Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:01:16] Guy Marzorati is a politics and government correspondent for KQED.
Guy Marzorati: [00:01:21] The county has a huge budget, in this case, $12 billion roughly, that they’re spending every year. Roughly half of that is just on health care and the hospital system. But supervisors also do oversee other parts of county government, from the sheriffs to the county jails, the elections office and also in the South Bay and Santa Clara County. The board has gotten more involved in housing development in the last decade, using public funds to address the affordable housing shortfall we have in the South Bay. So there’s a huge responsibility and a huge kind of fiscal oversight that the county board has.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:02:02] There are two open seats now on this board of supervisors. One in District five, which represents Palo Alto, Mountain View, Cupertino, Saratoga, Los Gatos, and District two, which is the the race we’re talking about today, which is entirely within San Jose and kind of a big deal, right, Guy?
Guy Marzorati: [00:02:25] Yeah. I mean, San Jose is the only city in District two and this seat covers a real variety of neighborhoods. You have downtown San Jose, you have some neighborhoods south of downtown and in the city’s East side, Alum Rock, Little Saigon. So it’s really an ethnically and racially diverse district. Just looking at registered voters, it’s basically like a third Latino, a third Asian and a third white. So to win this seat, they’re going to need to run campaigns that really speak to voters across race and ethnicity.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:02:58] And what have voters in this part of the county told you about some of the issues that they’re thinking about this election?
Guy Marzorati: [00:03:07] Yeah, I’ve heard a lot of, you know, the same issues come up from voters, but from different perspectives.
Aaron Resendez: [00:03:13] You know, both are good candidates, but I’m voting for Madison.
Guy Marzorati: [00:03:16] So I talked to Aaron Resendez. He’s a longtime resident of the East Side. He’s been really involved in community politics. He’s a business consultant. He’s supporting Madison Nguyen in this race. And he talked about kind of just like the feeling of almost like shame he has, as a longtime resident of seeing homelessness and so much blight in his community.
Aaron Resendez: [00:03:39] But he did that, like with Cindy Chapman was that was not enough. And we just have the homeless population so bad.
Guy Marzorati: [00:03:48] I also talked to Christina Bui, who is a business owner, runs a bridal shop in Line Plaza, and she kind of pointed to the same conditions as Rezendes. But from a small business perspective.
Christina Bui: [00:04:00] We want our streets to be clean.
Guy Marzorati: [00:04:03] She says. You know, these same kind of issues of blight make it hard to run a business and be in this race is supporting Betty Duong.
Christina Bui: [00:04:11] With the county and the city and their help. You know, we can make this place a better place for not just the community, but for our businesses as well. So let’s get into the race for this open seat in District two, then Guy, a seat that’s left open by supervisor Cindy Chavez, a longtime politician in the South Bay for the last 25 years. But she is turning out of the supervisor seat. What does it mean that she’s leaving?
Guy Marzorati: [00:04:46] Yeah, it’s a big deal. And when you think about kind of the two traditional wings of South Bay politics, the business moderate wing, the kind of labor progressive wing Cindy Chavez has been the face of that labor wing of politics in the South Bay. She’s been in this seat since 2013. So you have the fact of this, you know, longtime voice for labor and voice for these communities leaving. You also have this seat now that I think a lot of labor groups feel like we have to defend this seat on the county board of supervisors.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:05:18] Right. And there are two women running to replace her. One is actually Chavez’s chief of staff, Betty Duong, and a former San Jose City Council member, Madison Nguyen. And before we get into the specifics of each candidate, they do have one thing in common, which is that if either of them wins, they’ll be the first Vietnamese-American on the board of supervisors, right?
Guy Marzorati: [00:05:43] That’s right. And it’s certainly, I think, definitely a moment of history for the Vietnamese-American community in the South Bay. There is roughly 140,000 Vietnamese Americans in Santa Clara County. San Jose, by some estimates, has the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam. And this district, District two, has, it’s safe to say, has really been historically shaped by Vietnamese residents. Since they started arriving in the county in the mid-seventies after the fall of Saigon. You know, we saw initially a lot of refugees settle around downtown, really revitalized San Jose’s core in the late 70s. And then leading up to today, where you have these really thriving commercial districts in Little Saigon like Vietnam Town. So Vietnamese-American residents have shaped San Jose for decades and decades. And certainly this moment would be a big achievement in terms of political representation.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:06:33] And both these candidates are really part of that legacy. And I want to talk more a little bit about who they are starting with, Madison Nguyen, what’s her sort of personal bio? What are her roots in San Jose and how how did she get started in politics?
