AI State-Law Champ’s Influence Grows With Political Adaptation

The way Joe Nguyen tells it, his journey to becoming a go-to policymaker on AI laws began five years ago at a routine budget meeting concerning ferry lines in the Puget Sound.

As the committee chair and staff in Olympia wrestled to balance funding levels with trip frequency and ridership projections, Nguyen, the newcomer from a working class side of Seattle spoke up: “Hey, can I take over your computer?”

He clicked. He typed. In five minutes, Nguyen created a model showing how the numbers would crunch.

“‘Who the f—- are you?’” a staffer asked. “‘How are you a member and you’re able to — like — do these things in Excel?’”

The short answer was a 30-something son of Vietnamese refugees who had worked his way through Catholic high school by scrubbing its hallway floors, chased riches after college until having an epiphany of sorts, and had just entered — and won — his first political race.

And to the second question, Nguyen had mastered spreadsheets during his stints as a high-flying investment analyst, and later as a project manager at Microsoft Corp.

Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, a fellow Democrat who was the lawmaker chairing that Puget Sound ferry discussion, said he’s fuzzy on the details but remembers that Nguyen stood out “technology-wise” that day — and many that followed.

Nguyen had little trouble attracting attention. He wore hoodies in a Capitol where dress shirts and ties were the norm. An iPad replaced the front-desk receptionist in his office, a place where people could play an Xbox while waiting for him. He posted Facebook videos about topics such as increasing a tax credit for working families.

He was dubbed the “AOC of the Washington Senate” by The Stranger, a local progressive newspaper, but Nguyen initially had trouble getting much done in elected office. He credits a combination of Microsoft Office and a touch of showmanship for helping to change that.

“I don’t think that I have any special skills except for Excel and PowerPoint,” Nguyen, a 40-year-old father of three, said in a June interview while driving his Tesla through his district. “And then was able to tell stories.”

National Tech Influence

Nguyen and his political pragmatism are gaining sway far beyond the Pacific Northwest on technology issues. But his friendliness in elected office to some of the most powerful and rich businesses in the world puts him in an increasingly awkward position with some fellow progressives as federal regulators and legislatures alike increase scrutiny on Big Tech.

AI, like many technologies, is neither “good nor bad,” Nguyen told Connecticut lawmakers last fall as they worked on legislation that would restrict how private companies use automated decision-making in housing, finance, and other economic sectors.

“It’s how it’s used, right?” said Nguyen, who himself uses an AI app to maintain his daily schedule.

There are “important conversations” to be had on how AI might lead to widespread job losses in the future, but legislatures are “fundamentally set up to solve yesterday’s problems,” he told Connecticut lawmakers. They must avoid rules that stifle innovation, Nguyen advised them — a common theme in industry lobbying.

“You may have heard about Microsoft, Amazon, that exists in my backyard,” he continued. “We’re talking billions of dollars in investments. We’re talking high paying jobs.”

Amazon and Microsoft respectively have 87,000 and 50,000 employees in Washington with roughly $18 billion and $9 billion in investments in the state each year, according to the companies’ websites. Both businesses are expanding their investments in generative AI with Microsoft serving as a key investor in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

Nguyen appeared before the Connecticut panel at the suggestion of Jay Summerson, a senior director of government affairs at Microsoft, according to Connecticut state Sen. James Maroney (D). Microsoft did not provide comment. Nguyen said he had no recollection of ever meeting Summerson.

Nguyen’s home base gives him a big audience with lawmakers and other policymakers across the country, Adam Kovacevich, CEO of the industry group Chamber of Progress, said.

“You’re talking about one of the top five states in the country for tech jobs and innovation,” Kovacevich said. “And he’s at the center of the hottest debates on technology that are happening in Washington state.”

Tech companies have long opposed a legal tool called a private right of action that lets consumers sue, in favor of laws that leave all enforcement to state attorneys general, an approach that Nguyen has helped spread nationwide. Seventeen states now have comprehensive data privacy laws that are enforced by them. Washington is not among them. Nguyen alluded to a key reason why during his appearance before Connecticut lawmakers. “Enforcement is going to be the most important part of the bill because that’s when the lawyers get involved and that’s when things get expensive,” he said.

