Analysis: AANHPI communities flexing political muscle during redistricting process

Chicagoans examine one of the redistricting maps that includes an so-called "Asian" ward.

ANALYSIS

In the wake of recent elections which saw Asian Americans exercise their political influence in key races across the country, the newly gained power is being tested as AANHPi communities fight for political empowerment.

Chicago may get its first Asian American district in the Windy City.

“And this time, this year, it must happen," said Paul Liu, CEO of the Chinese American Service League during a press conference Tuesday. The following day the  City Council punted and delayed a vote on the new district boundaries.

Census data supports the creation of Chicago’s first Asian American majority ward in Greater Chinatown. The 2020 Census also demonstrates the existence of the Asian American community in the Albany Park and West Ridge neighborhoods. 

2020 Census supports the creation of Chicago’s first Asian American majority ward in Greater Chinatown. The 2020 Census also documented the significance of the Asian American community in the Albany Park and West Ridge neighborhoods.

"The redistricting process, as you may know is very chaotic at the moment. We're worried that if certain groups are not able to agree, and in that disagreement measurement Asian American Majority ward might get lost," said Justin Sia, redistricting counsel for Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Chicago.

Similar efforts are occurring across the nation. Filipinos in Queens, NYC; Koreans in Los Angeles's Koreatown; South Asians in Texas, Vietnamese in California's Orange County, Chinese and Filipinos in San Francisco, Hmong in California's Central Valley, Sikhs near Sacramento.

During this brief period when states redraw districts based on the 2020 Census so that residents AANHPI may lose influence and presence if they are not paying attention.

Even if AANHPI voters, which have leaned heavily towards the Democrats since the Obama administration, are watching the redistricting, GOP-dominated legislatures are deliberately finding ways to weaken the AAPI communities voting power.

GOP divides Texas’ Asian American neighborhoods

The most egregious attempts to weaken the AAPI vote is in Texas, but even in immigrant-heavy California, Asian American communities are being split up so they represent smaller voting blocs in their new districts as Asian American candidates, many of them newcomers to the old-school political scene, seek to have their voices heard.

"It is clear that these new legislative district lines were drawn to intentionally divide these rapidly growing AAPI communities and prevent them and other communities of color from electing candidates of their choice. This continues Texas’ shameful history of discriminating against voters of color,” Jerry Vattamala, Director of the Democracy Program with AALDEF. 

Census data shows that Texans of color accounted for 95% of the state’s population growth, but the state’s new political maps don’t reflect this growth. With obvious partisan intentions, Republicans drew new maps for Congress and the Texas Legislature that dilute the power of voters of color.

Even though AANHPI represent only 5% of the Texas electorate, in certain communities with heavy concentrations of AAPI residents and businesses, they have exerted their political and economic influence beyond the size of their communities.

The AANHPI population is the fastest-growing racial or ethnic voting group in the state, according to the Census. Over the past decade, AANHPI voters have increased from 950,000 in 2010 to nearly 1.6 million in 2020.

“This brazen attack on the voting rights of people of color in Texas is a fundamental attack on democracy and violates the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution. All Texans should be appalled at these blatantly discriminatory district lines,” said Vattamala.

The races in Congressional districts 22 and 23, where Asian Americans Sri Preston Kulkarni and Gina Ortiz Jones ran as Democrat challengers, nearly turned blue because of the AANHPI voters' eagerness to have someone who understood and addressed their concerns, particularly over immigration and health care issues.

Fort Bend county was voted the most diverse county in the country multiple times and shares the city of Houston along with neighboring Harris County. The county has gone from being 90% white 30 years ago to barely 32% White today. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, Fort Bend county has a 20% Asian population and neighboring Harris county has a 7.3% Asian population.

Voters in District 22 almost got Indian American Kulkarni a Congressional seat, and were ready to plunge their energy and resources for another attempt in 2022. Lacking a viable AAPI candidate (Kulkarni has not indicated if he would attempt another Congressional run), if the district with its 2019 district boundaries continues to trend towards the Democrats, the district could very have turned blue.

Under the proposed boundaries for District 22, that trend is less likely to occur. In order to dilute the voting influence of AAPI, the Texas legislature siphoned off part of the suburban district to a large rural district dominated by white conservatives.

