Bruce Nichols of the Dallas Morning News has penned an interesting article on Hubert Vo.
Here’s a teaser:
The regulars at Sally Jo’s Old Houston Bar-Be-Que weren’t surprised to see a Vietnamese-American bidding to upset their longtime Anglo state representative in last week’s election.
Their neighborhood, suburban Alief, has changed. Once a bastion of whites who fled Houston in the 1960s and ’70s, Alief began going international in the late ’80s and it has become a polyglot, 18 percent Asian, 20 percent black and 21 percent Hispanic.
Many businesses in the area are now Asian. When it opened in 1979, Sally Jo’s shared a strip center with an Anglo grocery, Mary Jo’s Furniture and Rack and Roll billiards and bowling, owner John Gembala said. Now it’s surrounded by Asian restaurants and shops.
“I give them full credit for bringing the area back up,” said breakfast regular Darla Bogard, noting that parts of Alief were blighted in the early ’90s as whites fled the immigrant influx.
Elections are reflecting the growing Asian presence. A part of the area sent a Pakistani-American Muslim to Houston City Council last year, and it is within an eyelash of electing Vietnamese-American businessman Hubert Vo to the Texas Legislature.
After counting, Mr. Vo, a Democrat, led Talmadge Heflin, a 22-year Republican incumbent and House Appropriations Committee chairman, by 38 votes out of 41,000 cast Tuesday in the District 149 race.
The entire article is worth a read. It is unfortunate Houstonians have to turn to the Dallas newspaper for such interesting coverage of local stories.
As of the time of this post, the Heflin/Vo ballot counting still had not been completed.
(11-09-2004 Update) It appears that Vo will hold on for the victory, although a full recount may still be in the works.
