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| Dean Tran |
ASAM NEWS
THE FIRST Vietnamese/American was sworn in as a Massachusetts state senator on Wednesday after winning a special election held on Dec. 5.
Tran will replace Jennifer Flanagan, who resigned after being appointed to the Cannabis Control Commission.
The 42-year-old Republican occupies the Worcester-Middlesex seat after defeating his closest competitor, Democrat Susan A. Chalifoux Zephir by 675 votes, according to Worcester Telegram.
Prior to his election, Tran served as city councilor for Fitchburg since 2005 and was the first minority to hold elected office in the city, Sentinel & Enterprise reports. He has resigned from that position and intends to resign from his job as senior manager at a software development company in order to serve as senator.
Tran will become the seventh Republican in the 40-member state senate, the highest number since 1999.
He joins a growing list of Asian/Americans elected to the Massachusetts State Legislature. In 2016, it was publicly announced that the State House had created its first Asian American caucus.
“We are the first Chinese, the first Japanese, the first female, and the first and only Cambodian elected to a state or federal position in the United States,” according to an op-ed written by Tackey Chan, one of the caucus’ five members.
After fleeing Vietnam where Tran was born, his family spent two years in a refugee camp in Thailand while waiting for their application for green cards to be approved. In 1980, Dean and his family were sponsored by a Catholic priest in Clinton, Massachusetts where he called his first real home. In 1986, his family relocated to Fitchburg, Massachusetts where he graduated from Fitchburg High School. He went on to earn a bachelor's degree from Brandeis University.
“My father saved every single penny and put the family on a wooden boat,” he told the Worchester Telegram. “I watched a documentary. We were called ‘boat people’ and drifted on the ocean for 12 days. I still remember the smell – a mixture of salt water and fuel from the old engine on the wooden boat. I can still smell that. We were very lucky. A lot of people died from dehydration drinking salt water.”
Because of hispersonal experience, on immigration, he departs from the GOP line. Tran believes the immigration policies proposed by the Trump-Pence administration are a “little harsh” and believes the federal government should provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
“In certain circumstances, good people who contribute to society, there should always be a way for them to become citizens,” he said. “There needs to be a path for these people like there was a path for us. We received green cards and took a naturalization class. There should be a path whether they are undocumented or not.”
(Views From the Edge contributed to this report.)
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