Madison Nguyen: [00:06:48] So I am what you call a a boat baby.
Guy Marzorati: [00:06:53] Yeah. So Madison Nguyen came with her family from Vietnam to the U.S. as a refugee. I think she was 3 or 4 years old.
Madison Nguyen: [00:06:59] We were rescued by a Philippine freighter who took us to the Philippines refugee camps. So we were there for about almost three years. And before we were sponsored by a Lutheran church to go to America.
Guy Marzorati: [00:07:13] She grew up in the Central Valley and worked kind of in the agricultural business. Her family was then she was picking almonds, apricots, peaches.
Madison Nguyen: [00:07:22] We live in a Section eight, you know, house that was that was subsidized by the local government. And I had, you know, free lunches at the elementary school, middle school and high school.
Guy Marzorati: [00:07:34] She went to UC Santa Cruz. She was eventually a community college instructor at Danza and then eventually ran for this local school board seat in the Franklin McKinley School District. She became, at that time, the first Vietnamese-American woman in state history to hold public office. She also was the first Vietnamese-American council member in San Jose history when she won election in 2005, later became the city’s vice mayor. So she’s already, you know, made history and been a real name in South Bay politics before this election.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:08:05] And how does when talk about the issues that matter to her in this race for board of supervisors.
Guy Marzorati: [00:08:13] So when really comes from that more moderate business flank of South Bay politics, although she had labor support earlier in her career, she’s more of a business aligned candidate at this point. And how that translates into issues, you can start with housing.
Madison Nguyen: [00:08:28] I definitely think that we should spend a differently than what we have been doing in the past.
Guy Marzorati: [00:08:32] I think Nguyen would like to see Santa Clara County align more with the strategies we’ve seen the city of San Jose pursue under Mayor Matt Mahan, which is a shift in funding away from permanent affordable housing towards more short term transitional housing and.
Madison Nguyen: [00:08:48] Shelter For a minute, affordable housing, that’s always going to be the goal, the end goal, right? But before we get there, we have to get them transitioned into temporary temporary housing.
Guy Marzorati: [00:08:59] She’s also probably a little bit more to the center in terms of criminal justice and policing. She’s been an outspoken supporter of Proposition 36 to enact some tougher sentences statewide. So that’s kind of the framing policy wise in which she’s approaching this election.
Madison Nguyen: [00:09:16] We need to get drug dealers off the street. We need to make sure that when people commit a felony, that they pay for their crime. And we need to be very diligent in working together to ensure that, you know, that that we provide public safety for our residents.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:09:35] And who’s coming out in support of her.
Guy Marzorati: [00:09:37] So we have seen support for Nguyen come from some of the leading moderate politicians in the region, most notably San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who’s endorsed her candidacy. And I think this speaks to really the integral relationship that the District two supervisor will have with the city of San Jose. Right. As the person representing downtown and much of the east side. Like that’s that’s a really important relationship. And then she’s also gotten financially more of the, you know, kind of traditional business backing.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:10:15] Coming up, what candidate Betty Duong is all about and how the two represent a shift in Vietnamese-American politics in the South Bay. Stay with us.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:10:35] And what about Betty Duong? What is her personal bio and and what was her pathway into politics like?
Betty Duong: [00:10:43] So my mom and dad came to Santa Clara County in the late 70s.
Guy Marzorati: [00:10:47] Yeah. So Betty Duong is a San Jose native. Her family participated in this refugee resettlement program in Santa Clara County. Growing up in Section eight housing in downtown San Jose.
Betty Duong: [00:10:57] And at that time when we were growing up, we relied heavily on county services as well. So that actually comes with lots of visits from social workers, inspections just to make sure the family’s doing well. So that again, that was.
