Democrats are targeting Asian American and Latino voters

When he grew up in Georgia, James Woo was never contacted for political campaigns and his home rarely received flyers or emails for candidates. There was only one ethnic market to buy cultural food. He could count all the other Asian American kids in his Gwinnett County middle school class.

Now, Gwinnett is one of the most racially diverse counties in Georgia with a large number of Latin American and Pacific American and Pacific populations, groups growing in the Atlanta subway area and throughout the state.

Faced with the crucial Jan. 5 election in the Senate that will decide control of the upper house, Democrats hope to harness the growing political power of AAPI and Latino Georgia voters to defeat current Republican Party Senator David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler and the chosen challengers Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock.

Woo is a communications manager and outreach leader in Korea for Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, a nonprofit organization that has been working for years to mobilize AAPI voters in Georgia. Advancing Justice-Atlanta and other advocacy groups of color communities have reached voters that many political campaigns ignored in the past.

According to Democratic data firm TargetSmart, a historic wave of Asian American and Latino voters helped change the state of President-elect Joe Biden. Compared to 2016, total participation in AAPI increased by 91%, while Latin participation grew by 72%.

“That kind of involvement didn’t really happen overnight,” Woo said. “We’ve been collaborating with other black, brown and immigrant communities and organizations to get them to vote.”

Leaders of AAPI and Latin American advocacy groups say continued investment and popular organization will be needed to win Democrats in January and beyond.

“Partisan politics in Georgia has long been defined by a black-and-white racial divide, and Asian Americans and Latinos obviously do not fit into this framework in an orderly manner,” said Emory University political scientist. Bernard Fraga.

“They are more convincing than whites or African Americans, so they are more than just a constituency,” Fraga said. “But Asian Americans and Latinos are much closer to being a basic democratic constituency of the state than even suburban white voters.”

According to NBC News exit polls, 88% of Georgia’s black voters supported Biden, while 69% of the state’s white voters favored incumbent Republican President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, 62% of Georgia’s Latino voters supported Biden and 63% of AAPI voters across the country were in favor of Biden. (AAPI data was not available in Georgia.)

Fraga said the November election results in Georgia demonstrate a “long-term model for Democrats that does not depend on a shrinking share of the white vote and instead participates in and increases turnout rates.” Latin and Asian Americans “.

Asian American and Latino voters accounted for approximately 3% and 5%, respectively, of Georgia’s eligible voters in 2019, but they are by far the fastest-growing segments of the U.S. electorate, according to Pew Research Center.

“People, for the first time, realize that AAPI and Latinx voters are this growing group of people who have the ability to change a state in one way or another,” said Gigi Pedraza, director executive of the Latino Community Fund Georgia.

In the high contests of the Senate qualifiers that are expected to reach the limit, increasing turnout among AAPI voters and Latinos will be key for Democrats hoping to maximize voter margins.

Georgia’s election rules called for second-round races when no candidate exceeded 50% of the voter turnout in either race during the Nov. 3 election.

After the general election, the Ossoff campaign hired constituency directors focused on disseminating AAPI and Latinos, according to a campaign spokesman. The Warnock campaign hired an AAPI community coordinator dedicated to political outreach in the summer of 2020 and also has a Latinx voting director and a New Americans coordinator on staff, the campaign reported to CNBC.

The Perdue campaign did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment. The Loeffler campaign was not available for comment before this story was published.

Historically, the turnout of Asian American and Latino voters has fallen in the by-elections compared to black and white voters. As of Dec. 24, more than 2 million people have voted in the Senate qualifiers. The turnout of blacks in the second round election is higher or higher than that of turnout during the November 3 election, while the turnout of whites is slightly lower, according to Fraga’s analysis of the early voting. The decline in Latino and AAPI turnout in the qualifiers is the lowest of the racial groups, ranging from 80-90% of the turnout in the general election.

Campaigns, the Democratic Party and advocacy groups are working to increase turnout for AAPI and Latino voters as it approaches January 5th. Before the election registration deadline, they helped register new voters. Voto Latino, a national voter registration organization, said it registered 12,000 new voters in Georgia for the qualifiers, in addition to the nearly 36,000 voters the organization registered for the general election.

“We know that participation will be the most important issue,” said Maria Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of Voto Latino. “That’s why we started re-registering voters.”

Of Georgia’s nearly 76,000 new registered voters since before the November election, Latin American and Asian voters accounted for more than their overall voter turnout, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Language barriers and gaps in citizen education are challenges that especially affect Asian American and Latino voters, many of whom are first-time voters, young people, or naturalized citizens. Leaders of AAPI and Latino advocacy groups say misinformation can spread quickly to their communities, especially on group messaging platforms like WeChat, WhatsApp and KakaoTalk, and sometimes through ethnic media. Asian American and Latino voters are not monoliths either; they cover various ethnicities, languages ​​and experiences between different communities.

The groups hope to meet these challenges through multilingual and multicultural dissemination of voters: door-to-door advertising, advertising, telephone and text banking, advertising and press in ethnic media, with the collective goal of contacting hundreds of thousands of voters. During the early voting period and on January 5, advocacy groups also organize electoral protection work and multilingual electoral hotlines.

In recent history, the task of mobilizing voters for these communities of color has been undertaken primarily by local entities. Latin American and Asian organizers cite the work of black organizers to pave the way, particularly leaders such as voting rights activist and former Democratic candidate for governor Stacey Abrams, who has collaborated with AAPI and Latin groups during years.

“We’ve really built our communities in a way that hadn’t existed in the past, so when we talk about why Georgia turned blue this year, it’s largely because of the organization that happened to communities of color in recent years, ”said Aisha Yaqoob Mahmood, director of the Asian American Advocacy Fund, a progressive grassroots group focused on Georgia’s AAPIs. “Over the last few years it has become very clear that advancing Georgia would require investment in communities of color.”

While Georgians can identify themselves when they register to vote, making it easier for organizations to use voter lists to contact key constituencies, it can be difficult to reach eligible voters who do not yet have an electoral background. Defense group leaders say it can be longer and more costly to advertise in AAPI and Latino neighborhoods, because the high percentage of immigrants means there is usually a smaller portion of eligible voters compared to White neighborhoods. and Black.

Continuing the momentum of mobilizing Asian American and Latino voters will require continued dissemination and relationship building, organizers say. Investment is especially important for the Democratic Party if it wants to consolidate AAPI and Latino voters as a central part of its base.

Jen Rafanan, media director of the AAPI of the Democratic Party of Georgia, said in a statement, “We don’t take anything for granted.” Rafanan and Karla Alvarado, media director for Georgia’s Latinx Democrats, said the party is committed to involving and mobilizing AAPI and Latino communities in the state beyond the second election.

“We’ve been struggling every year to get investments,” said Pedraza of Latino Community Fund Georgia. “Now everyone is paying attention, which is great … But can you make a commitment for the next five years?”

“Because maybe Georgia won’t be sexy next year and it will be sexy again in 2022 for the government election, but by then it will be too late,” Pedraza said. “We have to keep building next year, so we’re ready for 2022.”