First in a series

Two weeks ago this morning in Sacramento, state Sen. Janet Nguyen (R-Garden Grove), in a rare action, physically was ejected from the Senate floor during a speech intensely critical of the late Sen. Tom Hayden for his fiercely controversial role in the anti-Vietnam War movement.

Was that fair? Or not?

Was Sen. Nguyen removed largely because she is a Republican, a virtually invisible minority in the state Legislature?

Or mainly because she was judged to have broken Senate rules that prohibit criticism of a fellow senator, living or dead?

In all cases, the answers remain clouded.

Coverage of her historic ouster has been muted, acknowledged in an almost yawning manner.

According to witnesses: “Several sergeants-at-arms surrounded Sen. Nguyen and gently nudged her toward the door. Sen. Nguyen dodged them and continued yelling passages from her speech for nearly a minute as the presiding Democrat repeatedly told her to stop.”

The 40-year-old Saigon native, the first Vietnamese-American state senator in the country, was brought here by her family as a 5-year-old. She has rolled up numerous firsts, the youngest City Council member in Garden Grove history, the youngest supervisor in Orange County annals.

Sen. Nguyen casts herself as the voice of the 500,000 Vietnamese in California, especially her heavily Vietnamese district that spans western Orange County and a portion of Long Beach.

Mr. Hayden, who died last October, rose to prominence in the 1960s as the most oratorically vicious opponent of the unpopular war in Vietnam. He was/is regarded as a sacred idol by the huge anti-war crowd.

Sen. Nguyen said that on Feb, 23, she was fulfilling one of the headline reasons she was elected to the Senate in 2014 – to represent her seldom-heard fellow Vietnamese.

(To be continued)