To Vietnamese Voters, Blood Is Thicker Than The Union Ties That Bind

I was chatting with OCEA General Manager Nick Berardino and OCEA General Counsel Don Drozd after the Board of Supes decision this morning. We were marvelling at the magnitude of the Vietnamese turnout in the 1st SD special election and how it caught so many of us by surprise.

Nick shared an anecdote which vividly illustrates how much the election of a Vietnamese=American candidate to the Board of Supervisors meant to the Vietnamese community.

Nick told me that in late January, they (they being the unions) started a pro-Tom Umberg Vietnamese phone bank staffed by Vietnamese union members. After about a week, the question occurred to someone: "How do we know they're really asking people to vote for Tom Umberg?"

Nick Berardino said they decided to station a Vietnamese-speaker within earshot of the phone bankers to listen to what they were saying.

"Sure enough," Nick told me, "they weren't saying anything about Umberg. They were just telling people to vote." Since Janet Nguyen and Trung Nguyen received virtually all the Vietnamese-American votes, the local public employee unions were running a de facto GOTV phone bank for GOPers Janet and Trung -- and they quickly pulled the plug on the Vietnamese election outreach.

Nick pointed out that these Vietnamese-American phone bankers are dedicated  union people. Whereas the average member might walk a single precinct and knock off by early afternoon, Nick Berardino said these folks will walk three, maybe four precincts in a day.

But even that level of dedication to the union gave way before their enthusiasm for electing one of their own as OC's first Vietnamese -American Supervisor.