By Libby Hobbs
Morrow, September 13, 2023 — Councilwoman Van Tran, who was called “un-American” by a fellow council member for pushing to print ballots in Spanish and Vietnamese languages, is running for mayor. She will face incumbent Mayor John Lampl in the Nov. 7 general election.
Tran’s campaign follows the multilingual ballot controversy, in which her fellow council member, Dorothy Dean, said in a video that Tran should encourage citizens to speak, read and write “the language in which they are citizens of this country.”
“You have failed in your oath of office. You have failed as a citizen of this country,” Dean said in the video. “You disregarded and you dishonored those oaths that you took as an American citizen. I would like to say that is un-American and inexcusable. Shame on you, Van Tran.”
Councilwoman Dean later proposed in the Aug. 8 meeting that a question be included on the Nov. 7 referendum about whether to distribute bilingual ballots in future elections. While the vote passed unanimously, there were obstacles with the verbatim language of the motion that prevented the question from being on the ballot, Morrow City Clerk Victor Aguilar said in a video.
However, the council passed a resolution at the Aug. 22 meeting that will utilize a bilingual ballot for all city elections beginning in 2025, according to Aguilar.
“Throughout the multilingual ballot, [it] had [the] effect that the minority are not being heard,” Tran said. “If we did not have public attention, I don’t think that would have happened — you see how hard it is to get it to be the way it is now.”
The prior week on Aug. 15, Morrow City Council wrote a resolution censuring and reprimanding councilwoman Tran for “unaccpetable behavior and inappropriate actions towards City employees,” according to the resolution. Tran has since called this an act of retaliation.
The city of Morrow is diverse, with 32.9% being Asian American and 22% Hispanic or LatinX, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This community in Morrow is something Georgia Rep. Long Tran is excited to see, especially given Tran’s mayoral campaign.
“I think Georgia is overdue for Vietnamese mayor,” Long Tran said. “In a town like Morrow where almost a third, if not a third of the population is Vietnamese, I think it’s time for the city to have a Vietnamese mayor, so I’m very excited for that.”
Long Tran, being someone with experience, has been a figure of guidance for Tran. Cam Ashling, a city leader, has also helped with Tran’s campaign by giving her consulting and political strategies. She said Tran has her absolute support as a fighter for the community.
“You need people who actually care about the citizens to protect their rights, to make sure that their tax dollars are getting spent correctly and fairly for them and that there’s transparency in the political process, which we’re kind of lacking — having gone through so many city council meetings, it’s been very chaotic, and I don’t think up the standard for what a city should be disclosing to a citizen,” Ashling said.
Tran also emphasized her concerns with transparency between the Morrow City Council and Morrow citizens. She said she’s running for transparent governance, to expand equal opportunity for business owners, investors and employment, and to reflect good leadership.
“Over the past several years that I’ve been sitting in this council member [position] — I have so many concerns. And [the] majority of the concern is that the process of select contracts is not transparent,” Tran said.
With the encouragement from Morrow residents who asked her to run, Tran also said that helped her decide to take the step forward and run for mayor.
A challenge Long Tran anticipates is getting a broad pool of voters to show up on election day. While he said this is “uncharted territory” for Tran, he believes she’s capable of building a broad coalition and engaging people in the process if her grassroots game is strong.
Ashling, on the other hand, forecasts character attacks. She said people might think they can scare Tran off because she’s an Asian woman, but Ashling believes Tran will have the backing of the community.
“I have been [fulfilling] my job and doing all my duty [diligently],” Tran said. “Now I’m going to have a bigger step to give the public the service level that they deserve to have.”
