g***@yahoo.com
2008-11-03 15:38:17 UTC
bostonherald.com
November 3, 2008
Young Vietnamese-Americans abandoning Republican Party
By Ken McLaughlin / San Jose Mercury News
SAN JOSE, Calif. - For years after Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese
in 1975, the tiny contingent of Vietnamese emigres in the United
States who chose to join the Democratic Party stayed quiet.
"Many in the Vietnamese community felt Democrats were just too soft on
communism and too weak on defense," recalls Minh Steven Dovan, a San
Jose attorney who says he rarely told fellow members of the emigre
community that he was a registered Democrat. Other emigres say that
some Republican Vietnamese went as far as dubbing the Democrats in
their midst "communist sympathizers."
But more than three decades after communist tanks rolled into Saigon,
young Vietnamese-Americans are abandoning the Republican Party in
droves, according to a San Jose Mercury News computer analysis of
nearly 30,000 new Santa Clara County voters. By plugging Vietnamese
surnames into a data base, the analysis shows that Vietnamese-
Americans age 30 and under are registering Democratic over Republican
by nearly 4 to 1.
"That is really amazing," said Dovan, 57, "particularly when you think
of the generational turnaround."
Other Vietnamese emigres say the trend has crystallized in recent
years - especially since Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who is
exceedingly popular with youth, began running for president nearly two
years ago.
"It’s easy to understand," said Loc Vu, a former colonel in the South
Vietnamese army who now heads San Jose’s IRCC Immigrant Resettlement
and Cultural Center. "The young Vietnamese who were born in this
country are the same as the other American kids. They all go to school
together. They’re open-minded and they’re part of the new generation
of young voters. They have different ideas than the older Vietnamese."
Like most in his generation, the 75-year-old Vu, currently not
registered with any party, plans to vote for Republican John McCain.
Because McCain survived years of torture in a North Vietnamese POW
camp, many older Vietnamese consider him a hero. Many emigres even see
irony in the fact that South Vietnamese military leaders were sent to
forced-labor camps for "re-education" only two years after McCain was
released from the infamous prison camp dubbed the Hanoi Hilton.
"Many South Vietnamese were going into the communist jails," Vu said,
"as McCain was getting out of one."
Still, "I understand why the young people like Obama," Vu said. "And
that’s OK."
Hung Duc Lai of San Jose, a former South Vietnamese army captain and
longtime general secretary of the Coalition of Nationalist Vietnamese
Organizations of Northern California, also understands. He and his
wife, Mai, are staunch Republicans, and their two twentysomething
daughters are ardent Democrats.
"It’s a free country," Lai, 61, said with a laugh.
Overall, Vietnamese emigres are still strongly Republican - a fact
reflected in a ground-breaking national poll of Asian-Americans
released last month by the University of California-Berkeley and three
other major universities.
The poll found that all Asian-American groups with the exception of
Vietnamese-Americans supported Obama over McCain. Fifty-one percent of
Vietnamese-Americans said they were for McCain; 24 percent were for
Obama, with the rest undecided.
But a deeper analysis of the poll shows the generational split.
Forty-five percent of Vietnamese-American likely voters age 40 and
older told pollsters they were Republicans, and 20 percent said they
were Democrats, according to researcher Karthick Ramakrishnan of UC-
Riverside. But 49 percent of Vietnamese-American likely voters under
age 40 identified themselves as Democrats; 16 percent said they were
Republicans.
The Vietnamese love affair with the Republican Party was highly
similar to the love Cubans showed the party after communist dictator
Fidel Castro forced them to flee to U.S. shores.
When Vietnamese started becoming citizens in the early 1980s, Ronald
Reagan was president. Reagan, a longtime Cold Warrior, was viewed by
Vietnamese emigres as the perfect commander in chief. So the
overwhelming majority of them signed on with the GOP.
"We saw Reagan as very strong - a cowboy with a lot of charm," Lai
said.
"Reagan captured Vietnamese hearts and minds in the U.S.," said Andrew
Lam, author of "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese
Diaspora." And "that impression stayed with the Vietnamese here a long
time."
The impression often frustrated Dovan, the San Jose attorney, who
often points out to his Republican Vietnamese friends that two
Democratic presidents - Kennedy and Johnson - sent U.S. troops to aid
South Vietnam and that two Republican presidents - Nixon and Ford -
decided to extricate the U.S. from Vietnam. Ford, Dovan points out,
even cut off funds to South Vietnam as the communists were about to
take over.
