Bee Nguyen (born July 18,1981) is an American nonprofit executive and politician who served as a member of the Georgia House of Representatives from the 89th District from 2017 to 2023. A member of the Democratic Party,she was elected during a special election in December 2017 to fill the seat vacated following Stacey Abrams's resignation in August 2017 to focus on her run for governor. Nguyen is the first Vietnamese-American elected to the Georgia House of Representatives.
Nguyen was previously the executive director of a nonprofit organization[7] she founded,Athena Warehouse,a program to educate and empower girls in under-resourced communities. She is currently National Policy Advisor for New American Leaders.[8] In November 2018,BizJournals included her on a list of 40 under 40s.[9] Nguyen described her charitable work as helping to "focus her desire to reduce economic disparity".[4]
Georgia Legislature
Elections
After Abrams resigned from the state legislature,four candidates announced efforts to succeed her.[4]
In addition to being the first Vietnamese-American to win election to the Georgia House,[10] Nguyen became the first Asian-American Democratic woman to hold a state office in Georgia.[4]
In June 2020,Nguyen won the Democratic nomination for reelection to her seat by a wide margin.[11]
On May 4, 2021, Nguyen declared her candidacy for Georgia Secretary of State in the 2022 election.[13] In February 2022, she announced that she had raised over $1million in her campaign.[14] Nguyen received 44% of the vote, and advanced to a runoff election against Dee Dawkins-Haigler, who received 19% of the vote.[15] Nguyen defeated Dawkins-Haigler in the runoff.[16] She lost to the incumbent, Brad Raffensperger, in the November 8 general election.[17]
↑ Shoichet, Catherine E. (June 4, 2023). "These decisions weren't popular. Jimmy Carter made them anyway". CNN.com. Retrieved June 5, 2023. Nguyen says her parents fled Vietnam by boat in 1978. A Thai fisherman rescued them, she says, and they spent months in refugee camps in Thailand. "My parents, they risked their lives. They left a country in which they experienced the loss of civil liberties, in which my father was incarcerated by his own government. And they were in search of freedom," Nguyen says. They found it in Iowa, where they moved in 1979. "They were only able to do so because of the political courage exercised by President Carter," she says.
↑ Schouten, Fredreka (May 23, 2022). "'She is our future': A Democratic rising star seeks to make history in Georgia's secretary of state race". CNN.com. Retrieved June 5, 2023. Nguyen, the daughter of Vietnamese refugees, has risen swiftly in the state's Democratic politics. ... As Nguyen stumps in Georgia, she touches frequently on how her family's refugee experience shapes her views. Following the fall of Saigon in 1975, Nguyen said her father – a pharmacist and lieutenant who served in a medical role in the South Vietnamese army aligned with Americans – was imprisoned for three years in a reeducation camp. Once he was released, the family fled – a harrowing journey that included a rescue at sea by a Thai fisherman. The family resettled in Iowa in the late 1970s, where Nguyen was born in 1981. They moved to Augusta, Georgia, when she was young.
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