Garden Grove Mayor Bao Nguyen is in hot water after he voted against the decision by his City Council to send a letter to the City of Riverside protesting their decision to enter into a sister-city relationship with Can Tho, a city in Vietnam, according to the O.C. Register.
Apparently hundreds of Vietnamese-Americans protested at Riverside City Hall and wrote letters to the Riverside City Council asking that the relationship with Can Tho be rescinded due to the Vietnam’s Communist Party and its human-rights abuses.
Nugyen, who fled Vietnam as a youth, told his constituents that it was not “appropriate to tell another American city what to do.”
We agree with Nguyen. By now we should all know that the best way to do away with communism is to engage in trade with communist countries. Cold wars do nothing to advance peace – or change.
Nguyen will survive this turmoil but it may hurt his campaign to replace U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez, in the race for the 46th Congressional District, which she is vacating as she is running for the U.S. Senate next year. Nguyen is one of several Democrats vying to replace Sanchez.