"But it doesn’t seem to matter, just as it doesn’t seem to matter that
John McCain was in favor of normalizing relations with Vietnam in the
mid-’90s," a position that anti-communist Vietnamese fiercely opposed,
Dovan said.
Most older Vietnamese emigres also forgave McCain when, during his
2000 presidential bid, he called his North Vietnamese captors "gooks"
- a disparaging term for Asians often used by U.S. troops during the
war.
Democratic Party officials first made inroads into the Vietnamese
Republican stronghold in 1992, when Bill Clinton ran for president.
Clinton even met with Vietnamese-American leaders in Orange County’s
Little Saigon. And by the end of the decade, 33 percent of new
Vietnamese-American voters in Santa Clara County were registering as
Democrats and 28 percent as Republicans, a 1999 computer analysis
showed.
Since then, as Vietnamese immigration has slowed and the number of
American-born Vietnamese has jumped, Democratic causes such as social
and economic justice have taken root in the community.
Quynh Lai, Hung Duc Lai’s 27-year-old daughter, a marine biology
student at San Jose State University, said it was an easy call to go
with the Democrats when she registered to vote at age 18.
Originally, she was most concerned with the abortion issue. "I knew
that I believed that I should have control over my own body," she
said. "I couldn’t believe that it was even an issue."
Now, nine years later, her biggest concerns are protecting the
environment and gay rights - and she still feels that Democratic
positions better match her views.
"I have a lot of gay friends," she said. "People need to be treated
equally."
She and her sister, 23-year-old Uyen, both attended Vietnamese school
on Sundays in San Jose for several years and have a solid
understanding of Vietnam’s history. They understand how their mother
and father lost their country. They understand why they support the
Republicans and John McCain.
The sisters say they love and respect their parents but just don’t
like the GOP.
"Republicans are conservative and want things to stay the same," said
Uyen Lai, who recently graduated with a B.A. in psychology from San
Jose State. "I want to see change."
___
(San Jose Mercury News news research director Leigh Poitinger
contributed to this report.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 3, 2008
Young Vietnamese-Americans abandoning Republican Party
By Ken McLaughlin / San Jose Mercury News
SAN JOSE, Calif. - For years after Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese
in 1975, the tiny contingent of Vietnamese emigres in the United
States who chose to join the Democratic Party stayed quiet.
"Many in the Vietnamese community felt Democrats were just too soft on
communism and too weak on defense," recalls Minh Steven Dovan, a San
Jose attorney who says he rarely told fellow members of the emigre
community that he was a registered Democrat. Other emigres say that
some Republican Vietnamese went as far as dubbing the Democrats in
their midst "communist sympathizers."
But more than three decades after communist tanks rolled into Saigon,
young Vietnamese-Americans are abandoning the Republican Party in
droves, according to a San Jose Mercury News computer analysis of
nearly 30,000 new Santa Clara County voters. By plugging Vietnamese
surnames into a data base, the analysis shows that Vietnamese-
Americans age 30 and under are registering Democratic over Republican
by nearly 4 to 1.
"That is really amazing," said Dovan, 57, "particularly when you think
of the generational turnaround."
Other Vietnamese emigres say the trend has crystallized in recent
years - especially since Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who is
exceedingly popular with youth, began running for president nearly two
years ago.
"It’s easy to understand," said Loc Vu, a former colonel in the South
Vietnamese army who now heads San Jose’s IRCC Immigrant Resettlement
and Cultural Center. "The young Vietnamese who were born in this
country are the same as the other American kids. They all go to school
together. They’re open-minded and they’re part of the new generation
of young voters. They have different ideas than the older Vietnamese."
Like most in his generation, the 75-year-old Vu, currently not
registered with any party, plans to vote for Republican John McCain.
Because McCain survived years of torture in a North Vietnamese POW
camp, many older Vietnamese consider him a hero. Many emigres even see
irony in the fact that South Vietnamese military leaders were sent to
forced-labor camps for "re-education" only two years after McCain was
released from the infamous prison camp dubbed the Hanoi Hilton.
"Many South Vietnamese were going into the communist jails," Vu said,
"as McCain was getting out of one."
