Biden Presidential campaign targets Asian American community

The family of Odeen Domingo and Jenny Poon is featured in President Biden's campaign ad.

 

After the strong State of the Union address earlier this month, President Biden's reelection campaign was officially launched and the influential Asian American and Pacific Islander communities are getting special attention.

Among the $30 million ad campaign  is a television commercial targetting the AAPI voters. The TV ad, “Family Business” features the Asian American family of Odeen Domingo and Jenny Poon of Phoenix, Arizona.

“We are excited to announce our early investment into AAPI media, building on our campaign’s intentional, aggressive outreach to the voters that sent President Biden and Vice President Harris to the White House in historic numbers in 2020,” said Biden-Harris 2024 Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez in a sttement

“Our first ad, ‘Family Business,’ communicates the clear choice facing the AAPI community next November – between President Biden’s commitment to investing in our small businesses and our families, or MAGA Republicans solely focused on tax breaks for the wealthy and powerful corporations.”

The commercial brings attention to the AAPI penchant for startups and small businesses and their impact in the US economy.

Filipino American Odeen Domingo and Jenny Poon, who run a small business in Phoenix, Arizona. Domingo praises Biden for directing his attention to smaller businesses instead of corporations since “it wasn’t like that before.”

In 2020, there were 612,194 Asian-owned businesses employing about 5.2 million in the United States, the highest among all minority groups, according to the US Census.

Even though AANHPI make up only 7% of the US population, their economic impact as consumers and entrepreneurs far surpasses their relatively small numbers, says the US Census.

In the 30-second TV ad, Poon talks about her experience as a daughter of Vietnamese immigrants who built a small business and how that shaped her into who she is today. Poon and Domingo ssay the Biden administration's  shift s from large corporations to investments in small business was instrumental in helping launch small businesses like theirs.

Beyond the television ad, the Democrats' media program will include print ads in national and local outlets in the battleground states Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The print ads will be in-language in media outlets targeting Indian, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese and other South Asian communities.

The Democrats' campaign to woo AAPI voters may be in response to mainstream media's stories of shift towards the Republicans by the AAPI electorate.

In the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 midterm, almost three-quarters of Asian American voters  sided with the Democrats. The overwhelming support for the Dems helped decide  helped election outcomes in key districts and states even though the AAPI electorate was a small component of the total number of voters.

However, numerous stories, polls and pudits have pointed out that AANHPI voters may be pulling back from the Democrats. Mainly, Asian Americans believe that the authorities are not taking the hate-fueled attacks against AANHPI seriouisly enough and the voters have made their displeasure known.

In he San Francisco Bay Area, progressive political leaders have felt the brunt of AANHPI anger. Voters have recalled a San Francisco District Attorney and has the Alameda County District Attorney fighting for her political life. The two progressive DA's were seen as being soft on crime by living liight sentences or probation for criminals who have killed Asian Americans, including a five-year old boy and an elderly grandmother.

“They care about policies that don’t really help someone who just lives in the city and just want to be safe, who wants their kids to be educated well,” said one Asian American San Francisco resident who is a Democrat and normally votes along party lines. “They forgot the core problems for regular people. I wanted to do something to try to change and take that power back. It was fear and frustration, a lot of frustration, that I turned into action.”

There is a perception among some members of the AANHPI community that New York leaders are not doing enough to address the unprovoked attacks against Asians. That perception, say media outlets, led to surprise GOP victories in the midterms. 

A lifelong Queens Democrat, Karen Wang, 48, who is Chinese American New Yorker, said she had never felt as unsafe as she did these days. “Being Asian, I felt I had a bigger target on my back,” she said. “My vote was purely a message to Democrats: Don’t take my vote for granted.”

Despite their concern for their personal safety, AANHPI voters voted for a candidate's policy positions that includes economics, education, immigration, and health were as, or more, important that judicial reform according to a Pew Research Center survey.

Biden has paid particular attention to the AANHPI communities' concerns since he took office in 2021 signing several Executive Orders addressing  anti-Asian hate, business opportunities and disaggregation of data collection by fedral agencies and reinvigorated the White House Initiative on Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow me at Threads.net/eduardodiok, @DioknoEd on Twitter or at the  blog Views From the Edge.