In 1984, volunteers stood outside supermarkets in Orange County, clipboards in hand, helping fellow Vietnamese Americans register to vote.

Van Tran, then a freshman at UC Irvine, was one of them.

President Ronald Reagan was up for reelection, and the county’s Republican Party had launched an outreach effort targeting the growing Vietnamese population in Garden Grove and Westminster.

The GOP sent volunteers into the Little Saigon Vietnamese community to get them more involved in mainstream politics, Tran said. Anti-communism was at the forefront of the Reagan administration’s foreign policy agenda, and many Vietnamese Americans of that generation — less than 10 years from the fall of Saigon to the communist north — were strongly supportive of the president.

“The local party took advantage of the issues for the refugees as well as a strong national defense and anti-communism and built upon that,” said Tran, who became the first Vietnamese American to serve in a state legislature when he was elected to the California Assembly in 2004.

“There were activists who came into the community to recruit and assist in setting up the Vietnamese American Republican headquarters … prior to the 1984 election,” he said.

It was one of the first signs of political power emerging from Orange County’s Little Saigon, home to the largest Vietnamese population outside Vietnam.

Since then, the Vietnamese American community — in Orange County and across the U.S. — has become a voting bloc too big to ignore, helping elect lawmakers, attracting powerful allies and playing a role in shaping American policy on human rights. And in a historic first, Orange County’s Little Saigon now has one of its own in Congress: Rep. Derek Tran, the son of refugees, was elected last year to represent California’s 45th District — a sign, many say, of how far the community has come.

Now, with the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon approaching, the political influence of Little Saigons around the country is more visible than ever.

A campaign trail must

Little Saigon communities have become regular stops for presidential campaigns eager to woo Asian American voters.

But perhaps one of the more memorable visits came in 2000, when then-Sen. John McCain was in the midst of his first presidential run and visited Orange County’s enclave — with gratitude.

McCain, who died in 2018, was a naval aviator who was captured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, held and tortured for more than five years. Later, as a congressman and senator from Arizona, McCain worked to restore relations between the U.S. and Vietnam, while still railing against human rights violations in the Southeast Asian nation and any U.S. involvement in torture practices.

In 2000, McCain was greeted in Westminster to what was described then as a “hero’s welcome.” He spoke to a friendly crowd of about 3,000, according to reports at the time, about his campaign, but he also delivered a message of gratitude to those who fought in Vietnam, saying: “My experiences with you were the defining period of my life.”

Eight years later, McCain was the Republican presidential nominee — and the first presidential candidate to open a dedicated campaign office in Little Saigon, reports noted at the time. It was nestled in the Asian Village strip mall, near a travel agency, a stockbroker, a tae kwon do studio and a store selling tuxedos and wedding dresses.

The 2008 National Asian American Survey found that Vietnamese Americans leaned more Republican than other Asian groups and were much more likely to back McCain over eventual winner Barack Obama by a wide margin — 51% to 24%.

In 2008, 55% of voters in Westminster, widely considered the heart of Little Saigon, backed McCain, while just over 41% supported Obama. In nearby Garden Grove, about half of the ballots cast went to McCain, with 46% going to Obama.

“There’s no question that we owe a debt to the senator, who was a true war hero,” Van Tran, a chairperson for McCain’s California campaign, said at the time.

Voter sentiment has shifted only slightly over the years.

In 2020, 35% of Vietnamese voters said they felt closer to the Republican Party, while 7% picked Democrats, AAPI Data, a national research organization based at UC Berkeley that studies the Asian diaspora, found. That was the highest support for Republicans and the lowest for Democrats among all Asian groups. (This survey did not begin until 2012.)

By 2024, only 19% of Vietnamese voters said they felt closer to Republicans, and 18% picked the Democratic Party. Still, the majority of Vietnamese voters surveyed didn’t lean toward either party in either of those presidential years: 58% in 2020 and 59% in 2024 said they didn’t feel particularly close to Republicans or Democrats.

National campaigns often see Little Saigon as more than just a symbolic stop, said Christian Collet, a political scientist at Tokyo Christian University who has studied Vietnamese diaspora politics. For McCain, it was personal. For others, it can be a strategic decision.

