Twitter's #MyNameIs trend morphs into a campaign ad against Georgia's Senator Perdue

It is no longer any doubt that Georgia's Asian American voters are going to vote for the two Democratic candidates for Senate Jan. 5 next year. The only remaining question is: will enough AAPI voters turn out to make a difference.

Besides the huge question about the Republican incumbents' refusal to address accusations of insider trading from which both of the Georgia senators benefitted from, one of the reasons the AAPI vote is so overwhelmingly committed to the challengers may hinge on the perceived racial insensitivity of Perdue.

The Insider Advantage/Fox 5 Atlanta poll has Warnock, senior pastor at a civil rights landmark, the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, is ahead of Republican Kelly Loeffler by a 2% margin at 49%-47%. Incumbent Loeffler was appointed to the Senate when Senator Johnny Isakson resigned a year ago.

The same survey had GOP incumbent Sen. David Perdue ahead of Democratic rival Jon Ossoff, a media executive, by a razor-thin 1% margin,

The polls have both races within the margin of error so every vote will count in two races that could determine the ability of Joe Biden, the President-elect, to implement all his campaign promises and return the country to the realm of sanity.

Perdue's deliberate mispronouncing of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris' name at an October rally for Donald Trump could very well may be the deciding factor for many AAPI people who have been humiliated or bullied because of their names.

"Ka-MAL-a, Ka-MAL-a or Kamala, Kamala, Ka-mala, -mala, -mala, I don't know, whatever," mocked Perdue drawing laughter from the partisan crowd.

For the record, Harris' first name is pronounced "comma-LA," which means "Lotus Flower" in Sanskrit.

Most Asian Americans who have a name that has been mispronounced, mocked or bullied in school can recall the sting of of humiliation or shame that arose when they were kids.

But when an adult of Perdue's stature does it, it is because  -- not having anything weightier to say -- he has to resort to the playground taunt. It is a tactic meant to "otherize" or underline the "foreigness" of the Vice President-elect and -- Ossoff, by association.

In a race as close as Perdue vs. Ossoff, a little incident like the mocking incident, could spell the difference between victory or looking for a new job.

A video clip of the incident went viral, drawing angry social media responses from the AAPI community carrying the #MyNameIs hashtag. Celebrities and politicians such as Daniel Dae Kim, Ilhan Omar, Michelle Kwan, Ken Jeong and more joined in sharing the origins of their names in solidarity with Harris.

The viral #MyNameIs social media response has been revived by Harris' niece Meena Harris and her Phenomenal Productions and the Indian American Impact Fund (IMPACT) for a series of pro-Democrat  videos launched last week. The videos will air online ahead of the Jan. 5 runoff election and during Georgia's early, mail-in  and absentee voting period.

"South Asian Americans helped build this country even though at times we've been pushed aside and put down or made into a punchline," Nanjiani says at the top of the video. "In 2020, when our leaders insulted and disrespected us, they know exactly what they're doing. And so do we," referring to castsing their vote for Ossoff.

Perdue's mockery of Indian American Harris comes on top of the racist rhetoric coming from the White House in referring tot he cornavirus as the Wuhan Flue or Kung Fu.

According to a report by United Nations officials, hate crimes against Asian Americans have reached an “alarming level” across the United States since 2016 due to the weaponizing of words by the Trump administration and his supporters like Perdue. These words negatively impact the AAPI community and were emboldened during the pandemic when the former host of The Celebrity Apprentice referred to the coronavirus as the “Kung Flu” and the “China Virus”.

IMPACT, an Indian American advocacy and political action committee, has donated a historic $2.5 million to the campaign.

The joke -- as it turns out -- may be on Perdue.

"South Asian and Asian American voters played a pivotal role in delivering Georgia to President-elect Biden and VP-elect Kamala Harris. An additional 42,000 AAPI voters voted in 2020 over 2016, and more than 30,000 AAPI voters voted for the first time ever. Biden won Georgia by just over 14,000 votes. But the work isn’t finished yet," IMPACT said in statement. 

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.