Madison Nguyen

Madison Phuong Nguyen (born 1975 in Vietnam) is an American politician from California. She has served on the San Jose, California City Council since September 2005, representing District 7; she was the first Vietnamese American elected to the council.

Early life

Born in Vietnam to fisherman father Nho and his wife Dang, Nguyen and her family fled Vietnam by boat when she was only four; they were initially resettled in a refugee camp in the Philippines until a Lutheran family in Scottsdale, Arizona sponsored them to migrate there in the 1980s. Her father worked as a janitor, receiving only a wage of $10/hour to support his wife and nine children. Eventually, he moved his family to Modesto, California in search of higher wages picking fruit in the Central Valley; Madison worked in the fields alongside her father as a teenager. She is one of eight siblings.

Nguyen has said she was more outspoken than most girls in her culture, and that her Asian American peers often derisively referred to her as a "banana", yellow on the outside but white on the inside. She naturalized as a U.S. citizen around age 18, choosing the name "Madison". In various sources, she has stated that she chose it either due to former president James Madison or Daryl Hannah's character in the movie Splash; she felt it reflected her desire to be perceived as sophisticated. She went on to receive her Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of California, Santa Cruz; and her Masters Degree in Social Science from the University of Chicago. She returned to California in 2000 to pursue a Ph.D in sociology at U.C. Santa Cruz.

Political career

School board

Nguyen began to become more involved in politics in 2001, while working as a sociology instructor at De Anza Community College; inspired by MTV's "Rock the Vote" campaign, she and a colleague organized a voter drive in which 5,500 Vietnamese Americans registered to vote for the first time. She followed that up with a run for a position on the Franklin-McKinley School District Board of Education, hoping that her election would help to reduce the suspicion that the Vietnamese American community often demonstrated towards politics. Her win made her one of the first two school board officials of Vietnamese descent in the entire United States; the other, elected around the same time, was Lan Nguyen of Garden Grove, a city in southern California's Orange County. However, it was Nguyen's organization of protests in support of Bich Cau Thi Tran, a Vietnamese woman shot to death by San Jose police, which brought her to the forefront of people's minds in the Vietnamese American community. Nguyen, who felt the incident was being ignored by the public and the media, organized a rally to which 250 people showed up. At the time, she denied having any larger political aspirations, instead emphasizing that she eventually aimed to become a professor at an area university.

City Council

Nguyen would eventually turn the recognition she received from the Tran shooting into further political success in September 2005, when she ran in the election for the San Jose City Council in a special election to replace Terry Gregory as Councilperson for District 7. Vietnamese Americans, who formed less than 10% of San Jose's population at the time turned, out in record numbers during the primary election in June to support Madison Nguyen and co-ethnic Linda Nguyen, pushing them ahead of seven other candidates. Madison Nguyen won 44% of the primary vote, while Linda Nguyen, a real estate attorney, received 27%. In the end, Nguyen received 62% of the votes cast, beating out Linda Nguyen to become the first Vietnamese American to serve on the San Jose City Council.

District naming controversy and recall attempt

Nguyen's support from the Vietnamese American community suffered a sharp reversal in early January 2008, in a controversy over whether a San Jose neighborhood with a preponderance of Vietnamese-owned businesses should be renamed as "Little Saigon" or "Saigon Business District". Little Saigon is a common name used for various other Vietnamese-American communities and is often used as a sign of defiance towards the current government of Vietnam. Nguyen opted to use "Saigon Business District" because of the political implications of the name "Little Saigon". Supporters of the Little Saigon name denounced Nguyen as a traitor to the community, and also attacked a lone counter-protester outside of City Hall that night, who was holding a sign asking them to "Please stop offending our Vietnamese tradition, culture and ethics" and accused them of singling out Nguyen unfairly for her lack of support. Mayor Chuck Reed stated that supporters of the Little Saigon name "are the most vocal, but may not be the majority"; fellow council member Judy Chirco went farther in her criticisms, complaining after the January 8 meeting and vote on the issue that "I have heard more disrespect tonight than I ever thought I would hear from the Vietnamese community". Both refused to retract their statements when pressed.

Backlash against Nguyen continued to grow throughout January; she was disinvited from the city's annual Tết parade, organized by political opponent Linda Nguyen. Activist Ly Tong even started a hunger strike out of anger at the "Saigon Business District" name, which lasted from February 15 to mid-March. However, support for the "Little Saigon" name was not unanimous; on February 12, 350 local Vietnamese American residents, prominent businesspeople and anti-communists among them, also issued a statement emphasizing that the "Little Saigon" supporters did not represent them. That same day, Nguyen and Reed proposed putting the issue to a public referendum, in an effort to mollify critics; however, this proposal was withdrawn ten days later due to the estimated cost of $2.7 million and the fear that the vote would prove even more divisive to the community. A March 2 protest against the "Saigon Business District" name drew 2,500 people; they accused Nguyen of having conspired with Chinese American real estate developer Lap Tang to fight the name "Little Saigon" and instead use a name proposed by Chinese American Tang, "Vietnam Town Business District."

On March 4, the city council voted to rescind the "Saigon Business District" name, but stopped short of renaming it "Little Saigon"; instead, they proposed setting up a process by which business owners could choose district names. However, anger against Nguyen remained; on April 22, the issue was reopened with the submission of recall papers against Nguyen by the Recall Madison Nguyen committee. On October 9, the petition qualified for the March 3, 2009 ballot, having garnered more than 150% of the needed valid signatures. On March 3, 2009, voters rejected the recall attempt with a 55-45 percentile vote.

External links

• Campaign homepage
• District 7 on the San Jose city government website
• What's Happening in San Jose Vietnamese Community from the Vietnamese American Council; contains several news stories on Madison Nguyen
• This American Life - Episode 381: Turncoat Act one is about Madison Nguyen and the district naming controversy