Georgia's AAPI voters being woo'd like never before; Polls open until 7 p.m.

James Woo/AAAJ-Atlanta

Multi-lingual volunteers from Asian Americans Advancing Justice are going door-to-door.

For those of use who don't live in Georgia, its hard to imagine the intense battle for votes between the candidates for Senate.

In a tight, tight race, such as the state's runoff election for the U.S. Senate that is being finalized today, every vote counts.

"The power is literally in your hands," President-elect Joe Biden said Monday addressing Atlanta voters on Monday. "Unlike any time in my career, one state -- one state can chart the course not just for the next four years but for the next generation."

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have been targeted by both Republicans and Democrats in key regions where they could be the swing votes.

AAPI voters throughout the state, 240,000 strong, could very well be the deciding factor. The stakes are enormous.

It could mean four more years of Washington gridlock led by Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell whose grip on the Senate leadership depends on today's outcome; or the vote could determine the ability of the President Joe Biden administration to pass the promises he made during the campaign.

Polls indicate a photo finish in both races. Democrats Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock face Republican incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, respectively.

One of the highlights of Georgia's political reckoning is the new found awareness of the power wielded by AAPI voters. Although they represent only 4% of registered voters their votes are being aggressively sought by the candidates and the major parties.

Instrumental in educating and stirring up excitement about the vote is the grassroots efforts by AAPI advocacy agencies. 

Impact, a national political action committee, has put in $2.5 million in advertising -- mostly online and television -- to get out the South Asian voters, representing the largest AAPI group in the state.

"This is the first election I ever remember where it's not even one time a day, it's 20 emails a day, 10 texts or calls. It's overwhelming," Nikkei Asia quotes Angela Hsu, president of the Georgia Asian Pacific American Bar Association. "I don't think either party has focused on Asian Americans because Asian Americans [previously] didn't vote."

"What's compelling about this is that we actually voted" on Nov. 3, she said, "and now they're paying attention."

Groups like Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta are using their resources in sending out information in several Asian languages including Tagalog, Vietnamese, Hindi and Chinese.

Volunteers from Asian American Advocacy Fund, AAAJ and other local communitiy groups are going door-to-doo, staging texting and phone banks to get out the AAPI vote

Here are some of the commercials directed at Georgia's AAPI voters.

Georgia's polls remain open for a few more hours until 7 p.m. The Republican office holders have tried to dampen the vote turnout by limiting the number of polling places, especially in those communities where large numbers of AAPI reside. Get in line by 7 p.m. and poll officials are supposed to allow you to vote even when the deadline passes.

VOTE!

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.

Asian American voters can be difference makers in Georgia

Georgia's AAPI community were energized by the 2020 Presidential race.

Now that it has been established by a host of mainstream media that the Asian American vote helped push Georgia towards Democrat Joe Biden, a coalition of AAPI organizations are joining the Democratic Party to replicate the Nov. 3 record turnout in order to elect the two Democratic candidates to the U.S. Senate.

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.”

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."

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.

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."

“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.