Has the GOP Given Up on Asian Americans?

A side-by-side comparison indicates "Yes" - but is that good for APA Democrats?

By Stewart David Ikeda, IMDiversity

This is a tough time to be Asian American and Republican – a hard fall season, heading into a long cold winter, regardless of the outcome of this week’s elections. I say this because I’ve noticed that, whether or not the GOP machinery pulls out more wins than losses for its candidates, the efforts of Asian Americans in the party will have been largely taken for granted, unappreciated, at times even invisible.

A quick click on the following links illustrates the point. Side by side, in two browser windows, they display the “Asian American channels” on the websites of the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee respectively. (For those reading offline, screen capture images are also provided below.)

At this writing less than a week before Election Day, the RNC’s GOP.com blog channel for “Asian Americans” contains exactly a single posting (from September 14) about Ken Melhman urging Asian Americans in Seattle “to give the GOP another look”.  Among the various niche constituencies on the GOP “Teams” page, there is no Asian American team, nor even a single Asian face.

By contrast, visit the DNC’s Asian American and Pacific Islanders Communities channel, and you get the picture painting a thousand words.

Okay, so what?

While the ‘Net and Blogosphere are hardly reliable reflections of real life – much less predictors of actual electoral outcomes – what this does illustrate, concretely and objectively, is this:

At a time of an unprecedented embracing of diverse Asian Americans within the Democratic Party, the Republicans seem to have given up on representation of or outreach to Asian Americans entirely.

Try, Try Again.  Or Not.

You might think that, as a registered Democrat, I would take this as great news. In fact, the opposite is true. As someone concerned with diversity and policies affecting Asian American communities, I have to admit that our serious under-representation, even among “the opposition,” is unhealthy for us all.  And further, historically speaking, it makes no sense.

Traditionally, Asian Americans have leaned Republican – and often really, really Republican.  We collectively did not vote for Bill Clinton – twice in a row. (Hillary, take note.)  Disenchanted with Democrats for good reason during a decade of fundraising scandals and Wen Ho Lee, we gave them only 36% of our two-party vote in 1992, and a slightly better 47% in 1996.

Then, despite past animosities, Asian Americans crossed party lines in 2000 to give a small majority vote to Al Gore. (Exit polls showed APAs were the only “race” group to switch party allegiances that year.) As I’ve written in the past, the Republicans had a decision to make at this point.  In 2000, and even 2004, the APA vote was the GOP’s to lose.  And so they did.

In 2000, we showed ourselves to be a swing-vote, akin to the sought-after “soccer moms,” more than to other pigeonholed “race constituencies” such as “Black voters”.  But rather than woo and invite us back, the GOP ignored us.

Just as Democrats have been accused of taking African Americans for granted, holding back young Black leaders and paying only lip service to community concerns, the GOP has taken it for granted that Asian Americans will stick with them. In a national opinion poll commissioned by New California Media, a whopping 20% of APAs declared themselves to remain "Undecided" by September 2004.  Nonetheless, Asian Americans attached to the GOP were tapped more for donation drives and employed in Rove-style attacks on other Asians than they were allowed to represent and lead on community issues.  A golden opportunity passed by, and Asian Americans backed John Kerry by an even wider margin than Gore captured (exit poll estimates ranged from 56%-64%).

The same general patterns appear to be emerging again in the final weeks of the 2006 season – and then some.  The funny thing is, early on in the 2004 season, the DNC wasn’t much better.

Substantive outreach to Asian Americans did evolve at the DNC by Nov. 2004, but it was a rocky start.  The outreach desk got launched late in the game – at first disorganized, reliant on volunteers, something of an afterthought. But the effort got better, and the effect was good for Asian Americans. By Election Day, the DNC had grasped and developed (perhaps overly) detailed policy items addressing a host of real-world concerns specific to East Asian Americans, Southeast Asian Americans, South Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians.  (DNC won big points for showing it could actually differentiate among us.) For anyone who actually took time to compare the APIA channels on the Kerry and Bush sites side-by-side on the morning of Nov. 2, as I did, the contrast was startling – and a bit heartbreaking.

