Mr. Saigon Wednesday, February 20, 2008 By The Fly, Metro Councilman Kansen Chu cast a lucky vote when he joined colleagues Pete Constant and Pierluigi Oliverio and voted against a compromise to name an East San Jose retail area "Saigon Business District." Maybe his vote wasn't calculated at the time, but it certainly has helped elevate his status among the Vietnamese voters, who have put San Jose's politicians in "good" and "bad" camps depending on how they voted on the naming of the business district. Chu has every reason to need to be the fair-haired boy among Vietnamese. Not only is he running for re-election, but also his wife, Daisy, has plans to run for the District 3 seat on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, which is heavily populated with Vietnamese voters. Chu's influence among the Vietnamese was crystallized at a recent council committee hearing when Mayor Chuck Reed and Councilwoman Madison Nguyen had proposed rescinding the council's Nov. 20 vote to name the retail area "Saigon Business District" and instead ask voters to decide on the name. There were competing proposals to follow that, including Chu's suggestion to rescind the vote and just name the district Little Saigon, based on the results of a Redevelopment Agency survey, instead of taking it voters. It was at that meeting that many Vietnamese-Americans stepped up to the microphone to endorse Chu's proposal—which was co-authored by Councilman Pete Constant. It gave Constant a funny feeling inside. "I got the feeling he went out and drummed up people to come forth," Constant said. "You might speculate ... not only is Daisy running, but he is running." Doubters can snipe, but Chu has indeed been behind naming the Vietnamese retail area "Little Saigon" from the start. And his intentions are genuine, not political, he says. "There are all kinds of rumors," Chu says. "I feel the obligation to speak out and it had nothing to do with Daisy's campaign and my re-election."