California state senator removed after criticizing Tom Hayden

A Republican legislator and Vietnamese refugee was dragged from the state Senate floor Thursday morning when a Democratic leader ordered her removed after she tried to criticize the late Tom Hayden, a former state senator and vocal opponent of the war in Vietnam.

State Sen. Janet Nguyen, R-Garden Grove (Orange County), who was born in what was then Saigon, spoke briefly in Vietnamese, but her microphone was shut off less than 30 seconds after she began to repeat her remarks in English.

Even while Nguyen was speaking, Lara called on state Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel, who rose quickly to criticize Nguyen, arguing that it was neither the time nor the place to attack Hayden, who died Oct. 23 and had been honored on the Senate floor Tuesday.

Nguyen’s statement “was fully inappropriate,” Monning said as the Republican state senator was removed from the floor.

In her statement, which Nguyen posted on her state Senate website, she argued that she was offering “another historical perspective” on Hayden, a founder of the 1960s radical group Students for a Democratic Society, one of the “Chicago Seven” arrested at the 1968 Democratic National Convention and a peace activist who served 18 years in the state Legislature.

Nguyen said she stepped out of the Senate chamber during Hayden’s memorial Tuesday, “out of respect to his family, his friends and you (senators).”

[...] she argued that Hayden “chose to work directly with the Communist North Vietnamese government to oppose the efforts of the United States forces in South Vietnam,” siding with a government “that enslaved and or killed millions of Vietnamese, including members of my own family.”

Democrats argued that Nguyen was breaking Senate rules by going after Hayden when she stood for what was expected to be a standard request to adjourn the Senate in memory of someone recently deceased.

“I am greatly unsettled by what took place on the floor,” Democratic state Sen. Kevin de León of Los Angeles, the Senate leader, said at a Thursday morning news conference.

[...] to maintain order so every senator can be heard, we all observe a clear set of parliamentary rules, which were explained beforehand to Sen. Nguyen and her staff.

[...] Fuller said she has called for the incident to be reviewed by the Senate Rules Committee and would fight any effort by Democratic leaders to censure Nguyen or take any reprisals against her, such as removing her from committees or moving her to a different, less desirable, office.

The episode has similarities to one that took place earlier this month in the U.S. Senate, when Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was silenced by the Republican leadership.