Still, "I understand why the young people like Obama," Vu said. "And
that’s OK."
Hung Duc Lai of San Jose, a former South Vietnamese army captain and
longtime general secretary of the Coalition of Nationalist Vietnamese
Organizations of Northern California, also understands. He and his
wife, Mai, are staunch Republicans, and their two twentysomething
daughters are ardent Democrats.
"It’s a free country," Lai, 61, said with a laugh.
Overall, Vietnamese emigres are still strongly Republican - a fact
reflected in a ground-breaking national poll of Asian-Americans
released last month by the University of California-Berkeley and three
other major universities.
The poll found that all Asian-American groups with the exception of
Vietnamese-Americans supported Obama over McCain. Fifty-one percent of
Vietnamese-Americans said they were for McCain; 24 percent were for
Obama, with the rest undecided.
But a deeper analysis of the poll shows the generational split.
Forty-five percent of Vietnamese-American likely voters age 40 and
older told pollsters they were Republicans, and 20 percent said they
were Democrats, according to researcher Karthick Ramakrishnan of UC-
Riverside. But 49 percent of Vietnamese-American likely voters under
age 40 identified themselves as Democrats; 16 percent said they were
Republicans.
The Vietnamese love affair with the Republican Party was highly
similar to the love Cubans showed the party after communist dictator
Fidel Castro forced them to flee to U.S. shores.
When Vietnamese started becoming citizens in the early 1980s, Ronald
Reagan was president. Reagan, a longtime Cold Warrior, was viewed by
Vietnamese emigres as the perfect commander in chief. So the
overwhelming majority of them signed on with the GOP.
"We saw Reagan as very strong - a cowboy with a lot of charm," Lai
said.
"Reagan captured Vietnamese hearts and minds in the U.S.," said Andrew
Lam, author of "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese
Diaspora." And "that impression stayed with the Vietnamese here a long
time."
The impression often frustrated Dovan, the San Jose attorney, who
often points out to his Republican Vietnamese friends that two
Democratic presidents - Kennedy and Johnson - sent U.S. troops to aid
South Vietnam and that two Republican presidents - Nixon and Ford -
decided to extricate the U.S. from Vietnam. Ford, Dovan points out,
even cut off funds to South Vietnam as the communists were about to
take over.
"But it doesn’t seem to matter, just as it doesn’t seem to matter that
John McCain was in favor of normalizing relations with Vietnam in the
mid-’90s," a position that anti-communist Vietnamese fiercely opposed,
Dovan said.
Most older Vietnamese emigres also forgave McCain when, during his
2000 presidential bid, he called his North Vietnamese captors "gooks"
- a disparaging term for Asians often used by U.S. troops during the
war.
Democratic Party officials first made inroads into the Vietnamese
Republican stronghold in 1992, when Bill Clinton ran for president.
Clinton even met with Vietnamese-American leaders in Orange County’s
Little Saigon. And by the end of the decade, 33 percent of new
Vietnamese-American voters in Santa Clara County were registering as
Democrats and 28 percent as Republicans, a 1999 computer analysis
showed.
Since then, as Vietnamese immigration has slowed and the number of
American-born Vietnamese has jumped, Democratic causes such as social
and economic justice have taken root in the community.
Quynh Lai, Hung Duc Lai’s 27-year-old daughter, a marine biology
student at San Jose State University, said it was an easy call to go
with the Democrats when she registered to vote at age 18.
Originally, she was most concerned with the abortion issue. "I knew
that I believed that I should have control over my own body," she
said. "I couldn’t believe that it was even an issue."
Now, nine years later, her biggest concerns are protecting the
environment and gay rights - and she still feels that Democratic
positions better match her views.
"I have a lot of gay friends," she said. "People need to be treated
equally."
She and her sister, 23-year-old Uyen, both attended Vietnamese school
on Sundays in San Jose for several years and have a solid
understanding of Vietnam’s history. They understand how their mother
and father lost their country. They understand why they support the
Republicans and John McCain.
The sisters say they love and respect their parents but just don’t
like the GOP.
"Republicans are conservative and want things to stay the same," said
Uyen Lai, who recently graduated with a B.A. in psychology from San
Jose State. "I want to see change."
___
(San Jose Mercury News news research director Leigh Poitinger
contributed to this report.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------