Madison Nguyen, wearing black athletic pants and tennis shoes, walks with her 12-year-old daughter Olivia Tran in scorching 93-degree heat, canvassing an East San Jose neighborhood across from Story Road. They coordinate reading out house numbers, before her daughter jogs down the street to convince residents to vote for her mom as the next Santa Clara County supervisor.
Nguyen is competing against Betty Duong for the open Board of Supervisors seat in District 2, with Cindy Chavez terming out. Nguyen and Duong were the top two contenders in the March primaries. Nguyen said it’s important her daughter sees her mom campaigning to become the first Vietnamese American supervisor in the county. She’s grateful her daughter can watch her pursuing politics rather than growing up as she did, living in Modesto in Section 8 housing eating copious amounts of government cheese.
“When I was her age, I was working in the fields with my parents,” Nguyen told San José Spotlight. “Now she’s walking precincts with me. In one generation, you can change that.”
Nguyen, 49, has made history before as the first Vietnamese American woman on the San Jose City Council. She served from 2005 to 2014, including a stint as vice mayor, where she helped preserve 58 San Jose mobile home parks and aided in bringing more than 1,000 affordable homes into her district.
After leaving politics for about a decade, she wants to make history again by representing District 2, which covers East San Jose and parts of downtown with a large Vietnamese population. She announced her candidacy in May 2023 and has learned many residents don’t know what a county supervisor does.
Nguyen’s priorities include affordable housing, homelessness and public safety, all under a transparent lens. If elected, she would require annual service audits analyzing the effectiveness of the programs in place to hold the county accountable for its funds.
She said San Jose and Santa Clara County need to work together on homelessness — with city-provided housing and county-provided supportive services such as mental health and substance use rehabilitation on site — so people don’t end up back on the streets. She wants to use funding from Proposition 1, a $6.4 billion bond measure passed in March, to help provide more housing and mental health services.
“I am the change candidate. I want to bring accountability to the board of supervisors,” she said. “I want to see results.”
The race is personal to Nguyen, who came to the U.S. as a daughter of farmworkers and Vietnamese immigrants who used government services to survive. She attended University of California, Santa Cruz where she received a history degree. She also holds a master’s degree from the University of Chicago and began her political career as a Franklin-McKinley School District board member in 2002, becoming one of the first Vietnamese Americans elected to a U.S. school board. She launched a college initiative program there.
Following her time on the city council and an unsuccessful state Assembly run in 2016, Nguyen held executive positions at nonprofit Hunger at Home and the San Jose Chamber of Commerce before taking her latest position as executive vice president at AsianNet Media. She said she couldn’t stay away from politics because of her frustration with the way things are going.
Don Gage met Nguyen during her city council years while he was District 1 county supervisor. He said he endorsed her because she listened to the communities she served and got things done.
“She’s a hard worker and she’s honest,” he told San José Spotlight. “She does what she says she’s going to do and I appreciate that because we need that in our government.”
Nguyen and her daughter canvass neighborhoods together almost every day with volunteers, as long as Tran has finished her homework. They listen to neighbors’ concerns, handing out flyers and magnets with phone numbers for county and city services during the race’s final stretch.
Mary Barragan is one resident Nguyen met while canvassing. Barragan said Nguyen had her vote after Nguyen spoke about her priorities.
“The women will tell them how to do it,” she said to Nguyen.
After spending a long day speaking with voters, Nguyen reflects on how so many residents want to see change. She wants to be that change.
“With my lived experience, should I get elected, it would be such an incredible opportunity to provide similar services to a lot of families in our county district, understanding the needs of the community and understanding the needs of immigrant families… that came to this country to seek better educational and economic opportunities,” she told San José Spotlight.
Contact Annalise Freimarck at [email protected] or follow @annalise_ellen on X, formerly known as Twitter.
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