CALIFORNIA'S 45TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT — Incumbent Representative Derek Tran will face five Republican challengers on the June 2, 2026 primary ballot in California's 45th Congressional District. The challengers are Tom Vo, Chi Charlie Nguyen, Chuong Vo, Amy Phan West and Mark Leonard.

Tran won the seat in 2024 by a margin of just over 600 votes, defeating two-term Republican incumbent Michelle Steel. He was the first Vietnamese American to represent the district. Tran, 45, is an attorney and U.S. Army veteran who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley after his parents arrived as refugees from communist Vietnam. He and his wife, Michelle, operate a pharmacy. Tran has raised nearly twice as much funding as his Republican challengers combined.

According to his office, Tran helped reduce processing time for Social Security and small business loan payouts totaling $5 million in 2026, and he secured $1 million in funding for flood prevention infrastructure in the city of Cypress. He sponsored the Warrior Act, which codifies a woman's ability to serve in combat in the armed forces, and co-authored the SBIR Foreign Interference Safeguard Act with Representative Don Bacon to protect small businesses against hacking and cyber warfare. Tran has proposed expanding the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and providing direct mortgage relief and down payment assistance to first-time homebuyers.

Tom Vo, born in Vietnam, served as a fighter pilot for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and moved to Southern California as a refugee after the Vietnam War. He founded a taekwondo studio with multiple locations in Southern California and has worked as a real estate agent. "Our communities face rising costs, threats to public safety, and a Washington that too often forgets the hardworking Americans who keep this country strong," Tom Vo said in campaign materials.

Chi Charlie Nguyen, 61, is the current mayor of Westminster and previously served on the city council and the board of the city's waste management service. He fled Vietnam at age 14 after his father was taken to a reeducation camp. "America has given me the opportunity to realize my dreams, start a family, build a career and serve my community," Nguyen said in an email. "I am running for Congress to give back, and to fight against the radical left wing, which sometimes makes me wonder whether I'm living in a Communist country again." He has also said of his approach to housing in Westminster: "The city helps by providing land use approvals and support, while other partners help fund and develop the projects."

Mark Leonard, 36, is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and operations analyst whose campaign priorities are housing costs, job security and healthcare. "I've spoken with families across the district who are one rent increase away from having to leave communities they've lived in for decades," Leonard said. "Local zoning changes and state-level fixes have been tried, and they haven't moved the needle, which means Congress needs to use the levers it actually controls: tax incentives, funding and cutting the regulatory barriers that make building so slow and expensive," he said.

Chuong Vo served on the Cerritos City Council from 2020 to 2025, including a term as mayor, and worked as an officer with the Torrance Police Department from 1999 until his retirement. He has proposed auditing government agencies to eliminate waste and fraud and streamlining infrastructure permitting processes. Amy Phan West, 45, serves on the Westminster City Council and owns a rental car business with her husband, Jeremy. Her parents fled Vietnam in a fishing boat in 1985 and spent two years in a refugee camp before receiving asylum in the United States.

The 45th District covers parts of northern Orange County, including Fullerton, Buena Park, Cypress, Westminster, Garden Grove and Fountain Valley. Redistricting added Norwalk, Hawaiian Gardens, Artesia and Lakewood in Los Angeles County. The district has 750,000 residents with a median voter age of 41. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by eight percentage points, and 25% of voters have no party preference. Voting-age residents are 40% Asian American, 28% Latino and 26% white, according to the California Target Book.