It was an Orange County congressional seat that served as a catalyst for Democrats’ return to power in the House in 2018.
Six years later, the party aims to replicate that success by flipping one key congressional seat and holding another in Orange County.
That goal brought former President Bill Clinton to Orange County on Saturday, Oct. 26, where he stumped for Democrats Derek Tran and state Sen. Dave Min, who are locked in tight races that could decide control of the House for the next two years.
In Buena Park, a majority-minority city in California’s 45th congressional district, where Tran is vying to unseat two-term incumbent Rep. Michelle Steel, R-Seal Beach, the former president said his visit is a deeply emotional moment for him.
Tran is aiming to become the first Vietnamese American member of Congress to represent Orange County’s Little Saigon, considered the largest Vietnamese enclave outside of Vietnam, with Westminster at its heart.
Elected as the 42nd president in 1992, Clinton normalized relations with Vietnam three years later, marking a significant milestone in the post-war relationship between the two countries.
Calling that one of his proudest achievements, Clinton, 78, gestured to Tran, saying, “This is what I always dreamed of.”
“It’s inexplicable why the congressional district with the largest number of Vietnamese hasn’t had a Vietnamese representative,” said Clinton during a speech lasting about half an hour. “We’re about to fix that.”
The Vietnamese vote may be the margin of victory in Little Saigon, where voter behavior — perhaps unlike anywhere else in Orange County — has fluctuated strongly in the past decade or so. Many neighborhoods, particularly in Garden Grove and Westminster, supported former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016 but switched to backing former President Donald Trump in 2020. In the March primary, voters from this region again leaned toward Trump.
Tran leaned heavily into his…
Read the full article here
