Kim provided an instant infusion of diversity into the region’s congressional delegation.

The prosperous owner of an engineering firm, he came to the United States three decades ago on a student visa. The bespectacled and gray-haired businessman built his business up to more than 130 employees and entered politics in 1990, when he was elected to the Diamond Bar City Council.

Despite the handicap of running as an immigrant from Asia in a district that is only 10% Asian, Kim defeated five competitors in the Republican primary by stressing his business success and railing against professional politicians.

In Tuesday’s general election, he scored a solid victory over Democrat Bob Baker and became something of an anomaly--the first Korean-American elected to Congress and the only Asian-American Republican in the House of Representatives.

Aside from providing Korean-Americans around the nation with a sense of ethnic accomplishment, Kim’s success proved that immigrants can succeed on a broader stage, UC Irvine’s Liu said. “An ethnic community can serve as a major leg to stand on, but a candidate has to go beyond that to have success on a grander scale,” Liu said. “Kim obviously was able to do that. Voters didn’t see him just as an Asian candidate, they saw him as something larger.”

Lam’s victory in Westminster, if it stands, would prove equally historic. He came to the United States from his native Vietnam 17 years ago after losing everything he owned to the war. His first job in the United States was as a gas station attendant. Today he co-owns three thriving restaurants.

“I’m paving the road for the next generation,” Lam said. “The Vietnamese have achieved a great deal in education, and have worked hard to get their own possessions here. I will always be grateful for America, and I want to pay back by participating in the mainstream.”

Lam was one of two Vietnamese-Americans in the race for a two-year council seat. The other, Jimmy Tong Nguyen, received only 6.4% of vote. But the Lam camp says Nguyen took votes away from their candidate and in the process hurt the Vietnamese community’s chances for representation.

Animosity between the two candidates dates back to the beginning of the campaign, when each hoped the other would not run. Last week, Lam’s campaign approached Nguyen and asked him to withdraw. Nguyen agreed, but wanted Lam to pay his $5,000 in outstanding campaign debts. Lam refused.

Vietnamese leaders have high hopes for Lam. Dr. Co Pham, chairman of the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce, says Lam would give a voice to Vietnamese-Americans throughout the United States.

“He would be the first Vietnamese elected to the system in the United States, and he will build a bridge between us and the Anglo-Saxons,” Pham said. “He also opens the door for another generation to be more aggressively involved in the system.”

Such participation has already been sparked. In Westminster’s Little Saigon, the largest enclave of Vietnamese outside of Vietnam itself, the election has been a hot topic among immigrants who heretofore had little interest in local politics. The number of Vietnamese voters doubled to 4,200 in the weeks before the election, thanks in large part to Lam’s registration drives.

In Fullerton, Sa dumbfounded the pundits by running a sophisticated, pro-business campaign that earned her the third of three council seats. She raised about twice as much money as any other candidate, much of it from Asian-Americans and businesses around the Southland, and hired a Los Angeles-based consulting firm to run her campaign.

“I was amazed,” said former mayor Bob Ward, who was a councilman from 1972-1980. “I thought the more well-known people would win.”

Sa runs an electronics import-export business in Fullerton and a restaurant in Anaheim and plans to open three more restaurants around Orange County.

The other Korean-American elected to a council seat, Ho Chung in Garden Grove, came to this country in 1967. “It’s a great honor,” said Chung, 58. “I feel a big responsibility to those who supported me.”

Councilman Mark Leyes said Chung’s victory represents “a coming of age for the Korean community and the whole city,” and offers immigrants a chance to help guide the city in coming years.

Chung, who early in the campaign was given only an outside chance by many observers to become the first nonwhite to be elected to the council, said Wednesday he still was finding his victory hard to believe. Much of his success can be attributed to worn shoe leather--Chung estimates he visited 7,000 homes and talked with 12,000 voters in the course of the campaign.

Insurance agent Chung’s main goal is to work to establish an international trade and cultural center on vacant land in the downtown area that would feature ethnic restaurants, galleries and authentic products of various countries. He also wants to put hundreds of residents on citywide task forces to tackle street gangs and graffiti. Moreover, Chung said that Garden Grove has become divided and that he would work for unity “for the good of the community.”

Times correspondents Robert Barker, Willson Cummer, Danielle A. Fouquette and Jon Nalick contributed to this story.