“Presidential campaigns are really about the party in a lot of ways. Sure, it’s fundraising, it’s symbolism,” said Collet. “A trip to Little Saigon provides a lot of waving flags, cheering, enthusiasm. The backdrop is great. It’s a great campaign stop. It’s reliable. It’s reliable theater.”

Over the years, the bustling enclave in Orange County has drawn visits from former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then a presidential nominee. (Reports at the time said Hillary Clinton’s 2016 event did not draw many Vietnamese American voters.)

And in 2024, President Donald Trump, then the Republican nominee vying for a second term, made a campaign stop at the Eden Center in Falls Church, Virginia, a decades-old Vietnamese shopping center.

“The Vietnamese community loves me, and I love them,” Trump said there.

Community to Congress

That same year that Republican party activists focused on Vietnamese American voters in an effort to boost Reagan, they also opened a headquarters in the heart of Orange County’s Little Saigon to support congressional candidate Bob Dornan, an Air Force veteran who had covered the Vietnam War as a reporter.

It was a successful effort. Dornan was elected to represent a congressional district in central Orange County, defeating longtime Democratic incumbent Rep. Jerry Patterson in the same election that saw Reagan win reelection in a landslide.

Dornan had campaigned heavily in the Vietnamese community — then a still-burgeoning enclave of recent refugees, Van Tran said, which contributed to his success.

His background as a military veteran and war correspondent led to “that natural affinity with many leaders or elders in the Vietnamese communities who were veterans of the Vietnam War,” said Tran, an attorney who has stayed involved in Orange County politics.

Even at 92, the former congressman known for his fiery rhetoric and hardline views still gets fired up when talking about the Vietnamese people.

“The battle to save Vietnam from communism was close to my heart, eight trips over there,” he said. “Twenty years supporting Vietnamese freedom, ever since they fled from North Vietnam in 1954, all the way to the South, and then for them to lose their country. That was hard.”

Dornan also made good on a campaign promise to hire a Vietnamese staffer. Tran was his first.

And aside from personnel decisions, Congress has also taken note of the issues raised by the Vietnamese American community, establishing a dedicated caucus in 2004.

“Although relations between Vietnam and the U.S. — both politically, economically and militarily — continue to grow, given China, you still have a Vietnamese population in the United States that has significant political power and sway when it comes to foreign relations,” said Rep. Lou Correa, an Orange County Democrat who is one of the chairs of the Vietnam Caucus.

Correa pointed to lawmakers’ work to help “prisoners of conscience” — people under house arrest or in prison in Vietnam because of their beliefs — get released and brought to the U.S.

“It shows there is political strength in Little Saigon, not only here in Orange County, but across the country,” Correa said.

Loretta Sanchez, a Democrat and former longtime member of Congress, was one of the earlier non-Vietnamese elected officials to forge deep ties with Little Saigon. After her election in 1996 to a district in the core of Orange County, Sanchez played a key role in shaping U.S.-Vietnam relations during her tenure.

In 2000, she accompanied Bill Clinton on a historic trip to Vietnam, the first by a sitting U.S. president since the war. She said she used the opportunity to discuss human rights with dissidents, prompting the Vietnamese government to deny her entry on later trips.

But in 2007, she returned and publicly criticized the country’s lack of transparency. In Congress, she put forth resolutions condemning Vietnam’s human rights violations and calling for the release of jailed journalists.

“The U.S. must take a stand against Vietnam’s human rights violations,” she said on the House floor in 2010. “We are a beacon of freedom, of democracy, and it is our responsibility to speak out on behalf of those who have no voice.”

As for this year, Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican and a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he plans to reintroduce the Vietnam Human Rights Act — that says the State Department should help political and religious prisoners in Vietnam — along with his colleagues, as he’s done in years past.

“Here in Congress, we work together on a bipartisan basis in the Vietnam Caucus to not only commemorate the events of the past, but also to advance fundamental human rights concerns that the Vietnamese Communist Party denies the Vietnamese people,” Smith said.

