page_title: Janet Nguyen
section_title: 2020 California State Assembly
hierarchical_section_title: Janet Nguyen / Electoral history / 2020 California State Assembly
context_page_description: Janet Q. Nguyen is an American politician who served in the California State Senate. A Republican, she represented the 34th district, encompassing parts of Long Beach and Orange County. 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. She was reelected to a third term in 2012. In a major upset, she was narrowly defeated by former Assemblyman Tom Umberg in the 2018 elections.
caption: 2020 California's 72nd State Assembly district primary results by county supervisorial district  Map legend   J. Nguyen—30–40%