This Time, Dornan’s Lost His Lock on Vietnamese Vote

When Bob Dornan first started winning congressional elections in Orange County, he had people like Quang Nguyen in his hip pocket. A 1980 refugee from Vietnam, Nguyen was staunchly anti-Communist and, like the overwhelming percentage of his countrymen who settled here, he saw Dornan and the Republican Party as their new best friends.

Dornan showed up at local events and decried Communism. Fresh from traumatic upheavals because of the Communists, the new immigrants hailed Dornan as a heroic figure, a freedom fighter.

Nguyen is 63 now, and something about America must agree with him, because he doesn’t look a day over 50 as he sits at his desk in a complex of Vietnamese businesses near the border of Westminster and Garden Grove. When I inquire, he smilingly credits his relative youthfulness to moderation in all things.

Except for his support of Dornan, that is.

“I campaigned for him,” Nguyen says of the man who first won elective office in Orange County in 1984. “He was one of the defenders of our cause, really. He was one that really fought for us.”

If everything and everybody were as changeless as Nguyen, Dornan might have some breathing room in his fight to regain the 46th Congressional District seat he lost to Loretta Sanchez in 1996.

Such is not the case and, if only to underscore the point, a few blocks away 27-year-old Le Nguyen (no relation) is asked about the Dornan-Sanchez race. A machinist who lives in Dornan’s district and came to America in 1984, Nguyen doesn’t know who Bob Dornan is.

Nguyen’s father was in the Vietnamese army and had to leave Vietnam to avoid being killed. It was nine years before Le was able to join his father in America. When I ask what he knows about the race, he says, “All I know is that I work to get money to support my family.”

Le Nguyen is somewhat Americanized, in that he calls his daughters Kristine and Sharon around Americans. At home, however, he calls them by their Vietnamese names of My Chau and Thu Trang.

I ask him if talk of “anti-Communism” is much of an issue with him, and he says no. He cares about how the Vietnamese government treats its citizens, he says, but doesn’t automatically recoil at the prospect of Communists running the country.

Quang Nguyen, 36 years older than the other Mr. Nguyen, disagrees. “I still want Dornan,” he says. When I ask why, he laughs and says, “You know how Dornan is. Very flamboyant. Fighting to be heard. He is the one who can have his voice heard and can represent our voices to be heard.”

The disparities represented by the two Mr. Nguyens loom large, because by most reckonings the Sanchez-Dornan rematch will be close. A few hundred votes may well decide it, and Vietnamese community leaders say they have more than enough votes to be the determining factor in the race.

Mai Cong is president and CEO of the Vietnamese Community of Orange County, an organization set up to help immigrants assimilate into American life. The organization is nonpartisan, but it’s well known Cong personally supports Sanchez.

Given that, and given that she may have some influence in the Vietnamese community, she is someone Dornan has to worry about. “I heard he’s concerned about me,” Cong says, laughing.

‘I’m urging people wherever I can to register to vote and to vote for who they believe will do what’s best for the community,” she says. “They have to look at the track record of the candidates.”

She says the Vietnamese population in Orange County is still attuned to problems in its homeland but is increasingly focusing on life in America. “I think people accept that they’re here. Like the young man you talked to [Le Nguyen], he wishes for his people in Vietnam to have human rights and a better life, but he’s here and very concerned about what happens to him and his family. Most of us are concerned about making a good living and integrating. At the same time, we wish for our people to have a decent life in Vietnam with more freedom, more human rights.”

I asked another political activist in the Vietnamese community about the race. The activist believes it is up for grabs and would comment only if guaranteed anonymity. “My sense of things is that the race is highly contested and that there will be a high turnout of Vietnamese,” the activist says. “Both sides are working hard and effectively.”

The activist says campaigning against Communism won’t cut it anymore. “You have a whole new generation of Vietnamese Americans now. They’re familiar with the political process and they expect their representatives to be open-minded and pay attention to what their needs are. Dornan needs to find out what people are thinking and not assume that all they want is to fight Communism.”

The Dornan name lingers in the district, the activist says, still carrying weight in many quarters.

But even Quang Nguyen, the steadfast Dornan supporter, knows his man has to adapt. “We see the evolution in politics,” he says. “We see how it happens in this country. We are learning more. We can compare now. When we came over, we had to fight the Communists. But now, it’s different.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com