Guy Marzorati: [00:11:08] I think it’s safe to say, like she probably has more government experience than most first time candidates. She’s been Cindy Chavez’s chief of staff. That means basically her like top deputy running her office. She previously ran the county’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement. She also led the campaign back in 2016 to pass a huge, affordable housing bond. This was measure A, this really kickstarted the county’s efforts to be involved in the housing development business.
Betty Duong: [00:11:37] We really were the first county to say, hey, we’re going to step in, even though nothing says it’s our job, we’re going to step and we’re going to take on housing as a response, playing a role for public safety, for health and for health and wellness and for just the humanity of it. Right.
Guy Marzorati: [00:11:52] So the issues that she’s emphasizing, they align a lot with what Madison Women’s emphasized as far as housing, homelessness, public safety, the strategies and the policy views are a little different.
Betty Duong: [00:12:04] So my priorities are to build more and more expanse and expand the type of housing that we’re going to build to be able to meet the needs of everybody who is housing insecure and unhoused right now and also build up prevention system.
Guy Marzorati: [00:12:18] Young would kind of more aligned with Cindy Chavez in supporting the development of affordable housing, putting more money towards prevention of homelessness, making sure that people have, you know, rent assistance and are not, you know, losing their apartments and ending up on the street and probably a kind of a staying the course as far as the county’s focus on permanent affordable housing rather than shifting towards a more shelter based approach in reducing homelessness.
Betty Duong: [00:12:45] I can tell you this, in the years that I have supported and been a part of the county’s housing efforts, helping someone stay house is going to be infinitely easier, right? Less costly, better outcomes and helping someone off the streets. I’m not saying we don’t do that still, but there’s an opportunity.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:13:01] And I imagine Labor is coming out in support of Betty Duong here. Who else?
Guy Marzorati: [00:13:08] Yeah. So she certainly has the support of organized labor in the county and also of a lot of, you know, labor backed politicians, whether that’s Cindy Chavez, whether that’s Dave Cortez, the the state senator, and the labor spectrum, It really is across the board from home health care workers to teamsters to county employees. I think you are seeing a broad labor coalition get behind Yang’s candidacy.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:13:37] Guy. How are both these candidates pitching themselves to voters?
Guy Marzorati: [00:13:43] Yeah, well, one thing I’ve really been interested in watching is like that dynamic of how both of these candidates are pitching themselves as change candidates. Madison Nguyen has been clear the county needs a new approach, like that’s her change argument. She’s offering change on the policy front and a move away from maybe how Cindy Chavez represented the district. Then you have Betty Duong, who has said again and again, like I’m a first time candidate, she’s offering change, really on the personal front. You know, Madison win is a more established figure, but that kind of comes with all the baggage that you see in local politics. You maybe have more established support. You also have a lot of established opposition. I mean, Nguyen survived a recall while she was on the city council. There was a recall attempt against her in 2009 over her push to change the name of Little Saigon to the Saigon business district. You still have some people upset over that. So she has this longer life in public office. And I think Young’s case is the change candidates. I’m a new face on the elected stage.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:14:49] And what about spending here? What’s that looking like?
Guy Marzorati: [00:14:53] Yes. So spending’s been really interesting to track. Duong has spent around $460,000 Nguyen has spent around 400,000. So there has been a lot of campaign spending. And then when you look outside of that, like the outside groups who have no limits on their abilities to spend, Yang is definitely benefited from hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by labor groups, including groups who are county employees like sheriffs, for example. The real thing that stood out to me, though, and caught my eye in the campaign. Spending is this new dynamic of this group called the California Alliance of Family Owned Businesses. They are funded by fast food franchise owners, and they’ve poured more than half $1 million roughly into this campaign. Both money opposing Duong and also supporting Nguyen. As you all have talked about, like this issue of local fast food wages, labor standards, this is really getting heated up in local politics. And we’ve seen this fight over, you know, fast food working conditions now move to the local level, you know, whoever is going to be elected, the next supervisor. This could potentially be an issue coming before the board whether Santa Clara should enact more local protections for fast food workers.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:16:11] And I mean, again, we are talking about a history making election here between these two. I mean, it would be a historic first, whoever it is who wins. There’s been media coverage about all this. But how front and center has this sort of representation factor been in the actual campaigning?
