These are the two candidates for state Senate District 34 voters in west Orange County, Long Beach will choose between in today’s election

State Sen. Janet Nguyen will soon find out if the more conservative and heavily Vietnamese Orange County portion of her district will allow her to once again overcome an overall disadvantage in voter registration to win a second term in Sacramento.

U.S. Army Col. Tom Umberg, a Democrat, hopes he has enough progressive credentials to energize liberals to vote for him as they head to the polls today, Nov. 6.

Both Nguyen, a Republican, and Umberg are trying to win the right to represent District 34, which is contained mostly to the Little Saigon cities of Garden Grove, Westminster and Santa Ana, though it also bleeds into Long Beach.

Orange County represents 89 percent of voters in the district, but despite its traditionally conservative bent, Democrats have a 10-percentage-point lead in voter registration throughout the district. But Nguyen has beaten that deficit before, largely because the hefty Vietnamese population in Garden Grove and Westminster have typically supported her.

Nguyen is a strong conservative — with an “A” rating from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association — but is by no means extreme, supporting initiatives that liberals also back, such as protecting Dreamers and allowing undocumented immigrants who came to the country illegally as children remain. She also wants to expand healthcare and wrote legislation to increase the renters tax credit.

Umberg, a deputy drug czar under President Bill Clinton and former three-term assemblyman, said if elected, he would work to protect the Affordable Care Act, oppose the National Rifle Association to ban high-capacity weapons and ammunition, and continue California’s trend of enacting environmental regulations that are more stringent than those of the federal government.