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Moving Beyond Bubble Tea
U.S. World News & Report | Lynda Tran | May 13, 2016

When Hillary Clinton downed a cup of bubble tea in Queens last month, the image was compelling not just because the likely Democratic nominee to the White House clearly enjoyed this Asian specialty beverage. It captured our attention because it showcased a basic truism in politics: If you want to win votes, you have to show voters that you “get” who they are. And when it comes to Asian-American voters, that tenet has been more overlooked than you might think.

It’s not that the parties have ignored Asian-American voters — much has been made of the “rising American electorate” and the impact that minority voters are poised to have on the 2016 elections. The problem is that too often, both sides of the aisle have treated Asian-Americans as if we were a monolithic block of color, culture and creed. And with Asian-Americans projected to overtake Hispanics as the largest minority group in the United States by 2065, that wrongheaded approach will inevitably cost our would-be elected leaders elections in the future.

For Democrats, the primary danger is that political candidates take the unique nature of Asian-American voters for granted. Despite recent advances in community-based organizing over the last two presidential cycles that have made affinity groups and in-language organizing the norm, 69 percent of Asian-American voters reported that no one contacted them during the 2012 election.

Recognizing that there is more work to do to reach Asian-American voters in the first place, Hillary Clinton has made it a point to show that she understands the issues facing Asian-American families.

Since launching a targeted voter outreach program in January, the Clinton campaign has convened an Asian-American leadership council and released a platform detailing her “Vision for a Thriving Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community,” among other activities. Bernie Sanders has similarly brought together leaders from the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community to advise his strategy on key issues and voter engagement.

If the past several elections are any indication, these investments will pay off, too. Broadly, Asian-American voters have been steadily moving towards the Democratic Party over the past several presidential elections. A majority of Asian-American voters — 55 percent overall — supported Al Gore in 2000, while John Kerry garnered 56 percent support from these communities in 2004. More recently, President Barack Obama was re-elected to the White House in 2012 with the backing of 73 percent of the 4 million Asian-American voters who cast ballots that November — up from the 62 percent support he received in 2008. It’s no wonder, as the Obama for America campaign pioneered the use of affinity groups like AAPIs for Obama and invested in voter registration, persuasion and turnout efforts to reach these voters in game-changer states including Virginia and Nevada.

While Asian-Americans have not figured into the leading Republican presidential contenders’ operations in a particularly visible way in 2016, the Republican Party itself has historically considered these communities important. Asian-Americans have held key positions in recent Republican presidential administrations, with leaders like Norm Mineta, Elaine Chao and Neel Kashkari for George W. Bush and Julia Chang Bloch for George H.W. Bush. More recently, having witnessed the swing by Asian-American voters from once solidly Republican to increasingly Democratic, the Republican National Committee has attempted to make inroads with Asian-American and Pacific Islander millennials through the Republican Leadership Initiative, a leadership institute aimed at training young Asian-Americans to recruit other young Asian-Americans into the Republican Party.

But herein lies the central dilemma for today’s political candidates: It turns out that we Asians don’t typically move in lockstep — either on the issues or with our voting habits. Although Obama won every segment of the Asian-American electorate in 2012, the degree to which these distinct ethnic communities supported him varied by more than 23 percentage points between Indian-Americans (84 percent) and Vietnamese-Americans (61 percent). And the likelihood of Asian-American voters turning out at the polls changes dramatically based on the ethnic group, with some Asian heritage groups turning out at 89 percent and others doing so at 40 percent. In some cases, language barriers at the polls may play an important role in turnout among AAPI voters — especially when almost half of the jurisdictions around the country don’t provide language assistance to limited-English speakers.

While Americans of all stripes care deeply about the economy, jobs and whether our children will have the opportunity to do better than we have, there are a number of issues that figure more prominently for sectors of Asian-American and Pacific-Islander voters. For some, education will be the driving factor in casting their ballots. For others, social justice issues, trade or health care policy may make all the difference. The men and women who want to represent us in Washington ought to take the time to understand us better — and to differentiate between both our communities and our priorities.

The fact remains that fully 46 percent of Asian-Americans identify themselves as independent. When nearly half of the population in these communities refuse to be categorized as either Democrat or Republican, that’s a clear indication that both parties have work to do to count these voters in their column.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers — far from it. But one thing I know for certain is the same old playbook that has been trotted out the past several electoral cycles — i.e. slapping “AAPI” on a leaflet and calling it targeted outreach — won’t cut it for much longer. And our elected leaders and candidates ignore the differences among us, at their own peril.

Here’s hoping they recognize the irony the next time they’re tossing a mahjong tile or slurping those tapioca pearls. That at least, would be a start.