New Blue America Congressional Candidate-- Bao Nguyen

Today Blue America is endorsing progressive Democrat Bao Nguyen for the Orange County congressional seat being abandoned by Blue Dog Loretta Sanchez as she runs for the U.S. Senate. CA-46, once a deep red GOP hellhole represented by right-wing sociopath Bob Dornan, has changed drastically over the last couple of decades. The PVI is now D+9, and Obama beat McCain 59-39% and Romney 61-36%. When Sanchez first won the seat from Dornan in 1996, she squeaked in with 984 votes, 47-46%, in what was considered a stunning upset. Last year she was reelected against Republican Adam Nick, 58.6% to 41.4%. It's the only blue congressional district in Orange County and has a two-thirds Hispanic population. The main population centers are Anaheim, Santa Ana and Orange, and it includes Disneyland.

Bao was elected mayor of the City of Garden Grove in 2014. He was born in a Thailand refugee camp after his mother, eight months pregnant, escaped a war-torn Vietnam. He arrived to the U.S. at three months of age and was raised in Orange County, and eventually earned a B.A. from the University of California, Irvine. While attending college, Nguyen interned for the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Mayor Nguyen made his first public statement coming out as a gay man while thanking Ted Osius, the first openly gay U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, for his positive influence. When asked about it he said, “It’s not news. I have always been openly me, and I think everyone should be free." 

Prior to his election as mayor, he served on the Garden Grove Unified School District Board of Education for three years, including a term as vice president, and last year he was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to serve on the Orange County Fair Board of Directors, California 32nd District Agricultural Association. Nguyen also holds a master’s degree in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and has a certification in mediation from the Dispute Resolution Program of the Orange County Human Relations Commission. He is trilingual in English, Spanish and Vietnamese.

I asked him to introduce himself to DWT readers on a day when he was consumed with the Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and prosecute the revolting war against women. Please read this, and if you'd like to help his campaign, you can contribute here.


In Defense of Planned Parenthood
by Mayor Bao Nguyen

As you have no likely heard, Republicans in the House and Senate are trying once again to defund Planned Parenthood. However, despite what some may believe, this action is not new and has nothing to do with a poorly edited video. There has been a constant effort of the Republican Party to use Planned Parenthood and women's health issues as a political football for decades.

Presidential candidates are using it as a fundraising tactic. Mike Huckabee and Rand Paul are both urging donors to "chip in a contribution" to defund Planned Parenthood. Jeb Bush recently said he would like to “Defund Planned Parenthood” because he is "not sure we need half a billion dollars for women's health issues.” Moving past the begging question of, how much IS appropriate to spend on women health? What former Governor Bush is referring to is the $528 Million tax dollars received by Planned Parenthood which is used primarily for STI/STD Testing and Treatments, Contraception, cancer screening treatments, and other women health services. These make up 97% of the services Planned Parenthood provide, and not a single federal cent is used for abortion, as has been the case since a law ensuring this was passed 1976. These subsidies are the reason that for many low income women all across the country, planned parenthood is their only option to get the health services they need.

Planned Parenthood is the most trusted women's health care provider in this country, and has been for nearly 100 years. It's clear this is a part of a decade-long campaign of deceiving the public, making false charges, and terrorizing women and their doctors, all in order to ban abortion and cut women off from care at Planned Parenthood.

For nearly 100 years, Planned Parenthood has been the nation's leading women's health provider, and they have extremely high standards. When there are questions, they look into them, and if there are problems, they fix them. That's not what this is about-- it's an extreme political agenda. It's no surprise that what was edited out of that video is how deeply Planned Parenthood providers care about the patients they serve, and the fact that they do this even in the face of hate, hostility, and threats.

That's what this campaign is really about. These are the politicians who have tried-- and failed-- to push an unpopular agenda that would take away access to birth control, do away with evidence-based sex education, and defund Planned Parenthood and the care we provide. Now they're hoping this video will give them some cover, to swing far to the right without the political ramifications they've faced in the past. We should call this latest attack campaign what it truly is-- part of a decade-long campaign of deceiving the public, making false charges, and terrorizing women and their doctors, all to ban abortion and cut women off from care at Planned Parenthood.

I want to ask you to get involved and make your voice heard. As a community organizer I know that the most powerful force for change in our county is the power of the people. So stand up and make your voice heard and say that women's health is not a political football it is not a tool for fundraising, it is a matter of life and death and I know I wont sit on the outside and watch this happen, I hope you will join me.