Mai Vang campaign connects attacks over Pledge of Allegiance to opponent Matsui
At Tuesday’s Sacramento City Council meeting, Councilmember Mai Vang stood, folded her hands together and bowed her head for the city’s land acknowledgement honoring the region’s Indigenous people. She remained standing as everyone else behind the dais saluted the flag and recited the Pledge of Allegiance, but she did not join in herself, as usual.
Vang, the progressive challenger to longtime Congresswoman Doris Matsui for the 7th district seat, drew national attention over Memorial Day weekend after conservative news outlets such as the New York Post and Fox News criticized her for “turning her back” on the American flag.
She believes that it is no coincidence.
The race between Matsui, a pillar of the local Democratic establishment, and Vang, Matsui’s toughest primary challenger in the past two decades, has heated up in the final weeks before the June 2 primary — especially as polls have indicated the possibility that only of them may move onto the general election in November alongside the sole Republican candidate.
Vang and her campaign, who blasted Matsui last week for “boosting a MAGA Republican” to “tee up a weaker Republican opponent for November,” believe that the sudden uproar over the pledge is a part of the same effort.
“Days before the upcoming primary, Matsui loaned herself $1.4 million and steered her aligned super PACs to bankroll and boost a MAGA Republican by any means necessary,” Vang said to The Sacramento Bee when asked about the controversy. “These disgusting and deceptive tactics fuel the worst of our politics, undermine trust in our institutions and distract from the issues impacting everyday people.”
Matsui’s media page on her website features a blog post about candidate Zachariah Wooden, a Republican college student who has a “record of serving the community” and “fighting to advance Trump’s policies,” according to the entry.
Kevin Liao, spokesperson for the Matsui campaign, previously told The Bee that the post was meant to contrast Matsui with “extreme Republican ideas,” but Vang’s camp sees the move as a means to elevate Wooden, who is unlikely to succeed in the solidly blue congressional district, so she doesn’t have to face a fellow Democrat in November.
Matsui’s campaign declined to comment on Vang’s allegation regarding the media firestorm over the Pledge of Allegiance.
Why Vang doesn’t say the Pledge of Allegiance
When asked about Vang’s practice of abstaining from saluting the flag, her campaign spokesperson said that her past statements on the matter speak for themselves.
Vang has previously spoken to this choice at least twice. In a post responding to President Donald Trump’s proposal to take over the Gaza Strip and displace its Palestinian inhabitants, she wrote on Facebook that she chooses not to recite the pledge and instead uses that moment to reflect on the “injustices and harm that continue to affect so many, both locally and across the globe, under this nation’s influence.”
“We must not tune out — they want us to become numb to the realities we see in the news — it’s part of the plan to keep us complacent,” she wrote. “But instead, we resist.”
Vang has served in public office since 2016 when she was elected to the Sacramento City Unified School District board of trustees. In 2019, she commended a group of Luther Burbank High School students being honored for their public service when they declined to lead the pledge at a school board meeting, citing their belief that the United States does not support Black youth.
“I also just want to put on public record that for the past two years, every time we do the Pledge of Allegiance I’ve stood up in solidarity with students, but I have not recited the Pledge of Allegiance just because of my beliefs about what the flag stands for in terms of all the injustices happening in the United States,” she said.
“So I find it very courageous that you guys came up today to really speak your truth.”
