Hue Quang temple in Santa Ana during the 2026 primary season. Photo taken May 14, 2026.
As we head into the general election season for 2026, I’d like to share one humble hope for Little Saigon: Stop letting our temples off the hook for letting politicians walk all over them.
If you drive around the Little Saigon neighborhoods in Westminster, Santa Ana, Garden Grove, and Fountain Valley, you’ll probably see a higher density of yard signs for candidates than in any other area of the county. Not only that, but some of the largest quantities of candidate signs are often prominently posted in front of Buddhist temples.
Yes, temples. As in the kinds of religious institutions that are supposed to be nonpartisan and refrain from endorsing candidates (yes, the law still says that religious institutions can’t support or oppose candidates in elections).
This ethically dubious practice of displaying (mostly Republican) candidate signs on temples goes back years. For example, check out this Orange Juice Blog post from 2008 showing campaign signs all over the Chua Bao Quang temple property on Newhope: John Nguyen for Garden Grove Board of Education, Trung Nguyen for Garden Grove City Council, “Vincent” Sarmiento for Santa Ana City Council, Claudia Alvarez for Santa Ana City Council, and Miguel Pulido for Santa Ana Mayor.
A Google Maps Street View image from January 2024 shows that the Tinh Xa Giac Ly temple (Lampson Ave, Garden Grove) had Van Tran for Supervisor signs displayed on its property. Chua Bao Quang still regularly displays large banners for mostly Republican candidates – you can see Kimberly Ho for Supervisor signs and Michael Vo for Supervisor banners in the January 2024 Google Maps Street View of the temple, and if you go back further to April 2018, you can see a Janet Nguyen for Senate banner placed on the temple’s fence. The September 2022 Street View image of Westminster Buddhist Temple (Westminster Blvd, Westminster) shows a Tai Do for Westminster City Council sign, a Janet Nguyen for State Senate banner, and a Tri Ta for Assembly banner.
And while I was driving down Westminster Ave earlier this year, I managed to stop for a photo of Hue Quang temple in Santa Ana, which featured signs for several Republican Vietnamese candidates for various offices, including almost all of the Vietnamese Republican congressional candidates and Tri Ta for Assembly. The temple did not seem to hang up or allow for signs from Democratic campaigns.
Now, a few of these could have been put up by rogue supporters who didn’t know any better.
But these aren’t just a handful of signs here and there, and they’re directly on the temple properties rather than out on the more public greenway. Even if the temples don’t expressly say it’s okay for the candidates to put their signs up on temple property, the fact that they let the candidates’ signs stay up suggests to the average person that the temple is at least implicitly supporting those candidates or political parties.
Whether or not the temples are actually primarily supporting right-wing Vietnamese candidates, they give off the very strong perception that they do.
Just about every single large Vietnamese Buddhist temple has candidates’ signs – mostly for Republicans – up during election season. Sometimes, they seem to have multiple candidates in the same race, maybe to seem “unbiased.” But that doesn’t work if they’re primarily letting Republican candidates use their properties to advertise.
Are the temple leaders too afraid to tell politicians “no”? Are they really willing to risk their tax-exempt status – or, at the very least, their ethics – to please politicians?
Well, it seems the answer is yes, because when Thomas Quoc Thai Nguyen announced his campaign for the Garden Grove City Council District 3 seat in early August, he published over a dozen posts about his visit to Chua Dia Tang (4th St, Santa Ana) – including a clip of what appears to be one of the temple monks urging others to support Quoc Thai Nguyen’s campaign.
The audio is kind of hard to hear because there’s a bunch of background noise, but here’s what I managed to pick out:
My attempted Vietnamese transcription: Năm nay mình có cuộc bầu cử, và anh đang lại sống ở tại thành phố Garden Grove, và hôm nay là chùa rất là hoan hỉ và rất vào chào đón anh [????], các chương trình kỳ tới, bầu cử kỳ tới, vào chúng tôi muốn mong anh kỳ này mọi điều suôn sẻ, chúc anh thành công trên đường [????]. Bây giờ xin quý vị nào ở Garden Grove, cố gắng là mình ủng hộ cho người Việt của mình nhé.
My rough English translation: This year we have an election, and he (Thomas Quoc Thai Nguyen) currently lives in Garden Grove, and today our temple is very happy and welcomes him [????]. With upcoming programs, the upcoming election, we hope that this time things run smoothly, we wish him success on this road [????]. Now we ask that whoever lives in Garden Grove, please try to support our Vietnamese people.
Chua Dia Tang may not have plastered signs with Thomas Quoc Thai Nguyen’s name all over its property. But the temple did something worse: it issued a very heavily implied – if not just short of outright – endorsement of Thomas Quoc Thai Nguyen’s campaign for Garden Grove City Council. When the monk said “we wish him success” and “please try to support our Vietnamese people,” he had his hand on Quoc Thai, so the monk clearly didn’t just mean any “Vietnamese people.” He meant Quoc Thai. He wants Quoc Thai to succeed and win his election. I’m sure if Cindy Tran or Amanda Nguyen (the other two Vietnamese candidates in the race) went into that temple, they would not be getting the same treatment from the temple leaders (even if Cindy Tran wasn’t super Catholic).
It’s sad that we’ve let this sad state of affairs go on for decades in Little Saigon. My hunch is it’s because everyone – including Vietnamese community members – is too afraid of being seen as “attacking” the Vietnamese community, so nobody wants to harshly criticize these kinds of unethical behaviors from those who are supposed to be our leaders.
But that’s the same line of reasoning that let former Supervisor Andrew Do keep stealing from taxpayers until it was too late. It’s the same reason Dina Nguyen and Joe DoVinh get to keep spewing transphobic vitriol as “Vietnamese values.” It’s why the Westminster City Council gets to keep looking like a clown show.
I feel like I’m a broken record at this point, but all I can conclude with is: the Vietnamese community deserves better than unethical, neglectful religious and political leaders.