For the sprawling Congressional District 23, where Filipina American Ortiz Jones was the focus of anti-Asian and anti-LGBTQ attacks, the GOP plan is to take away the San Antonio and El Paso suburban voters where she performed well among Blacks sand Latinos.

As the proposed redrawn map for Congressional districts show below, the GOP plan to reinforced their grip on Texas.

Similarly, the proposed map (below)  for legislative districts guarantee GOP dominance in the state's legislature.

Texas' Republican legislature and governor are using the same strategy of divide and conquer against those Congressional and state legislature districts where Blacks and Latinos voted Democrat to ensure the GOP grip on the Lone Star state and stop cold  any voters' trend towards Democrats.

As of October 2021, the partisan breakdown of the House was 83 Republicans and 66 Democrats. During the 2020 election, 76 districts voted for Trump while 74 voted for Biden.

In an analysis by the Texas Tribune, the reconfigured Congressional districts brings the number of districts in which Hispanics make up the majority of eligible voters down from 33 to 30. The number of districts with Black residents as the majority of eligible voters would drop from seven to six. Meanwhile, the number of districts where Whites are a majority would increase from 83 to 89. The possibility of an AAPI Congressional representative from Texas would be nil.

A slew of lawsuits have been filed by the Asian American Legal and Educational Defense Fund, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fun along with other civil rights groups, saying the proposed maps disenfranchise Latinos, Blacks and Asians.

"These racially gerrymandered maps minimize the voting power of our Latino, Black and Asian communities," said state Rep. Ana Hernandez, D-Houston and legal counsel for the caucus. "Texans deserve a map that provides them a fair chance to elect their candidate of choice."

California dreaming: AAPI communities try to stay intact

In California where AAPI voters make up 16% of the electorate, the redistricting battle is of a different nature but still has overtones of decisions based on race, or more accurately, a type of color blindness that erases the growing strength of AAPI voters.

"When I'm thinking about the dynamics of the Bay Area, the main thing in my mind is what's going to happen with minority representation — in particular, how is this growth in the Asian American community going to emerge?" said Eric McGhee, senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. The San Francisco Bay Area with its heavy concentration of Asian residents is one region that could gain some AAPI seats in Congress, the state legislature and local districts for counties and cities.

As the redistricting process began, a network of Asian American, Pacific Islander, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian advocacy groups formed the AAPI & AMEMSA State Redistricting Collaborative.

In order to avoid the district gerrymandering to give strength to whichever party is power at the moment, California has taken away the redrawing of districts from the state legislature and given the power to the supposedly nonpartisan California Citizens Redistricting Commission, a body of eleven residents created when voters passed Proposition 11 in 2008.

While the intentions of the commission are good, the results are still questionable because the dividing of blocks among districts don't take into account the cultural and racial implications of the color-blind decisions.

That's where the Collaborative plays an important role to make sure that minority voices are heard and strengthen the voices of the previously ignored voters.

To make sure the voices of the diverse minority communities don't go unheard, the group held local workshops for residents and drew its own series of district proposals. They were able to present the commission with their own maps that best represented their communities.

"We got a lot of really great, rich information and tried to make sure folks were sharing that with the commission," said Julia Marks, an attorney with Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Asian Law Caucus. "But fitting all these communities and data and legal requirements together to create an actual map proposal is a big puzzle."

Some of the group's ideas have been picked up by the redistricting commission, such as drawing a San Francisco Assembly district that combines the city's Chinese communities — from the west side to the Filipino neighborhoods in southeast San Francisco with the Filipino neighborhoods in Daly City.

While those communities have unique identities, Marks said residents' common "policy concerns and voting habits," clustering them together justify their inclusion in a single district, "because that helps them have a stronger political voice and influence the outcome of both elections and policy conversations."

Palo Alto Councilmember Greg Tanaka is running for Congress as a representative for California’s 18th congressional district, which encompasses areas in Santa Clara and Alameda counties that together are known as Silicon Valley. He told San José Spotlight the map will fracture the San Jose Vietnamese vote by splitting the population into several districts.

“[The proposal] takes what would have been a 40% Asian district and carves it out into a district with only about 20%, and that’s not right,” Tanaka said.

