Madison Nguyen: Seeing an example in the Samsung building
By Scott Herhold
sherhold@mercurynews .com
POSTED: 04/07/2014 12:00:00 PM PDT6 COMMENTS
UPDATED: 04/08/2014 06:40:23 AM PDT
Mayoral candidate Madison Nguyen in front of the construction site of the Samsung headquarters in San Jose, Calif., April 1, 2014. (Gary Reyes, Bay Area News Group)
This is the second of five columns on the five major candidates for San Jose mayor.
[TV xin tạm dịch: Ứng cử viên thị trưởng Madison Nguyễn đứng phía trước của công trường xây dựng trụ sở Samsung tại San Jose, California, ngày 01 tháng tư 2014. (Gary Reyes, Bay Area News Group)
Đây là bài thứ hai trong loạt 5 bài (của San Jose Mercury News) viết về năm ứng cử viên quan trọng nhất cho chức thị trưởng San Jose (2014).]
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Madison Nguyen is the most petite and most polite of the five major candidates for San Jose mayor. She seldom says anything cutting about her rivals. She jokes about accepting the outrageous slings and arrows of political life.
Don't be fooled. Nguyen's charm masks a steely ambition, born from her roots in an immigrant family of strawberry pickers. So it wasn't a total surprise that she took me to the massive new Samsung building to illustrate her ambitions as mayor.
At the northwest corner of First Street and Tasman Drive, the NBBJ-designed American headquarters for Samsung is rising now like a gigantic Stonehenge, with twin 10-story towers, 680,000 square feet and a boast of architectural distinction.
As vice mayor, Nguyen cannot claim special credit for having landed the big fish. The negotiations for the concessions the city gave Samsung were handled by Mayor Chuck Reed and Kim Walesh, the director of economic development.
As a talented evoker of symbolism, however, Nguyen points to the Samsung building as a template of what she seeks as mayor, a vigorous expansion of the city's drive for jobs and tax revenue.
77 DAYS
"We were able to do everything for them in 77 days," she told me. "I'd like to use this as an example of what the planning department is capable of doing to show that we are a very business-friendly city."
The next question was inevitable: Just why would she -- of the five major candidates -- be the best person to bring in the next Samsung? After all, bringing jobs to town is the first of the municipal Ten Commandments.
"I think the difference is the energy, the drive, the ability to see something magnificent, something bigger in San Jose," she told me. "I find pride in doing this not just for the city, but for myself."
To a greater extent than any of her rivals, the 39-year mother of one makes her personal story the centerpiece of her campaign.
It's a remarkable story: Born in Vietnam less than four months before Saigon toppled to the Communists in 1975, she fled with her family in a boat, landing in a holding camp in the Philippines.
After finally arriving in America, the Nguyens went first to Scottsdale, Ariz., and then to Modesto, where she grew up as one of nine children on the rough side of town, traveling an hour to pick strawberries in the morning, listening to her father lecture the kids about securing a better life.
ELECTED IN 2005
She went on to graduate in history from UC Santa Cruz and do graduate work at the University of Chicago before returning to California. In 2005, she was elected to the council over a well-funded opponent who was the daughter of a major power broker in the Vietnamese community.
Nguyen is probably best known for the "Little Saigon" controversy of 2007, when she resisted attempts to christen the commercial district near McLaughlin and Story Roads "Little Saigon," a name freighted with the anti-Communism of Vietnamese in America. She proposed the clunkier "Saigon Business District," now mercifully forgotten.
The councilwoman survived a recall election and made peace with some -- though not all -- of her critics. As vice mayor, she has wrapped herself closely in the mantle of incumbent Mayor Chuck Reed, standing vocally for his Measure B pension reform.
If you ask Nguyen why she would be a good mayor, you do not get a 10-point plan or a position statement. Instead, she often invokes the symbolic importance of electing a young Vietnamese woman to the top political job in one of America's most diverse cities.
"I think people want to see someone who understands their struggle, someone who understands their identity," she told me. "When I listen to people's stories, and I tell them my life story, there's a deep connection."
LEEWAY GRANTED
To some extent, this allows Nguyen, who still speaks with a Vietnamese accent and takes an occasional grammatical shortcut, more leeway than her competitors.
In answer to a question at a recent debate at Gunderson High School, Nguyen said a potential police officer would be attracted to San Jose by the top 90 percent pensions.
Under the pension reforms she helped champion, it's actually 65 percent for the new "tier two" recruits. But none of her rivals challenged her. Nguyen said later that she understood the question to be in the past tense, but it was clearly asked in the present tense.
The emphasis on the personal makes for good politics. Nguyen talks readily about being the mother of a 2-year-old, Olivia. (Nguyen is married to Terry Tran, a stay-at-home husband who has studied pharmacology).
But make no mistake: For all her charm -- when she describes her practical father's chagrin at her history degree, she can make you laugh -- Nguyen has a confidence in her own judgment that is about as unmovable as the Samsung building's foundations.
At a recent debate at Bethel Church in West San Jose, the candidates were asked to describe a vote they regretted. Pierluigi Oliverio talked of his regret at converting a piece of industrial land to housing. Sam Liccardo talked about a Little Saigon vote he would take back.
Nguyen said she had no regrets. She read the agenda carefully.
Contact Scott Herhold at 408-275-0917 or
sherhold@mercurynews .com.Twitter.com/scottherhold.
Nguồn:
http://www.mercurynews.com/scott-her...msung-building
Bài đọc có liên quan - Ghi chú của TV:
1. Bài đầu tiên trong loạt 5 bài viết về năm ứng cử viên quan trọng nhất cho chức thị trưởng San Jose: “Pierluigi Oliverio comes from immigrant roots” - Scott Herhold:
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_2...mmigrant-roots
2. “Phó thị trưởng thành phố San Jose, Madison Nguyễn, được mời qua Nam Hàn bàn chuyện hợp tác kinh tế”- Trương Thị Hàm Yên:
http://www.baocalitoday.com/vn/tin-t...c-kinh-te.html
Originally Posted by Phú Yên
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