LA Times Endorsement: “Michelle Steel needs to go. Derek Tran for the 45th Congressional district”

The 45th Congressional District is due for change. Overdue.

Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Seal Beach) may officially represent the district in northern Orange County, but her extreme-right values and occasional dishonesty make her a poor fit for her constituents.

Fortunately, voters have an excellent alternative in Democrat Derek Tran, a consumer- and employee-rights attorney who also owns an independent pharmacy with his pharmacist wife. It's not surprising, then, that he has aligned himself with other Democrats who are strongly pro-small business. In contrast to Steel, he is a believer in helping Americans gain quality, affordable education and healthcare - and respecting their freedom to make their own medical and family decisions.

As the son of Vietnamese refugees, he has a deep understanding of the interests and needs of that community, which is heavily concentrated in the district.

Tran is well-informed, not just about the important issues facing Congress, but about how D.C. politics work. He would hit the ground running.

Steel, on the other hand, is a conservative ideologue. She was a co-sponsor of a 2021 resolution declaring that life begins at conception and has a top rating from the antiabortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. She signed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

But earlier this year, she flip-flopped and withdrew her name from the resolution, saying she believes in extremely limited exceptions to outlawing abortion. In other words, don't put too much faith in anything she says or does during an election year on the issue.

Steel is well aware that stripping women of their abortion rights does not sit well with constituents in her district, an arc that curves from Fountain Valley to Garden Grove, taking in a small portion of Los Angeles County. In 2022, 55% of voters in this district supported Proposition 1, a state measure that guaranteed the rights of Californians to make their own decisions about reproductive health.

Honesty - or lack of it - has been another issue for Steel. In 2022, she sent a mailer to Vietnamese Americans in the district that painted her opponent, Jay Chen, as a communist sympathizer. Chen is in fact a Navy reservist whose mother fled Communist China. The message was sure to resonate with those voters who had fled from the communist takeover of Vietnam and who detest anything that remotely smacks of communism. It's not a trick she's likely to get away with in competition with the son of Vietnamese refugees who served in the Army reserves for eight years.

Steel did not respond to requests for an interview with the editorial board. But her record speaks loud and clear.

She has voted against her district's economic interests - and then pretended she didn't. She opposed the infrastructure bill in 2021, and when it passed and brought more than $8 million to her district, she claimed credit.

Removing Steel from office also will help prevent an extremist Republican majority in Congress that may strip Americans not only of abortion rights, but marriage rights and retirement and health services, that are relied on by many people whose interests Steel is supposed to have at heart.

The constituents of the 45th District deserve an honorable member of Congress who will represent their interests. In order to have that, they should vote for Derek Tran.