By: Kasie Hunt
July 28, 2010 05:21 PM EDT

Source: Politico.com

Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez co-chairs the Congressional Caucus on Vietnam, co-sponsored the Vietnam Human Rights Act, has worked to release Vietnamese political prisoners, employs a full-time Vietnamese caseworker in her California field office and has visited Vietnam twice.

This year, she’s finally facing a candidate who can directly challenge her from inside the community she has been working to help: Van Tran, a Vietnamese American who hasn’t been back to his homeland since April 25, 1975, when his family fled Saigon just five days before the city fell to the North Vietnamese.

And Tran, the Republican challenging Sanchez this fall, is making the race all about Vietnam.

“There’s a big debate in the community whether she’s effective or not — whether she’s doing it for lip service or for votes, because the big question is, after 14 years in the House, what substantial and tangible results can she show in terms of advancing Vietnamese democracy and human rights,” Tran told POLITICO in an interview Tuesday. “Show us your accomplishments — what bills, what legislation, what political prisoners?”

Conventional wisdome suggests Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA) is the most vulnerable GOPer in Congress, seeking re-election in a heavily African-American district in which any scandal-free Dem should easily top half the vote. But conventional wisdom has been wrong before, and a new poll for Cao's campaign hopes to prove it wrong again.

Cao led state Rep. Cedric Richmond (D) by a 51%-26% margin, according to a survey conducted May 27-June 2 by LA pollster Verne Kennedy. Cao leads Richmond by a 67%-13% margin among white voters, and by a narrower 39%-36% margin among African American voters.

Source: The Washington Post

By Sandhya Somashekhar and Amy Gardner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 

Robert F. McDonnell's stunning victory in Northern Virginia proves that Republicans can win in the region by doing exactly what Democrats have done: talking about the issues that matter to suburban voters.

McDonnell avoided discussion of divisive social issues such as abortion and gay rights, crafting his campaign around particular concerns raised by voters from Alexandria to Aldie. He reached out to minority communities and drilled so deeply into local concerns that he was discussing Lyme disease in one neighborhood and Guantanamo Bay prisoners in another.

This morning's Weekend Edition Sunday program on National Public Radio aired a segment exploring how the national trend of Asian Americans leaning heavily for Barack Obama is being bucked by large portions of the Vietnamese American community. While most national Asian American organziations and the largest proportions of polled APAs from diverse ethnic groups and regions are continuing their leftward trend in 2008, Vietnamese Americans have collectively remained Senator McCain's most stalwart supporters among Asian Americans.

Reporting from Little Saigon in Orange County, Ca., NPR interviews supporters explaining a strong connection they feel for the candidate, in lagre measure out of respect for his serving years in a North Vietnamese prison camp. Online audio for this story will be available at approx. 12:00 p.m. ET.

Meanwhile, as more detailed coverage by the Associated Press' Amy Taxin observes, the "special tie" many Vietnamese Americans feel for McCain has carried over from his time in Southeast Asia to his service in Congress. McCain's subsequent "efforts in Congress on behalf of Vietnamese refugees is being repaid" Taxin writes, in her report from a campaign office in a strip mall in Westminster, which she describes as "ground zero for efforts by Vietnamese-Americans to elect the Republican presidential candidate and, at the same time, increase their political influence."

On the Vietland website, a commentary attributed to Shandon Phan suggests that this sense of connection is not lost even on younger Vietnamese Americans, who may be at a generational remove from the war.

"As young Vietnamese Americans, some of us grew up listening to our parents
tell us bedtime stories of the war...Some may call it a burden, but we take
pride in treasuring that part of our history," Phan writes.

"As Vietnamese Americans who believe that Senator John McCain is uniquely
qualified to lead our nation, we have been handed an unprecedented opportunity
to express our gratitude for his sacrifices. Recognizing this opportunity also
demands us to act," Phan says.