Nguyen denies Microsoft has had any undue influence over him. “I don’t feel like I’ve been kumbaya nor have I been an adversary to the tech folks,” he said. But his views have aligned with the company on significant issues during the four years he worked at the company while also serving in the legislature — and after. He said that all of his life experiences play into how he legislates.

Early Lessons

Nguyen’s father fought with the South Vietnamese Navy before fleeing in 1975 as communist forces neared victory. His mother and older sister escaped Vietnam in 1979 as part of a mass exodus by sea, rescued when a US Coast Guard vessel spotted them off the coast of Japan in a boat with two dozen other people.

The family made its way to Washington state, and was living in public housing outside Seattle in 1983 when Joe was born. The Nguyens later bought their own home in the Seattle area, which was becoming one of the largest Vietnamese communities in the country.

When he was 8, Nguyen found his father pinned under a church van in the driveway, an accident that left him quadriplegic and brain-dead until he died 16 years later. Neighbors provided an early lesson in the value of community a couple years later by building a ramp to the front door of the ranch house so that his father could get to medical appointments more easily.

Nguyen said he became his father’s caretaker while going to school and, as a teenager, worked at a movie theater and inside his Catholic high school to help pay off his tuition. He also found time to join student government, play the saxophone, and become a member of the French honor society.

“I don’t know what better experience I can have for politics than having been a janitor at your own high school,” he said. “You have to get over insecurities pretty fast and you just have to acknowledge that life is not the same for every single person.”

Entering Politics

After graduating from Seattle University with undergraduate degrees in finance and humanities, Nguyen stayed in the area while working as an investment analyst with UBS Group AG.

“I got really, really good at Excel,” he said. “I’d pitch people. I’d say, ‘This is where your portfolio should be.’ I’d use the data, I’d have a narrative.”

“Financially, it was like, fine. It was good,” Nguyen said. “But I hated my life.”

During a trip to Vietnam to bury his father in 2007, Joe saw extended family members generous with everything they had, especially home cooking, while “living off of probably $50 US a month” in his ancestral village near the city of Phan Rang.

“I was like, man, what am I doing wrong with my life where I’m just chasing money, chasing power, chasing the rich people?” he said.

Nguyen left UBS weeks later to escape what he calls the nonstop grind of the financial industry. He took a job at Expedia Inc., before joining Microsoft in 2013. The job at the Redmond-based company allowed the time and money for Nguyen to begin volunteering in the community for groups focused on housing and homelessness.

His interest in politics grew after President Donald Trump’s 2016 election and rhetoric targeting young immigrants that Nguyen said “felt personal.”

He joined a police oversight board after the 2017 fatal police shooting of Tommy Le, a young Vietnamese American man, in Burien, a community near White Center where Nguyen’s family had moved. He began making plans by the next year to run for a state House of Representatives seat, but then switched to a state Senate run when the incumbent Democrat, Sharon Nelson, announced her retirement.

There was a natural base of support for his bid to replace Nelson and become the first person of color to represent the district. The Asian American population in King County, which includes Seattle, more than doubled between 2000 and 2020 to nearly a half-million people, according to US Census data. Many lived in the 34th Senate District covering West Seattle, White Center, and the island of Vashon.

“This provided a really valuable network for him,” Paul Berendt, a political consultant and former chair of the Washington State Democratic Party, said.

‘Play the Game’

Nguyen faced nearly a dozen opponents in the nonpartisan primary, including Shannon Braddock, then chief of staff to longtime Democratic King County Executive Dow Constantine. “She had all the money,” said Michael Charles, a political consultant who worked on the race with Nguyen. “He was kind of the underdog in the race and nobody really thought that he had a chance of winning.”

