Seeing Double? A Blue-Dog Dem Hopes to Flip Long Beach’s Only Red District

Many might be surprised to find out that Long Beach has a legislator elected to office as a Republican. Just one. Republicans currently control State Senate District 34, which is mostly North Orange County, but also contains a section of Long Beach’s east side, including Los Altos and Cal State Long Beach.

It’s a district Democrats have trained their crosshairs on leading up to today’s election, hoping for a flip, though the man in their corner is what you could call a paler shade of blue. The stakes: This race is one among a handful that could determine whether the Democrats reclaim a supermajority in the state senate.

Along with east Long Beach, the district includes sections of Anaheim, Huntington Beach, Orange, Los Alamitos, Fountain Valley, and Santa Ana. Cities beyond the orange curtain comprise over 75 percent of the district. Westminster’s Little Saigon is also in the district, home to some 36,000 Vietnamese Americans. It’s the biggest Little Saigon in the world and it’s where Republican incumbent Janet Nguyen finds her strongest base of support.

The Candidates

Nguyen fled Vietnam with her family by boat when she was five. Her family eventually settled in Garden Grove where she was first elected to public office in 2004. After serving on the Garden Grove City Council, she went on to be elected to the Orange County Board of Supervisors in 2007.

First elected to the State Senate in 2014 (the first Vietnamese-American elected to the body), Nguyen overcame a Democratic registration lead of five percent to defeat her opponent by double digits. That Democratic registration lead has grown to nine percent since then. That fact, coupled with heightened media attention of overlapping House races that Dems have been trying to make competitive, Nguyen is fighting hard to keep her seat.

Her competitor is 63-year-old Tom Umberg, who is no stranger to uphill races. Formerly the nation’s Deputy Drug Czar and a military man, he was first elected to the State Assembly in 1990. That year he was the only Democrat elected to the state legislature from Orange County, defeating the powerful Republican politician Curt Pringle.

He’s also no stranger to loss either; after his re-election to the assembly in 1992, Umberg lost four of the six elections he entered. These were for a host of positions including state Insurance Commissioner and California Attorney General. His most recent defeat was in 2007, a failed bid to join the Orange County Board of Supervisors that ended up going to, you guessed it, Janet Nguyen.

Both candidates, staffed with high-end consultants, are scuttling for the middle-of-the-road voter. Nguyen’s platform prominently features elements that you’d expect from a Democrat, like government grants for local schools; expanding health care services for the homeless, mentally ill and lower-income families; and support for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

Her conservative cred stems from the “A” rating she receives from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, staunch defenders of the landowner bonanza that is Prop. 13. No surprise, she’s also against the California gas tax.

She upped her statewide presence as a conservative voice last year when she was removed from the Senate floor for calling out deceased state legislator and anti-war activist Tom Hayden as being a Viet Cong enabler. She included the clip in ads that ran this year. When she got to the convention, she was something of a star, offering a conservative counterpoint to Elizabeth Warren’s “the lady persists” moment.

Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, who has endorsed Umberg, gave her a score of 29 percent.

Umberg’s campaign is appealing to traditional Orange County voters by focusing on his military background and “pragmatic” and “bipartisan” politics. An Umberg mailer stresses his law enforcement background with the tag “Fighting to Keep Our Communities Safe.” Paradoxically, the self-proclaimed progressive has another ad that features himself posing next to President Ronald Reagan and former First Lady Nancy Reagan, along with a caption that boasts his 100 percent conviction rate as an assistant U.S. Attorney in Orange County. It’s an image that represents a tacit approval of policies that have led to the mass incarceration of people of color. Yet the district Umberg is vying to represent, home to 925,000 people, is 70 percent non-white.

Along with his stint as a Deputy Drug Czar in the Clinton Administration (where he was an active enforcer of the war on drugs), he references an award he received from the California Police Chiefs for Legislator of the Year. In other words, he’s a politician of the law-and-order variety and he wants to make sure you know it.

Nguyen’s voting record places her firmly in the right column. She voted against an expansion of an open carry ban in public spaces, a state mandate for local governments to provide low-income housing, and a lessening of sentence enhancements for drug related crimes.

