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| Georgia's AAPI community were energized by the 2020 Presidential race. |
The stakes are enormous. If Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock beat incumbent Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, Democrats would wrest control of the Senate from Republican, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. If the GOP keeps the majority in the Senate, the upper house would make it difficult for Biden to pass major legislation and reform,
FiveThirty-eight has both races a virtual toss-up with only .1 or .2 percentage points separating the candidates, well within the margin of error.
This year, Georgia saw a 91% increase in AAPI voter turnout over 2016, and exit polls showed Asian American voters preferred Joe Biden to Donald Trump by a 2 to 1 margin.
Surveys show that 42,000 more AAPI voters voted in 2020 over 2016; more than 30,000 of those voters voted for the first time ever. Biden's winning margin was only 14,000 votes.
It's no wonder that the Democratic Party is concentrating to improve those numbers and Republicans are trying their best to dissuade AAPI voters from casting their ballots.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, who is of Black and South Asian heritage, campaigned in Georgia Monday (Dec. 21) to energize African American and Asian American voters. Her visit comes a week after Joe Biden came to the state.
Republicans have countered with Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, an Indian American.
One of the stops on Harris' itinerary was supposed to be in Suwanee, is located in Gwinett County – a county the president narrowly won in November 49.6% to 48.4%. CBS News voter files show that 17% of registered voters in the county are Asian American, a number that is higher than the state's average.However, that stop was canceled because she had to return to Washington to vote on the $900-billion stimulus bill.
But in Columbus, she was greeted with large energetic crowds. “As far as I’m concerned Georgia — Columbus — 2020 ain’t over until Jan. 5,” said Harris. “That’s when 2020 will be over. That’s when we’ll get this thing done. Because as you know, everything is at stake.”
Anjali Enjeti, who co-leads the Georgia chapter of the mobilization group They See Blue, said the key to wooing Asian American voters, they say: a candidate they respect with a coherent plan for the pandemic.
“That's going to get them to the polls more than saying, ‘Oh, we need to flip the Senate and dethrone [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell,’” Enjeti told Politico.
This week, They See Blue launched in-language phone banking in Punjabi, Gujarati, Nepali, and Telegu. They also, along with other Asian American groups in the state, deployed door knockers as early voting got underway -- three weeks out from the election, according to Politico.
"Language access is always a big thing for us," Yaqoob Mahmood of the Asian American Advocacy Fund told NPR. "We also make sure that outreach is available, and when we're knocking on doors, or talking to voters on the phone, that we have in-language volunteers and staff making those calls, but also having two way communication to let voters know that they can always reach back out to us if they have questions."
Andrew Yang, former Democratic Presidential candidate, was among the first Asian American "names" to go all in to encourage AAPI voters to take part in the runoffs. He hosted rallies and coffee gatherings with AAPI Georgians for both Ossoff and Warnock.
“The Democratic Party couldn’t win the presidency or the Senate without Asian Americans," said IMPACT Executive Director Neil Makhija.
IMPACT, an Indian American advocacy and political action committee, has launched a historic $2.5 million campaign to turnout Asian American voters in Georgia ahead of the January 5 Senate runoffs. The funds will be spent on digital, mail, and turnout operations.
"In November, South Asian and Asian American voters were the critical difference between victory and defeat in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Arizona," Makhija said. "The numbers are striking: Asian Americans increased turnout more than any other demographic, nearly doubling in Georgia. Asian Americans are becoming a core constituency of the Democratic Party, but they can’t be taken for granted.”
Some groups have started to focus on the AAPI vote in Georgia since Nov. 3. The AAPI Victory Fund launched a full scale Senatorial campaign in rural Georgia to mobilize the AAPI vote for Ossoff and Warnock.
“This Southern strategy has since paid off, but much work into infrastructure remains and particularly into identifying AAPI voter sub-ethnicities in order to properly target our voters.
"In the 2020 election where Biden won Georgia by only 12,000 votes, there were 30,500 who were first-time AAPI voters. ... At least 15,000 rural AAPI voters came out to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris," said the Victory Fund in a statement.
