Janet Nguyen REPRepublican

Janet Q. Nguyen (born May 1, 1976) is an American politician who serves in the California State Senate. A Republican, she represents the 36th district, which includes coastal Orange County, Little Saigon, and parts of Los Angeles County. She previously was a member of the State Senate for the old 34th district from 2014 to 2018, before narrowly losing reelection to Tom Umberg. Before her current Senate term, she was a member of the California State Assembly for the old 72nd district from 2020 to 2022, encompassing parts of northern coastal Orange County which includes the cities of Huntington Beach, Garden Grove, Westminster, Fountain Valley, Seal Beach, Los Alamitos, and the unincorporated areas of Midway City and Rossmoor. She is the first Vietnamese-American state Senator in the United States and the country's first Vietnamese-American woman state legislator. Prior to being elected to the state Senate, she was an Orange County Supervisor, representing the First District. At the age of 30, she was the youngest person to be elected to the board of supervisors, the first woman to be elected from the First District, and the first Vietnamese-American county supervisor in the United States. She won her supervisor seat following a historic special election where two Vietnamese-American candidates received half of the total votes cast in a field of 10, separated from each other by only 7 votes. She was sworn in on March 27, 2007, after a lengthy court battle. She won a full, four-year term in 2008 in another historic election when all three major candidates were Vietnamese Americans.