On the issue of immigration, she has shown public support for DACA, but voted against California’s Sanctuary State law, which bars state and local officials from assisting federal officials in the enforcement of immigration policy. Despite this, she did vote in favor of the Democrat-backed bill which allowed for a greater sharing of pricing information among employer groups helping them to negotiate lower healthcare costs. Many of her Republican colleagues voted against this legislation.

While in the Assembly, Umberg voted pretty consistently with his caucus but he’s been tepid about specific policy commitments during this campaign. Umberg believes healthcare is a right but is open (and noncommittal) to how this would manifest. He favors an incremental approach for universal healthcare access.

When asked by FORTHE Media about Sanctuary State laws, he did not fully commit to the idea that state and local resources should not be used to aid in enforcement of federal immigration policy. He does believe that undocumented immigrants not engaging in criminal activity should be exempt from deportation.

On Prop. 13, the monumental legislation enacted in 1978 that places a cap on property tax rates (which progressives are trying to constrict and which conservatives are trying to expand), Umberg speaks in worn platitudes saying he wants to “revamp” the entire tax code in the state.

Possibly more interesting than which candidate will win in this race is the question of whether the Democrat’s strategy of running a barely-blue Democrat in strongly held Republican district will be successful—it’s a strategy they’ve been criticized for by more progressive voters, who see little to get excited about in this race.

Umberg has a generally scandal-free past, despite a decades-long career in Washington and Sacramento. There was an extramarital affair that might have contributed to a failed State Senate run in 2006 but, with the support of his wife, his career overcame the hit. One issue that has come up is a recently purchased apartment Umberg is using as his residence in order to run for this seat. Nguyen supporters are calling him a carpetbagger. Umberg changed his voter registration from his Villa Park home to a Santa Ana apartment on Feb. 17, placing himself in the district. He announced his candidacy four days later.    

Nick Anas, Communications Director for the Umberg campaign, says that claims of carpetbagging are not a priority for the citizens of the district.

“[The voters] want someone that will fight for them, and Tom will do that,” said Anas. “I think that’s what the residents of the district are concerned about.”

Fighting for the District; Scuffling and Slinging

Nguyen, who did not comment for this piece despite multiple requests, enjoys the support of many local officials within her district.

Tomisin Oluwole
Dine with Me, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
36 x 24 inches

Click here to check out our interview with Tomisin Oluwole, a literary and visual artist based in Long Beach.

Instead of gunking up our site with ads, we use this space to display and promote the work of local artists.

Larry Crandall, a member of the Fountain Valley City Council (where Nguyen currently resides) touts her accessibility. A long time city official, Crandall’s gotten used to state legislators giving him the “Sacramento Waltz”. Not so with Nguyen.

“I know that if I need something from Sacramento she won’t just blow me off,” said Crandall.

Los Alamitos Mayor Troy Edgar echoes the sentiment.

“She’s always accessible,” he said.

Another reason for their support of Nguyen is her securing of funding for local projects, something she publicizes prominently. As a member of the State Allocation Board, Nguyen was able to get $5.5 million in modernization grants for four schools in the Los Alamitos and Westminster school districts. In May, she secured $10.6 million in seismic mitigation grants for Garden Grove Unified.

Carolyn Cavecche is the Chief Executive Officer of the Orange County Taxpayers Association and is the former mayor of Orange. Both Cavecche and the organization have endorsed Nguyen. Cavecche recalls a particular moment when they were both on the Board for the Orange County Transit Association. The recession had just hit and, with a decrease in tax revenue, transit lines were slated to be cut. Nguyen was the lone dissenting vote against cuts, which ultimately equaled an eight percent reduction of the county’s bus service.

“Ridership started to drop because of the economy folding. She was very strong on preserving buslines within her district (Santa Ana and Garden Grove) where a lot of our riders were. They needed the bus the most. She was [adamant] that rates didn’t get raised and lines weren’t gotten rid of. That was a huge priority for her,” said Cavecche.

And though supporters praise Nguyen as a fighter for the district, her detractors paint a picture of a calculating pol who’s not afraid to throw some jabs, even at those in her own party.

It’s been reported that Nguyen will take to Vietnamese-language media to attack rivals.