Asian Americans and Howard Dean

In 2006, the situation is very different. Whereas the GOP has continued to ignore and at times abuse APAs, the DNC has now formalized an unprecedented effort to bring Asian Americans into its fold.  It has created formal issues and outreach desks at the national level, staffed by experienced veterans of the 2004 effort, and created an infrastructure and real, paid opportunities allowing young Asian Americans to meaningfully engage with the party.

The Democrats are also setting a new benchmark this year, fielding Asian American candidates – old and new – that could bring an unprecedented level of Asian American representation in Congress.  This includes a historic trio of Asian American women with excellent prospects of winning their campaigns for the U.S. House – Mazie Hirono (Hawai’i), Tammy Duckworth (Illinois), and Doris Matsui (Calif.).

For the DNC’s newfound attentiveness to our communities, we may have Howard Dean to thank.  Some top party leaders don’t agree with the new Chairman’s 50-State Plan, decentralizing party resources and beefing up small, networked efforts in every state, but it has created paths for more APAs to get involved. The party has hired passionate APAs to work on outreach, fundraising and GOTV efforts in targeted races nationwide.

It was also Dean’s personal commitment, for example, that swayed the swing-vote group, the 80-20 Initiative, to back all Democrats this year, with only two exceptions.  Although the tripartisan organization ultimately endorsed Kerry last time, it was half-heartedly, and internally controversial.  In 2004, the Democrats’ responsiveness to 80-20’s policy concerns was lukewarm, at best; but the GOP’s was at first nonexistent, and later hostile. This year, Chairman Dean enthusiastically committed his support to 80-20’s call for Congressional action on glass ceiling discrimination against Asian Americans – a rare common-ground cause dear to 80-20’s Republicans, Democrats and independents alike.

If the GOP has any equivalent to a Howard Dean, none has emerged this season. Indeed, recent public dispatches from 80-20 have alleged intimidation tactics were used by high-level Asian Republicans, including members of the (ostensibly community development-oriented, non-political) White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. For that matter, few conservative candidates or APA groups have had much to say about even no-brainers such as Virginia incumbent Senator George Allen’s “Macaca-gate”. 

In fact, as far as Asian Americans are concerned, it doesn’t seem to have much to say about anything.

Invisibility’s Good for No One

In 2006, short of any monkey business at the polls (“macaca business,” should we say?), the margin favoring Democrats is forecast to be similar or even larger than the last midterm, at least.  However, this will depend largely upon turnout among our youngest voters, 18-25, who multiple polls have found to be left-leaning. Since young APAs’ turnout has been fairly dismal (alas, they have been the least likely to vote among all youth “race” groups), those forecasts may be overblown.

In any case, Asian American Republicans are left in an unenviable position.

1)      They are unhappy stakeholders in a low turnout by Asian Americans.  Virtually every sound predictor this year suggests that any improvement in turnout by Asian American voters, especially youth voters, would be a net loss for the GOP. And I have to wonder, if victory means you have to hope your kids don’t show up to vote, how sweet a victory can it be?

2)      A Democratic sweep would bring a banner era for Asian American representation in high government, with the bipartisan Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus growing in size and influence.  Meanwhile, sure, the GOP will likely see re-election of Bobby Jindal in Louisiana (excluding non-voting delegates), widely admired for his leadership during the Katrina catastrophe. And what else? If unlucky, Orange County’s Tan Nguyen, whose scandal-ridden campaign stands to tarnish (unfairly) a host of other up and coming, mostly Republican Vietnamese Americans seeking office in California.

3)      Even if “they win,” the question has to be asked: Okay, what next? What do they (we) get out of it – as Asian Americans? What GOP planks or policies bear their (our) mark? How are they bringing Asian American leaders to the table? If their party ignores them now, what leverage, what carrot or stick, do they (we) really have to offer anyone, say, when the next Wen Ho Lee case comes around? Where’s their (our) “Team”?

None of this necessarily means that the GOP “doesn’t care” about Asian Americans, or have some positions that are relevant and attractive. The thing is, there’s really no way to know.  Indeed, some APA Republicans have strenuously urged their party to better communicate its positions to APAs.  But while its fundraising is unparalleled, its coffers full (aided not insignificantly by Asian Americans), the RNC has not made this investment.  The party seems, from the outside anyway, to be divesting fast.

And if so, that’s bad news for us – not for us Reds or for us Blues, but for Asian Americans in our democracy.