Red-baiting allegations in the OC congressional race between Michelle Steel and Derek Tran

A close race in California's 45th Congressional District between two Asian American candidates has turned ugly, with both candidates accusing each other of using red-baiting tactics.

Red-baiting is the attack or persecution of a person as a communist. Mailers sent to voters in Orange County by Republican Michelle Steel's campaign attempt to link her opponent, Democrat Derek Tran, to Mao Zedong and show Tran with the communist symbol, the hammer and sickle.

“Michelle Steel has been known for incitement throughout her campaign and career. This is something very disgusting,” Tran said. “We see xenophobic attacks here. They are simply baseless claims from someone who is losing, and she expects to win based on this message. It won't work this time. I am the son of Vietnamese refugees who fled communist Vietnam.”

Steel's campaign says Tran also campaigned against the Red Hate movement. Tran's campaign cited reports from the Wall Street Journal and the Orange County Register accusing Shaun Steel, Steel's husband, of bringing Chinese spies into American politics for money and claiming voters can't trust Steel to stand up to China offer.

In a statement, Steel's campaign said: “Since May, crybaby Derek Tran has made false and despicable attacks on Michelle Steel's family and even planted a CCP flag in his own advertising, but now he is sobbing as our campaign exposes his connections on communist China aptly highlighted.”

Steel, the incumbent, is a Korean American and Derek Tran is a Vietnamese American who represents a district that is 39% Asian. The district has the largest Vietnamese population in the United States.

“I think I’m more Vietnamese than my opponent,” Steel recently told a local Vietnamese television station. “My opponent may have a Vietnamese name, but you know that I understand the Vietnamese community and have worked with the Vietnamese American community for more than 30 years.”

Tran said, “This is a community that loves our country and our heritage and for them to come here and try to go to court and take our votes and say they are more Vietnamese-American than a son of Vietnamese-Americans, a.” Son of refugees.” insulting and disgraceful.

The use of anti-Asian rhetoric in this race prompted AAPI leaders to write a letter to the OC Democratic and Republican parties expressing concerns that the candidates had falsely suggested that candidates of Asian descent posed a threat to national security .