Is Van Tran the GOP's future?
On the heels of an election marked by a dismal performance among Asian voters, top Republicans are aggressively recruiting California Assemblyman Van Tran, a Vietnamese-American, to challenge Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) next year.
If elected, Tran would be the second Vietnamese-American in Congress, after Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao (R-La.), who won his seat in a 2008 election.
Tran has already been feted at the National Republican Congressional Committee’s March fundraising dinner as a guest of the committee’s recruitment chairman, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and he was encouraged to run by House Minority Leader John Boehner and Minority Whip Eric Cantor. He also made a trip to Washington after last November’s election to meet with officials from the NRCC.
Even Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has assisted in the recruitment process, meeting with Tran and offering support for any potential candidacy. Tran was an outspoken backer of McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign and helped him carry Orange County over Mitt Romney in the Republican presidential primary.
According to the National Asian American Survey, in the general election, McCain won the Vietnamese vote by a wide margin in 2008 — the only Asian group he carried.
“I’ve been working on recruitment, and this is one of the top people I’ve gone after since the very beginning,” said McCarthy, who served in the state Assembly with Tran. “Tran transcends Republican politics, and he will be able to reach out to independents and moderate Democrats.”
Tran’s appeal to the party is rooted in the ethnic composition of Sanchez’s district. It is home to the largest concentration of Vietnamese-Americans in the entire nation — about 15 percent of registered voters in California’s 47th Congressional District are Vietnamese.
And while the number of Hispanic voters in the district is more than twice that — pegged at 34 percent by the state Board of Elections — their turnout rate has been traditionally lower than the Vietnamese community. Republicans believe Vietnamese voters would rally behind Tran if he ran, making that turnout disparity even greater…
Sanchez herself is a testament to the district’s demographic evolution: She defeated former GOP Rep. Bob Dornan in 1996 by taking advantage of the growing influx of Hispanic voters into the Orange County-based district. Republicans believe that a mobilized Vietnamese community could pose a similar threat to Sanchez…
Tran’s chief of staff, Paul Hegyi, said Tran is giving the congressional race a long look but hasn’t yet decided whether he’s running for Congress or seeking to remain in the Legislature.
“Van’s been flattered by the attention he’s received and the encouragement,” said Hegyi. “He has a longtime history in the district. He’s been thinking about running for Congress for a long time, and he’s very seriously considering it now.”
Click here to read the full story.