A maturing political trajectory

Community leaders say the political influence built in Little Saigon is reaching the halls of Congress in a new way — through direct representation.

The 2024 elections saw Derek Tran, D-Orange, become the first Vietnamese American elected to Congress from California, representing Little Saigon.

He followed in the footsteps of Joseph Cao, a Republican from Louisiana, who in 2009 became the first Vietnamese American ever to serve in Congress. Born in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, Cao came to the U.S. as a refugee at the age of 8 during the fall of Saigon, according to his congressional biography.

In Orange County, Vietnamese Americans have gained political representation at the local level for decades, but Tran’s victory was widely seen as a breakthrough at the federal level. The congressman said he hopes to use his new platform to preserve Vietnamese history and uplift the next generation.

“It’s really about making sure that there’s this contribution to the country that Vietnamese Americans have given and been able to be part of in this great nation in the last 50 years,” said Tran.

Frank Jao, a prominent developer and longtime community leader in Little Saigon, said the Vietnamese American community’s political trajectory has matured over the years.

“The second generation of Vietnamese Americans (is) deeply involved in not only local politics, but they are also doing fairly well in the state, in congressional races. So they’ve gone much further than their first generation was able to accomplish,” he said.

Vietnamese Americans, Jao said, have secured state-level victories, including getting Orange County’s Little Saigon officially recognized as a tourist commercial destination.

Now, with a member of Congress from that community, he expects that impact to expand further.

“I wouldn’t be surprised that pretty soon the Vietnamese would learn how to echo that impact to Washington, D.C., on political matters of their concern,” he said.

Even so, others say that the presence of Vietnamese Americans at all levels of leadership — whether elected or as staffers — has made a tangible difference in how the community is served.

“Every single congressional representative … has had Vietnamese staffers,” said Tam Nguyen, a multi-generational business owner and former chair of the Vietnamese American Chamber of Commerce. “Every time there was a race or fundraising, we got calls.”

Nguyen said that growing clout has drawn national leaders to Little Saigon, including ambassadors, presidential appointees and other high-level officials.

“It was very evident that the Vietnamese American voting bloc was critical.”

A modest influence

While local wins in the Little Saigon community have paved the way for higher ambitions, Sanchez, the former congresswoman, said she believes internal divisions in the community have sometimes slowed national momentum.

“The sad thing is that, of course, as with any community, there tends to be different sides or cliques or what have you. And I think that because that did happen in this community, they have not been as successful in pushing Vietnamese onto the national level,” Sanchez said.

And Van Tran said he believes Orange County’s Vietnamese political influence is still modest compared to other groups.

“If you compare it to other ethnic communities … the influence and the power of the Vietnamese community is still very modest, modest at best,” Van Tran said. “It’s a function of time.”

Tung Bui, a professor who has studied the community’s evolution, agreed — and said younger generations are shifting priorities.

“If you look at the history of political engagement… you could see the first generation doing more on advocacy for human rights and democracy,” he said. “But then, if you look at the new generation now, they are looking more inward towards social justice, integration and those issues.”

But in Orange County, political engagement seems to translate to voter turnout.

In a 2007 election to fill a vacant county supervisor seat, Vietnamese Americans made up only 25% of registered voters in the district, but accounted for 45% of ballots cast.

And according to data from the Orange County Registrar of Voters, from 2012 to 2024, voters who received Vietnamese-language ballots consistently returned them at higher rates than those who received ballots in other languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Mandarin, Korean, Tagalog and Japanese.

Nationally, though, turnout isn’t quite so robust, studies have shown. In 2020, just 55% of Vietnamese Americans turned out to vote, one of the lowest turnout rates among Asian American groups, according to AAPI Data, a national research organization based at UC Berkeley that studies the Asian diaspora.

Nguyen says he believes the geographic concentration of the Vietnamese community in Orange County may be one reason for the stronger political activism seen locally.

“Seeing so many Vietnamese come together in a very dense, small area that you can pretty much wrap your arms around … I think that made advocacy and coalition building just easier, more organized,” he said.