Daniel Nguyen
Candidate for:
State Representative - HD 38
What drives me to seek an elected position
My parents fled the Vietnam War to the United States with my older siblings in one arm and everything they could carry in the other. That experience shaped all our lives. Neither of my parents even had a high school education, and they risked everything to get more for their children. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, I ran for city council because it was clear we needed a strong voice for immigrants and refugees, like my family, to help ensure all in our community would have opportunities like my family received here in the U.S. In 2022, I ran for the legislature for those same reasons.
The first three priorities or issues I want to tackle
My top priorities in the coming sessions are bringing more economic opportunity to Oregon and our region in partnership with state and local leaders, reforming our tax and revenue system to ensure we’re not further burdening those struggling the most and creating a commission on Artificial Intelligence to proactively harness AI’s benefits and protect us against its harms.
I will continue fighting to fund district priorities from the Clackamas Recovery Campus, increasing treatment and transitional housing beds which address our addiction and mental health crisis, to the James Beard Public Market and keeping Portland’s Rose, Winter LIght and Blues Festivals alive. I will continue fighting for affordable childcare building on successful legislation co-locating childcare with large employers, rewriting zoning laws to make it easier to open new child care facilities and fully funding the Employee Related Day Care program.
Last session, I stood up against Trump’s attacks on Oregonians by keeping ICE out of schools and hospitals and requiring police officers to be identifiable. I voted to restore funding to Planned Parenthood after Trump’s Big Ugly Bill defunded this critical access point for reproductive and gender affirming care. I will continue to stand up for Oregon’s values.
The experiences and insights I will bring to the office
My lived experience, growing up in an immigrant family as someone whose family struggled and made sacrifices to make ends meet, as a successful entrepreneur, the father of two daughters and as a two-term legislator who isn’t afraid to challenge the status quo in Salem, I am the candidate best qualified and positioned to get real results for our district and our state. Talk is cheap; we need elected leaders who can get real results.
What being a Democrat in Multnomah County means to me
I’m a Democrat because I believe in a country where “liberty and justice for all” actually means for all–regardless of their race, ethnicity, immigration status, disability, gender identity or who they love. A country where every eligible voter can vote without hardship and every eligible vote is counted. A country where you can come with nothing and still make great change.
When my parents came to the United States as Vietnam War refugees, they came with my three older siblings in one hand and everything they could carry in the other. When they visited the Oregon State Capitol in 1975, they never imagined that their son would one day be elected to the House of Representatives just decades later, and use that platform to show other Asian Americans that the Oregon Capitol is their capitol too.
And as a Multnomah Country Democrat, I’m proud that we don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk. Multnomah County is home to 19% of Oregonians, yet pays for nearly a quarter of all tax revenue to our state. I am committed to making sure that every dollar spent in Salem is spent with our values of equity and compassion in mind.