Guy Marzorati: [00:16:36] It’s not the first thing that these candidates are interested in talking about. I think part of that is the fact that with two Vietnamese Americans in this general election, it’s a guarantee that history is going to be made. And I think in some ways that’s kind of opened up the dialog between the candidates to be more about the issues because it’s a foregone conclusion. Whoever wins will become the county’s first Vietnamese-American supervisor. I also think it’s it speaks to districts, to diversity. Right. And just winning the Vietnamese American vote is not going to be enough to win this district. And you’ve seen both candidates really bring to this race long histories of working across community lines. I mean, Madison Nguyen represented District seven on the council. A plurality of residents there are Latino. And so I think the work that she did, you know, backing housing projects in the district, those were not specifically like Vietnamese-American issues. Same thing with Betty Duong. She’s worked in this district to office. One of the issues the board is is working on right now is setting up a Latino wellness center. So I think both Duong and Nguyen understand deeply that getting elected and effectively serving this district to community is not going to be through the kind of narrow lens of Vietnamese-American representation.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:17:51] Yeah, but it is interesting because you have these two candidates from the same community, but who represent sort of different kinds of politics. Like how do you see these two women representing the changes in politics within the Vietnamese-American community in San Jose over the years?
Guy Marzorati: [00:18:13] Yeah, this was something I talked about with Phillip Nguyen who’s with the Vietnamese-American roundtable about this kind of being like a real second generation election within the communities.
Philip Nguyen: [00:18:23] For the younger generation, at least my generation of folk, right? There is a there is a hope. And in being able to see that sort of representation in the political.
Guy Marzorati: [00:18:31] Process and we talked about that in two aspects. The first of which is the issues of, you know, Vietnam and some of the more polarizing issues around communism. Those are not front and center in this election.
Philip Nguyen: [00:18:45] Folks in San Jose probably have seen parades or cars with like flags going around like Eastridge Mall into Grand Central, Right. That are calling for freedom for Vietnam and like human rights for Vietnam, down with the communists. I think for that, for a long time, that was the only image of who Vietnamese Americans were in in San Jose. In San Jose. Right.
Guy Marzorati: [00:19:07] You know, you have the candidates focused on issues that you would likely hear about from any supervisor candidate, housing, public safety. Those have been, at least by the candidates themselves, what they’ve been centering in their campaigns.
Philip Nguyen: [00:19:20] What I and I think a lot of the Vietnamese American community see and in both candidates is a lot of hope and a direction forward, a way to move forward while still acknowledging that we are not yet done with healing from the past. Right. That these these wounds.
Guy Marzorati: [00:19:35] This the second piece of that, I think, is the fact that as you see Vietnamese-American candidates like white candidates, like Mexican-American candidates in San Jose fall within this kind of spectrum of labor and business. It just means really that this is just like a San Jose story.
Philip Nguyen: [00:19:52] And I think those camps have emerged in a way that is in alignment with how San Jose politics has kind of fallen into. Right. The Vietnamese-American community is is conforming to that political discourse. Right. Of like Vietnamese Americans who support more business oriented interests and more labor oriented interests. And then who? Those folks?
Guy Marzorati: [00:20:11] As you know, communities take hold within the region. You see kind of these broader political divides cut across different races, cut across different ethnicities. And I do think that’s something you definitely see at play here, even with two Vietnamese-American candidates.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:20:31] Okay. How might you summarize, I guess, the stakes of this specific election for San Jose and the South Bay more broadly?
Guy Marzorati: [00:20:39] There’s a huge responsibility that the county board has. And so it makes it a really important position and one that could really define policy direction within Santa Clara County for a while, because these are seats in which the winner gets three terms. You get to run for three, four year terms. And so when you’re talking about the winner of this race potentially holding this office for more than a decade, you really start to understand the significant impacts that this election could have on this community.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:21:12] Well, Guy, thank you so much for breaking this one down. I really appreciate it.
