Faced with the prospect of what she considered xenophobia and hate in the Oval Office, Vietnamese refugee and Duke alum Kathy Tran knew she had to take a stand.

A year later, she became Virginia's first Vietnamese American lawmaker.

“I knew what my parents had risked getting to America, so to see the election results in 2016 was extremely discouraging,” said Tran, Virginia's representative for the 42nd House of Delegates District, Friday at a talk sponsored by Duke POLIS. “I realized, I couldn’t spend all my time crying on the couch.”

Tran's parents fled from Vietnamese re-education prisons as refugees to America when she was only two years old. In the 2017 election, Tran, Trinity '00, became one of the 15 Democrats who flipped seats in the Virginia House of Delegates, and has since led efforts in women’s rights, immigrant advocacy and veteran rights.

“We were 66-34, Republicans to Democrats,” Tran said. “People knew there was this energy across the country, but nobody knew how it was going to play out. We won 15 seats and went from 66-34 to 51-49.”

The margin in one delegate election was so thin that after multiple recounts, the tie still was not broken, so a Republican incumbent won only because they picked his name out of a ceramic bowl.

But in a hyper-partisan era, bipartisan cooperation remains a challenge.

"No one wants to be that person who jumps ship and gives a Democrat a win," she said.

So, as Tran recognized, making progress would require convincing a majority to see the benefits of her proposals.

This coalition has been harder to find, especially after a panel of Virginia judges struck down the district lines for the House of Delegates for being racially gerrymandered. Virginia Republicans proposed a new "race-blind" map Sept. 19, but Tran doesn't think lawmakers should be drawing the districts.

“I came into my campaign believing that you need independent commissions to draw the maps,” Tran said. “Someone has to do it, but it’s clear to me it shouldn’t be us.”

As the upcoming 2020 census looms closer and closer, Tran increasingly feels the pressure of protecting Virginians against further gerrymandering. Redistricting based on that census will occur in 2022.

Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox Signup for our editorially curated, weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.

“The thing about Virginia is that you won’t get an independent commission unless it is in our constitution," Tran said. "What’s really important to us in the timeframe is that we get this passed before 2021, when redistricting starts.”

It’s a long shot, Tran said.

To pass the Amendment before the census goes out, Democrats would have to propose and pass the Amendment with a GOP majority in 2019, win their elections again that November and then pass the Amendment again in all Virginia legislatures in 2020.

President Donald Trump's administration’s planned question on the U.S. 2020 Census asking whether the participant is a citizen or not has complicated matters further.

“It has created a lot of anxiety to immigrant communities,” Tran testifies. “The potential that those individuals will not complete the census is very real.”

The possible damage from an underrepresentation of census data would be detrimental, as Tran said that many federal policies and state decisions, and the design of the House of Representatives itself, are driven by census data.

Tran hopes her election can inspire a new generation.

“Women are not just running for office; we are the backbones of campaigns. We are the backbones of the Moms Demand movement and tremendous efforts right now to win back our country while juggling work, family responsibilities, kids, older parents and all sorts of things,.” Tran said. “That sheer willpower is just going to push us forward.”