In the campaign for Virginia Governor, there is a lot of rhetoric about who can lead Virginia forward. We hear about creating jobs, strengthening our economy, and building partnerships and coalitions with diverse groups of people. But you rarely see the candidate personally engage, especially in the Asian communities, until now.

As the Vietnamese American National Chamber of Commerce, we were founded on creating opportunities for and representing the political interests of our members, building strong relationships with other communities, and fostering a friendly environment to grow businesses.

In this election, we took a hard look at the outreach efforts that each gubernatorial candidate has made to our community and we looked at the candidates’ policy proposals on the economy, transportation, and taxes.

Mr. McDonnell has gone to great lengths to reach out to various new American communities, particularly the Asian American communities. His outreach efforts have been impressive and substantive. We have seen McDonnell campaign materials in Vietnamese and other ethnic languages, he has made several visits to Vietnamese American businesses to listen to their concerns and he has attended many events hosted by the Vietnamese community in Virginia.

Of course, outreach is not enough. As much as we like Mr. McDonnell’s pro-active engagement, we look for a leader who has a clear, specific and sustainable policy platform to move Virginia forward and keep Virginia competitive. On this, Mr. McDonnell impressed us with a solid economic plan to work with the business community to protect jobs in Virginia while growing the economy. We believe his policies will continue to foster economic development and keep Virginia as the top state to do business in.

For those reasons, VietAmCham hereby endorses Bob McDonnell for Governor. Mr. McDonnell has earned our support by recognizing the contributions of Virginia’s Asian communities, by listening to our concerns – always an admirable trait to have for an elected leader, and by convincing us with sound economic policies.

Together, we gladly join other business leaders and organizations across the Commonwealth of Virginia in endorsing Mr. McDonnell for Governor.

Sincerely,

Lieu Nguyen
Chairperson
Vietnamese American National Chamber of Commerce

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The Vietnamese American National Chamber of Commerce (“VietAmCham”) is a non-partisan pro-business organization that aims to unite Vietnamese American entrepreneurs across the country and provide an organized structure to empower the community through economic development as well as provide issue advocacy at state and federal levels.

For a pdf copy of the endorsement letter, click here.