Nguyen convinced a local Democratic club to jointly endorse him and Braddock, denying her a clear advantage among highly engaged voters. And he spent a few hundred dollars to target voters with Facebook ads according to their ZIP code. Nguyen won by a comfortable margin, the first Vietnamese American elected to the Washington state Senate.

“It was the kind of place where people pay their dues,” Berendt said. “Joe challenged the status quo and he was elected, and that ruffled a few feathers.”

Some colleagues found him annoying at first. In a state where lawmakers can only pass legislation for a set number of hours every year, Nguyen wasted valuable floor time making speeches that “no one’s listening to,” state Sen. Manka Dhingra, the Democratic deputy majority leader at the time, recalled telling him.

Long speeches on police accountability and tax credits for working class families were definitely “falling on deaf ears,” Nguyen said. Besides technology, he also has focused upon topics such as real estate taxes and vacating cannabis convictions.

“I learned really quickly just working hard and showing up doesn’t mean you can achieve the goals you want,” he said. “You also have to play the game a bit.”

First Big Tech Bill

One of those lessons came during his freshman year in 2019, as states were considering ways to restrict how companies collect and sell personal data about their users.

A landmark California law the previous year had entrusted the state attorney general to enforce restrictions, but it also included language letting citizens sue companies that jeopardize their privacy with data breaches. Tech companies worried that other states adopting similar rules that would empower consumers to sue.

In Washington state, Sen. Reuven Carlyle (D), who chaired the state Senate Environment, Energy, and Technology Committee, introduced the Washington Privacy Act in 2019 (S.B. 6291) after meeting with Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft. The state attorney general would have the sole enforcement authority under the measure — a provision privacy groups opposed.

Carlyle asked Nguyen to work with him on the bill, which would help him counter criticism from the political left that Nguyen cultivated in his election. “Joe, as a Vietnamese American and with a technology background had an enormous credibility,” Carlyle said.

Nguyen said he wasn’t opposed to allowing state residents to sue, but saw no point in supporting the provision considering tech companies’ opposition.

Microsoft backed the bill when the 2020 legislative session began. It cleared the state Senate, but the proposal never passed the other chamber. Industry lobbyists saw its potential, however, and used it as a model for other states.

A 2021 Virginia law was “clearly modeled on the Washington Privacy Act,” said Keir Lamont, director of the Future of Privacy Forum’s US Legislation team, who tracks data privacy laws nationwide. At least 17 state laws affecting millions of people have a “common ancestor” in Olympia, Lamont said.

The Virginia law received an F grade in a 2024 report by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and US PIRG Education Fund because it is “almost entirely void of meaningful” consumer protections.

“It kind of baked into law the status quo of allowing companies to just put whatever they want in their privacy policies and as long as it’s in their privacy policies, it’s OK to do,” Caitriona Fitzgerald, deputy director of EPIC and an author of the report, said.

‘Much More Pragmatic’

In 2020, Nguyen sponsored what would become the first state law in the US restricting government use of facial-recognition technology.

The ACLU of Washington wanted a full ban on the technology — which uses AI — out of concern that it could lead to increased police abuses and mass surveillance by the government or businesses. Some legislators told Nguyen that they were inclined to agree with the civil liberties group.

But Nguyen’s bill, backed by Microsoft, proposed state and local agencies be allowed to use the technology if they got a warrant in most cases. They would also have to publicly disclose what tools they were using. The state attorney general alone would enforce the measure, with no ability for state residents to sue.

While Washington’s became the first state law in the US restricting government use of the technology, some privacy groups questioned how much protection it offered for communities historically harmed by government surveillance.

This year, he successfully pushed for a task force to develop potential regulations on AI, which critics say could effectively slow down AI regulatory efforts themselves. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson (D) appointed Nguyen a member of the task force in June.

“He’s really good on the policing stuff and he’s really good on sentencing reform, tax reform, he’s a very good progressive ally,” Lorena González, legislative director at the ACLU of Washington, said of Nguyen. “On tech issues, he’s much more pragmatic.”

