Derek Tran took an initial large lead over Chuong Vo in the 45th Congressional District race Tuesday night, according to early returns released by the California secretary of state’s office. Tran is finishing his first term in Congress while representing a district that includes Orange County’s Little Saigon.
The district includes Cerritos in L.A. County, along with Buena Park, Cypress, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove and Westminster in Orange County. Voters in those communities are following the count as Tran and Vo move through the first tabulation of the race.
Orange County and Cerritos
Tran and Vo bring similar family histories into the race, even as they compete on opposite party lines in a district with a large Vietnamese American population. Both candidates are children of Vietnamese refugees, a background that has shaped how each presents his candidacy to voters in Orange County and Cerritos.
Tran’s father fled Vietnam by boat after the fall of Saigon. The boat capsized, killing his wife and children, before he later remarried and successfully left Vietnam for the U.S. Tran was born and raised in Los Angeles County.
Chuong Vo in the 45th Congressional District
Vo served nearly three decades as a police officer before running for Congress. He came to the U.S. from Vietnam as a refugee with his parents and wrote on his campaign website, “like so many immigrant families, I’m grateful to a country that gave my family a chance, and I want to keep that promise alive for the next generation.”
Registered voters in the district are split among Democrats at 38.77%, Republicans at 30.08% and no party preference at 25.29%. That breakdown gives the race a clear partisan frame as the count continues, with Tran’s opening lead setting the first benchmark for the final result.
Little Saigon and the count
Little Saigon, part of Tran’s district, is home to the largest Vietnamese population outside Vietnam, which gives the race added attention for Vietnamese American voters. The next step is the continued vote count, and the main question is whether Tran keeps the margin he built in the early returns.
