WESTMINSTER, California – President Joe Biden’s disco-era opposition to resettling Vietnamese refugees in the United States is ancient political history to most voters, if they’ve heard about it at all. But not for a small yet politically potent group in Southern California’s Little Saigon.

It’s living history for immigrants from Vietnam after the war, and their children and grandchildren, who have long played a central role politically in Orange County, the former Republican haven that is now highly competitive between the two parties. The community has trended strongly Republican, a result of fierce anti-communist sentiment among the initial refugees who settled in the northern Orange County cities of Westminster and Garden Grove and the surrounding areas.