Mayor
Westminster, California
Tri Ta is the mayor of the city of Westminster, California. He was first elected to the Westminster City Council in 2006 and was re-elected in 2010. In 2012, he won his mayoral election and became the first Vietnamese American elected mayor in the United States. Ta was re-elected in 2014 and 2016. The city of Westminster is located in Orange County, California, with a population of some 95,000.
Ta was born in Saigon, Vietnam. He arrived in the United States with his family in 1992 at the age of 19. He received a bachelor’s degree in political science and had completed the requirements for the master’s program in international relations at the California State University of Los Angeles.
Ta is a long-time community activist, yet he finds his passion in philosophy, nature and literature. He has written several books in Vietnamese with his wife, Anh Que Doan, under a mutual penname, Duc Tri Que Anh.