In a major Democratic victory, first-time candidate Derek Tran defeated Republican Rep. Michelle Steel in a hard-fought congressional race in Orange County that became one of the most expensive in the country.

Tran will be the first Vietnamese American to represent a district that is home to Little Saigon and the largest population of Vietnamese descent outside of Vietnam.

The race was the third to last held in the country. As Orange County and Los Angeles County counted mail-in ballots, Steel’s lead narrowed to 58 votes before Tran took the lead 11 days after the election. Tran was leading by 613 votes when Steel conceded Wednesday.

Tran was born in the United States to Vietnamese refugee parents. He said his father fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon, but his boat capsized, killing his wife and children. Tran’s father returned to Vietnam, where he met and married Tran’s mother. The couple later emigrated to the United States.

“Only in America can you go from being a refugee fleeing with nothing but the clothes on your back to being a member of Congress in just one generation,” Tran said in a post on X.

“This victory is a testament to the spirit and resilience of our community,” he said. “My parents came to this country to escape oppression and pursue the American dream, and their story reflects the journey of so many here in Southern California.”

In a statement Wednesday, Steel thanked her volunteers, staff and family members for their work on her campaign and said, “Everything is God’s will and like all journeys, this one comes to an end for a new one to begin.” Steel filed paperwork Monday to seek re-election in 2026.

The 45th District was one of the most competitive elections in the country and was crucial for both parties in the fight for control of the House of Representatives.

With Steel’s loss, Republicans have 219 seats in the House, barely above the 218-seat threshold needed to control the chamber.

Two races still have to be announced. A recount is underway in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, where a Republican incumbent leads her Democratic challenger by fewer than 800 votes. And in California’s agricultural San Joaquin Valley, Democrat Adam Gray has a slim lead over GOP Rep. John Duarte, but the race remains too close to call.

Steel and Tran both focused heavily on outreach to Asian American voters, who make up much of the district. The district runs in a C-shape through 17 cities in Orange County and Los Angeles County, including Garden Grove, Westminster, Fountain Valley, Buena Park and Cerritos.

Born to South Korean parents and raised in Japan, Steel broke barriers in 2020 when she became one of three Korean-American women elected to the House of Representatives. She relied on anti-communist messages to reach older voters who fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975.

Tran also focused on Vietnamese American voters and Vietnamese-language media, hoping that voters would abandon their loyalty to the Republican Party to support a representative who shared their background.

Steel became a prime target for Democrats because, even though she is a Republican, voters in the 45th District supported President Biden in 2020. The two-term congresswoman is a formidable fundraiser with close ties to the Orange County GOP, including through her husband Shawn Steel, the former chairman of the California Republican Party.

The Republican establishment and outside groups, including the cryptocurrency lobby and Elon Musk’s super PAC, spent heavily defending Steel.

In a sign of the seat’s importance to Democrats, Gov. Gavin Newsom, former President Clinton and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) all joined Tran in the campaign in the weeks leading up to the election.

The race was marked by accusations of “red baiting” after the Steel campaign sent Vietnamese-language mailings to households in Little Saigon that showed Tran next to the hammer-and-sickle emblem of the Chinese Communist Party and Mao Zedong.

Steel’s campaign said that the Tran campaign had run Vietnamese-language ads on Facebook accusing Steel’s husband of “selling access to the Chinese Communist Party” and that Steel could not be trusted to stand up to China offer.

Tran’s victory is a decisive victory for Democrats, who fought to capture five closely contested Republican seats in California – more than in any other state. Republicans pushed to flip a district in coastal Orange County represented by Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine).

Democrat Dave Min defeated Republican Scott Baugh in the costly battle for Porter’s seat and Democrat George Whitesides won the district represented by Republican Rep. Mike Garcia in LA County’s Antelope Valley.

In the agricultural Central Valley, Republican Rep. David Valadao easily won re-election ahead of Democrat Rudy Salas. The San Joaquin Valley race between Gray, the Democrat, and Rep. Duarte, who won by 564 votes two years ago, remained too close to call.