According to a study by by the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund, 68% of Asian Americans were contacted by a campaign, a political party or a community organization, compared to just over 50% of Asian Americans nationwide.
Sam Park, Georgia's first Democrat state legislator of Korean American descent, said that during the general election, the party and both candidates put forth coordinated multilingual outreach programs, conducted in-language phone banks and invested in ads in ethnic media.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee made a six-figure investment, hiring organizers to contact Georgia's communities of color, including Asian Americans.
"They've got some great folks on the ground who know what they're doing. They know how to organize within the Asian American community," Park told NBC News. "But also, I think, which is important to note, they have long-standing ties and relationships to Asian American communities, given that they're from these communities here in Georgia."
“That's going to get them to the polls more than saying, ‘Oh, we need to flip the Senate and dethrone [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell,’” Enjeti told Politico.
SCREEN CAPTURE / CNN
Bilingual outreach was effective in reaching out to AAPI voters.
This week, They See Blue launched in-language phone banking in Punjabi, Gujarati, Nepali, and Telegu. They also, along with other Asian American groups in the state, deployed door knockers as early voting got underway -- three weeks out from the election, according to Politico.
Person-to-person outreach is critical for new AAPI voters. Before the last Presidential election campaign, neither major party paid attention to the community. But the Biden-Harris ticket and growing anti-Trump sentiment among younger voters pushed staffers and volunteers in community groups such as AAsian American Advocacy Fund and Advancing Justice-Atlanta to produce multi-lingual campaign material; bilingual door-knockers canvassed Asian neighborhoods speaking to voters in Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese and any number of Asian Indian languages.
"Language access is always a big thing for us," Yaqoob Mahmood of the Asian American Advocacy Fund told NPR. "We also make sure that outreach is available, and when we're knocking on doors, or talking to voters on the phone, that we have in-language volunteers and staff making those calls, but also having two way communication to let voters know that they can always reach back out to us if they have questions."
An important turning point for Asian-American voters came in 2018, several Democratic activists said, when Stacey Abrams in her race for governor had a staff member assigned to Asian immigrant communities. Exit polls later showed that 78 percent of Asian-American voters cast their ballots for her.
But what made the turnout in Georgia unique, said Aisha Yaqoob Mahmood, director of the Asian American Advocacy Fund, was that coalition-building across community groups eventually paid off. Through multilingual, multiethnic, multigenerational organizations, she said, the communities in the state were able to chart a new path.
As community organizations across cultures focused on issues from immigration reform to ending cash bail to getting police out of schools, Mahmood told NBC News, people of color were able to see changes occurring.
"I think the biggest value in our work is not just in how we organized in Asian American communities, but the way that we build community with other Black and Brown voters. That's the story for Georgia," she said.
"It's not just Asian voters," NBC reported her saying. "It's how Asian Americans, Latinos and Black voters really changed the electorate and changed the future of our state, and the future of our country. ... It's always tied into how can we make sure that we're achieving these victories for all of our Black and brown brothers and sisters."
But what made the turnout in Georgia unique, said Aisha Yaqoob Mahmood, director of the Asian American Advocacy Fund, was that coalition-building across community groups eventually paid off. Through multilingual, multiethnic, multigenerational organizations, she said, the communities in the state were able to chart a new path.
As community organizations across cultures focused on issues from immigration reform to ending cash bail to getting police out of schools, Mahmood told NBC News, people of color were able to see changes occurring.
"I think the biggest value in our work is not just in how we organized in Asian American communities, but the way that we build community with other Black and Brown voters. That's the story for Georgia," she said.
"It's not just Asian voters," NBC reported her saying. "It's how Asian Americans, Latinos and Black voters really changed the electorate and changed the future of our state, and the future of our country. ... It's always tied into how can we make sure that we're achieving these victories for all of our Black and brown brothers and sisters."
“There’s a saying that the Asian American community has gone from being a marginalized community to being the margin of victory,” said Assemblyman Park. “That could be very true here in Georgia.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: A word of caution, this is news sprinkled with opinion. Readers are encouraged to seek multiple news sources to formulate their own positions.
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