Her attacks on Umberg have been spirited to say the least. She sent out a mailer in Vietnamese accusing the retired army colonel of being a communist sympathizer, a potent attack in the Vietnamese-American community whose members include refugees of a violent communist regime. Nguyen’s former Chief of Staff Andrew Do has similarly claimed that she has accused him of being a communist sympathizer.

Do campaigned for Nguyen in her successful bid for an Orange County Board of Supervisors seat in 2014. Nguyen returned the favor, assisting Do in getting elected to the seat she vacated on the Garden Grove City Council and later to the Board of Supervisors seat that he currently occupies, which she left to join the State Senate. However, Nguyen did an about-face when Do ran for reelection four years later. She deployed a Vietnamese robo-call during Do’s primary run for the board of supervisors, telling voters not to support him.

Voice of OC reported that Orange County GOP Chairman Fred Whitaker has pleaded with Do to stop attacking Nguyen within the Vietnamese community. Do shot back in an email to Whitaker: “When Janet Nguyen messed around with other Vietnamese Republicans’ campaigns, including my own, I got lip service from you and others as to how disappointed you were, but I noticed the party stayed away. The convenient excuse then was you had no way of knowing who did what and who said what. Little Saigon politics was maybe a bit too backwater for your understanding.”

Art Pedroza, candidate for Santa Ana School Board and libertarian blogger with deep ties in Orange County Republican politics (and an ally of Democratic Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido who himself has dogged accusations of impropriety), says this is par for the course with Janet.

“She doesn’t care who she casts aside,” said Pedroza. “As long as she lands on top.”  

Blue Wave Coming?

The fate of State Senate District 34 may very well be tied to competitive House of Representative races that overlap it. Democrats are hoping to recapture the House and reign in the Trump administration, while the base is eager for a chance to impeach the president, which would require only a simple majority in the House to initiate.

What was once considered a strong hold of the conservative movement—Reagan country, and before that, Nixon country—demographic shifts over the past few generations have moved the whole county to the center. The most recent voter registration data provided by the county has Republicans with an edge of under 20,000 voters. That’s compared with a 125,000 voter lead Republicans had just four years ago. In 2016, the county voted in favor of Hillary Clinton by 5 percent, the first time Orange County Voters elected a Democrat President since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936.

“We’re seeing really high Democratic engagement [in State Senate District 34] because it overlaps with other really exciting congressional races,” said Rachel of the Orange County Democrats. “We have Harley Rouda’s congressional campaign that’s running in that same area and its generating some much grassroots energy. And that’s carrying over with folks looking at who’s down the ballot.”

The House races in California have drawn major firing power from both sides, as they are among some of the most contested in the nation. At a recent Get Out The Vote event for Umberg, Congressman Adam Schiff made an appearance. Schiff, a member of the House Select Intelligence Committee, is a long time friend of Umberg’s. He’s becoming a darling of the anti-Trump left for his perseverance in investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and at the event, hosted by the Seal Beach Democrats Club, the audience fawned over this leader of the resistance.

“What you are doing,” said Schiff to campaign workers, “ensures not only that in the state legislature we have a bastion of progressive values, it also helps Harley and everyone up and down the ticket.”

On the state level, this race could give back the super majority to Democrats in the State Senate. They lost it after Republicans recalled State Senator Josh Newman (D-Fullerton) over his support of the “gas tax,” a repeal of which will also be voted on today.

Nguyen’s official campaign committee raised $994,101 from Jan. 1 thru Oct. 20. Some of her top donors are the California Republican Party ($233,740), California Real Estate PAC ($15,600), California Dental PAC ($7,200), Farmers Insurance Group ($11,300), Astrazeneca ($5,300), AT&T ($3,100), Chevron ($4,600), United Health Group ($4,300), Santa Ana Police Officers ($7,300), and Blue Shield of California ($4,700).

Umberg’s official campaign committee raised $1,411,765 in the same period. Some of his top donors are the California Democratic Party ($434,473), the California Teachers Association ($8,800), California State Council of Laborers ($13,200), International Longshore And Warehouse Union Local 13 PAC ($8,800), American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees ($17,600), and ActBlue ($16,742).

If you want to see more local journalism that doesn’t require a conflict of interest disclaimer and isn’t owned by corporate interests, please consider supporting Long Beach grassroots media by subscribing to FORTHE.