TUVILYSO.net: Tổng thống Hoa Kỳ John Mc Cain

ERIC KAYNE CHRONICLE

McCain backers Dieuthao Nguyen and her husband, Alvin Dieu Van Nguyen, have a replica of the Statue of Liberty inside their office.

Alvin Dieu Van Nguyen escaped Vietnam on a U.S. Navy ship the day before Saigon fell in 1975. He was 16 years old.

Thirty-three years later, tears welled in his eyes as he watched a CNN documentary about former Navy fighter pilot John McCain's five-year imprisonment and torture by the North Vietnamese in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton."

"That broke my heart," said Nguyen, now a 49-year-old dentist living in Missouri City.

He pledged his vote to the Arizona senator on the spot.

"John McCain is our hero," Nguyen explained. "We feel we owe him a lot for his sacrifice in our country, and we have to pay it back to him, you know?"

With just a handful of days left before Election Day, polls show Democrat Sen. Barack Obama leading Republican Sen. McCain nationally and in many battleground states. But the Illinois senator trails his GOP rival in one demographic with strong personal ties to McCain: Vietnamese-Americans.

Though an overwhelming majority of Asian-Americans support Obama for president, Vietnamese-Americans like Nguyen are much more likely to vote for McCain, 51 percent to 24 percent, according to a recent national survey by university researchers. About a quarter of respondents were undecided.

The Houston area — home to the nation's second-largest Vietnamese community after Southern California — is no exception to feeling a bond with McCain.

No matter what party

Last Friday, more than 600 Vietnamese gathered at Ocean Palace Restaurant on the southwest side to honor Vietnam War veterans and rally for McCain. The event raised $13,501 in campaign donations.

"I always feel a Vietnam veteran deserves our love, our support and our honor from the bottom of our hearts," said Nguyen's wife, Dieuthao. "They fought for us, they sacrificed their lives for us, they were prisoners of war for us, so we support them no matter what party, because they have given us a lot already."

The 31-year-old pharmacist voted early Monday. She cast a straight Democratic ticket in all local and congressional races, but voted McCain for president.

'A victory with honor'

Like many Vietnamese, Dieuthao sees parallels between the Vietnam War and the war on terror, and opposes Obama's plan for a phased troop withdrawal.

"Right now we're at war, and if we don't fight the war in Afghanistan or Iraq, eventually we will fight in America," she said. "So the reason I choose John McCain is that he has experience. He understands how much the soldier has to sacrifice for us because he himself has been in that situation. If we want to bring an end to war in Iraq, we have to select John McCain because he can bring us a victory with honor."

Most Vietnamese-Americans support McCain not only because of his military service, but also because they are grateful for the senator's support of Vietnamese refugees, said Al Hoang, a 46-year-old attorney who serves as president of the local Vietnamese community.

In 1996, for example, McCain championed legislation to reunite the families of Vietnamese political prisoners who already had immigrated to the U.S. "I believe the Vietnamese really like him because they see him as a faithful person," Hoang said.

Generational split

Despite the emotional connection that many Vietnamese feel with McCain, his support for normalizing America's relations with the Communist government of Vietnam rubbed some people the wrong way, said Tam Tran, editor of DEP Magazine, a weekly publication in Vietnamese and English, based in Houston.

"But we put (them) on the scale, and we think between Obama and McCain, McCain's better," Tran said. "We'd rather go with the one who already showed he was willing to sacrifice his life for the country and democracy."

On Election Day, though, the Vietnamese community's strong support for McCain could break down along generational lines, said Kim Nguyen, president of Houston's Vietnamese Senior Federation.

Seniors who immigrated from Vietnam look to McCain for security, while Obama's call for change resonates with younger voters, many of whom were born in America, said Nguyen, 58.

"I'm telling you, it is a very, very tough race," she said. "Even our small community is already split in two."

NGƯỜI VIỆT ở HOA KỲ QUYẾT TÂM ỦNG HỘ MC CAIN .