“On the county side, it seems like some of this is being done for political reasons, not necessarily for representation reasons,” Tanaka said.

AANHPI influence threatened in Southern California

The remapping process is occurring up and down the political flagpole, from Congress down to the grassroots level affecting representation for school boars and city councils. 

For the moment, the latest map produced by Los Angeles City Council appears to keep Koreatown intact in one city council district instead of the current map that divides  the neighborhood among four city council districts.

Eunice Song, executive director of the Korean American Coalition and member of the Koreatown Redistricting Task Force, said she supported the map for its unification of Koreatown under Council District 10, which community members have long advocated for.

This fragmented structure, Song said, forces Koreatown residents to compete for the attention and resources of multiple elected officials.

“When accountability is diffused among four council members,” she told NBC News, “it has a direct impact on the needs of Koreatown being deprioritized and therefore neglected.”

Under the proposed remapping of Congressional districts, Monterey Park, Alhambra and Rosemead would move from the 27th District to the 39th District.

The San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles is home to more Asian Americans than in 42 states, according to a report by Asian Americans Advancing Justice. The suburbs east of Los Angeles where AANHPI neighborhoods have sprouted and established roots is a battleground for competing interests seeking representation.

The remapping process threatens two Congressional seats now held by Asian Americans: Rep. Young Kim, a Republican representing the 39th District, and Rep. Judy Chu, a Democrat representing the 27th District.

A coalition of Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community leaders and organizations, the Center for Asian Americans United for Self Empowerment (CAUSE), is raising concerns over the  Redistricting Commission’s draft maps of the San Gabriel Valley and East San Gabriel Valley.

The draft maps split West San Gabriel Valley cities  and East San Gabriel Valley  cities with significant AAPI populations into multiple congressional districts. In these draft maps, the AAPI community could face an uphill battle to elect a representative from their own community despite the incumbency of two Asian American Congressional members. 

Voters in both districts fear that four decades of progress by community coalitions and partnerships could come unravel under the proposed changes.

The growing and well-established AANHPI community is identifiable in ESGV by retail plazas with AAPI businesses, AANHPI churches and temples, and AANHPI language schools. In ESGV, the communities of Hacienda Heights, Walnut, Rowland Heights, and Diamond Bar are currently in a district with 33% AAPIs and in the new maps will be put in a new district with the Gateway Cities that will reduce the AAPIs to 21%, diluting AAPI representation. CAUSE say these communities should remain in a district with neighborhoods that reflect similar economic conditions that may cross county lines into North Orange County and San Bernardino.

The WSGV AANHPI community has a strong long-standing cultural identity, providing an environment allowing immigrant AAPI families to gain a sense of belonging and seek opportunities for economic success. In WSGV, the cities of Monterey Park, Alhambra, Rosemead, San Gabriel, San Marino, Temple City, and Arcadia have AAPI majority and should be in the same congressional district. 

In addition, all but San Marino are in the same Assembly and State Senate districts in the draft maps, yet the cities are split at the congressional level in a way that dilutes the political power of the AANHPI community.

After the initial maps were released, citizen concerns in the Central Valley succeeded in keeping the Hmong community of Fresno and Turlock in the same Congressional district.

The 2020 Census shows that the AANHPI population is the fastest growing community in the U.S.  While the approximately 23 million AANHPI are spread across the U.S., in some cities and neighborhoods they have coalesced into voting blocs that can no longer be ignored and shunted aside. 

Breaking down the AANHPI umbrella monicker into ethnic groups makes the remapping process even more complicated sometimes pitting one group against the other -- ie. Filipinos vs. Chinese in San Francisco, Hmong vs. Sikhs in the Central Valley, South Asians vs. Chinese in New Jersey -- to the detriment of both and giving an advantage to other interest groups.

It is imperative that all the communities benefitting from the numerical and political growth by AANHP communities be front and center as states and local governments around the country redraw electoral maps. Maps at all levels of government – from school boards, city councils and county supervisors to state legislatures and Congress – must reflect a more diverse, multiracial America.

WHAT'S NEXT: 

The deadline for providing input may have passed for some state but the majority of states are still accepting comment. Check here to find your deadline, it may not be too late.

Click here to learn how to affect the redistricting process.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AAPI perspective, follow me on Twitter @DioknoEd.