He has been rewarded by his colleagues for his efforts. Nguyen became chair of the Senate Environment, Energy, and Technology Committee in 2023 after Carlyle’s retirement. Chamber leaders also made him a leading Democrat on negotiating the state’s roughly $70 billion budget.

The ‘Tech Optimists’

Many of Nguyen’s constituents have connections to Microsoft or other tech companies with big footprints in the Seattle area, such as Amazon.com Inc. — as well as major companies Starbucks Corp. and Boeing Co. And many of them supported his unsuccessful 2021 run for King County executive when Nguyen lost to Constantine.

“He’s representing a lot of people who don’t hate tech companies because they work for tech companies and they’re oftentimes tech optimists,” Kovacevich said.

Being a member of the Washington state legislature is a part-time job that pays $57,876 per year, and Nguyen, who is married to a special education teacher, continued working at Microsoft until 2022. He still owns as much as $29,999 in company stock, according to his latest financial disclosures.

Nguyen also worked in recent years at a human-service nonprofit, Wellspring Family Services, and his Joe Nguyen Consulting LLC. His total income from those two jobs is as high as $260,000 per year, according to the records. Neither role involves his legislative work, according to Nguyen. His main consulting clients are Goodwill Industries International and a Seattle-based soap company called L’AVANT Collective, he said.

Nguyen said he’s never spoken to his employers or clients about legislative business. A Microsoft spokesman did not provide comment.

Early in his legislative career Nguyen highlighted that he didn’t take corporate donations. But last year, Microsoft; Isaac Kastama, a lobbyist tied to Amazon; and the Entertainment Software Association, an industry group tied to both companies, each gave $1,000 to Nguyen out of the $1,200 permitted per four-year Senate term, records show. Charter Communications gave the full amount. DoorDash Inc. and the Washington Technology Industry Association PAC gave $600.

His initial idealism against corporate donations — as Nguyen calls it — worked to his “detriment,” he said, alienating colleagues who did accept such money. “People saw that as me not wanting to be a team player,” he added.

‘Not Afraid’

Last summer Nguyen took on another job: president and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based AAPI Victory Fund, a super PAC devoted to promoting Asian Americans and allied candidates for state and federal positions.

The group unleashed robocalls, social media ads, and advertisements in ethnic publications such as Urdu News, a news site serving Pakistani immigrants, to label Republican Mazi Pilip as an extremist ahead of the February election in New York to replace Rep. George Santos (R) after his expulsion from the chamber. The race was easily won by Democrat Tom Suozzi.

The super PAC can be more aggressive than those tied to nationally prominent Democrats or established advocacy groups, according to Nguyen.

“They aren’t able to go negative,” Nguyen said. “We are not afraid.”

The super PAC, which received at least $750,000 this year from a group tied to financier George Soros, developed ties to Vice President Kamala Harris long before her unexpected campaign to become president.

“It mobilizes and turns out voters,” Harris said at a 2022 event hosted by the group in Washington, D.C. “Asian voters were the margin of victory in 2020.”

Harris later hosted the group in May to celebrate AAPI Heritage Month at her official residence at the Naval Observatory, an event where Nguyen also spoke. He also plans to vote for her nomination next week as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

If Harris wins in November, she would become the first woman, and first Asian American, president.

Five years after crashing onto the Seattle political scene, Nguyen also is crafting a national political reputation as a pragmatic operator, AI realist, and rising Democratic voice.

“When he was first elected, he was affiliated with the far-left, progressive wing, and I think that as he has evolved, and experienced more and more success, he has seen that the deep complexity of nuance in legislating is both about relationships and incrementalism and compromise,” Carlyle, the former state senator, said.

Not everyone in Nguyen’s circle is thrilled with the changes.

“I kind of miss the new-to-the-legislature Joe,” Marcy Bowers, executive director at the Statewide Poverty Action Network in Seattle, said. “This is not unique to him by any stretch of the imagination, but I find myself wishing that he would push harder on a few things.”