"Charlie Kirk Way" Reveals Paradox of America's Most Vietnamese City
By J. J. Ghosh | 30 Apr, 2026

Is Westminster Mayor Charlie Nguyen honoring the late anti-immigrant MAGA influencer in a city filled with Vietnamese immigrants—or is he honoring his own ambition in a GOP town?

Mayor Nguyen poses with the street sign he championed

As of this week residents of Orange County's Westminster can drive down “Charlie Kirk Way." 

It was, frankly, only a matter of time before monuments began to bear the name of the late far-right conservative activist and podcaster who was assassinated in September in an act of political violence that shook the nation.

Charlie Kirk Way in Orang County, CA

One might have been waiting for Charlie Kirk Way to pop up in, say, Texas’s panhandle or Central Florida. Try Southern California.

And as if the Charlie Kirk fallout wasn't complex enough, this particular Westminster happens to be the most Vietnamese American part of the United States.

The Most Vietnamese City in America

“Charlie Kirk Way,” which can be seen near the intersection of Westminster Boulevard and All American Way, was the project of Vietnamese American Mayor Chi Charlie Nguyen, who claims that Westminster is the first city in the country to dedicate an official street to Kirk.

Four of the city council's five members supported the name Charlie Kirk Way. The lone Democrat dissented. 

No, Westminster isn’t some generic suburb of Orange County, a part of Southern California known for being stodgy, white, and affluent.  This is the cultural and political capital of the Vietnamese American diaspora in the United States.

Westminster sits at the center of Little Saigon, which also covers parts of Garden Grove, Fountain Valley, and Santa Ana, and is home to more than 215,000 Vietnamese Americans — the largest concentration outside Vietnam itself.  Vietnamese Americans comprise up to 45% of Westminster’s 90,000 residents.

Kirk, the late conservative activist, was assassinated while speaking on a college campus

The businesses on Bolsa Avenue, the Buddhist temples, the pho restaurants, the memorial to South Vietnamese soldiers — all of it exists in the shadow of a community that fled a communist government, rebuilt itself in Southern California, and has maintained a fierce and understandable attachment to anti-communist politics ever since.

Who Is Chi Charlie Nguyen?

Mayor Chi Charlie Nguyen is a Republican running for Congress in 2026.  He introduced the Charlie Kirk proposal himself, framing it as a tribute to someone who “helped save civic participation in our time” and “encouraged a new generation to care about their country.”

“By doing this, we promote the freedom, the freedom of speech here in the city of Westminster,” Nguyen told ABC7.

He’s not the only one on the council with congressional ambitions.  Councilmember Amy Phan West, who is also running for Congress, criticized the street sign design as inadequate, saying officials should “honor them correctly and properly” rather than using a three-inch font size.

Her objection, in other words, is that they didn’t go far enough in honoring Kirk.

The sole no vote came from Councilmember Carlos Manzo, the only Democrat on the council, who accused his colleagues of “exploiting a tragedy for political gain” and trying to “out-Republican each other” ahead of their 2026 congressional races.

It’s difficult to look at this situation and not conclude that Manzo is correct.

Two Republicans running for Congress in the same year, both supporting a measure to name a street after a recently deceased conservative icon in a conservative-leaning city, is not a complicated political calculation.

It’s a campaign ad that also happens to involve street signs.

Political Affiliations

Charlie Kirk was many things.  He was the founder of Turning Point USA.  He was one of the most prominent voices in the MAGA conservative movement.  He was shot and killed at age 31 while speaking at Utah Valley University in September 2025, a death widely condemned across the political spectrum.

He was also someone who, in the days before his death, traveled through Asia delivering anti-immigration speeches.

It’s no secret that Asian Americans in general skew liberal.  But the Vietnamese American community — the only majority-Republican AAPI subgroup — is another story.  Their conservatism is real and rooted in genuine historical experience.

The anti-communist politics that drive much of Little Saigon’s Republican alignment make complete sense when you understand that most of its residents or their parents fled a communist takeover.

But conservatism that emerges from the experience of being a refugee isn’t the same thing as endorsing the politics of a man who argued that America should take in fewer people like them.

There are really two ways of interpreting how they should feel about Kirk.

On one hand, their particular brand of conservatism might not extend to the MAGA movement’s anti-immigration rhetoric.  President Trump has made a push to ban refugees… like this community and their parents.  Charlie Kirk was even critical of legal immigration.  In his own words: “Everyone says, ‘Well, we just need immigrants to come legally.’  That’s not true.”

But on the other hand, maybe now that this community is already in the country, they no longer see a need for immigration.  It’s frankly not uncommon for marginalized groups to climb the ladder and then pull it up behind them.

What Westminster Wants

Whatever their political views, it’s also not even clear that this community supports the street renaming.

While there isn’t exactly a robust polling operation in Westminster, the meeting’s attendees may have been an indication.

Most of the roughly two dozen residents who spoke at the city council meeting opposed the street renaming, including conservatives.

One veteran said he was “against spending tax dollars to name the street after Charlie, as much as I like him,” noting that Kirk “didn’t live in Westminster” and “didn’t do anything for Westminster.”

Some speakers suggested the city should instead honor the Mendez family, whose 1940s lawsuit ended the segregation of Mexican American students in California schools.

The council voted 4-1 to do it anyway.

Kirk’s name now appears in smaller lettering beneath the official “All American Way” street name, following the city’s standard format for honorary designations.  The stretch runs beside the city’s Vietnam War Memorial.  The cost of the new signs was estimated at around $3,000.

A separate motion, carried by a 3-2 vote, designated October 14 as Charlie Kirk Day in Westminster.

Another Way?

Obviously the only thing that could make this situation any messier would be pitting the town’s Vietnamese community against its Mexican community.  But the residents who suggested honoring the Mendez family were onto something.

Sylvia Mendez grew up in Orange County.  Her family’s 1947 lawsuit in Mendez v. Westminster desegregated California schools.  Her case preceded Brown v. Board of Education by seven years and laid crucial legal groundwork for it.  She was a Mexican American girl who was told she could not attend a white school in the same county where Charlie Kirk’s name now hangs beneath a street sign.

The Vietnamese American community of Westminster has also produced extraordinary figures worthy of permanent recognition: veterans, activists, journalists, community organizers who rebuilt entire lives in a new country after losing everything.  The street near the Vietnam War Memorial could carry any of their names.

Mayor Chi Charlie Nguyen called this a promotion of freedom and civic engagement.  But it’s possible to see it differently: politicians using a dead man’s name to win a primary.

He might as well have named it Charlie Nguyen Way.