Group Seeks to Boost Profile of Asian American Voters

Now that the Democrats have shouted their final convention hurrah at Staples Center, another political gathering--much smaller but significant--is coming to town.

Thirty-three Asian American delegates from across the country, representing Democrats, Republicans and independents, will decide Sunday whether George W. Bush or Al Gore best represents the aspirations of the Asian American community, 11 million strong nationwide, 4 million in California and 1.5 million in the Los Angeles area.

Then the 80-20 Initiative, whose members include former UC Berkeley Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien, will urge Asian Americans to donate money to and vote for the candidate it endorses.

The group’s model is the Jewish American community, half the size of the Asian American population, but wielding considerable influence on U.S. domestic and foreign policy. One way to emulate the Jewish community, members of the 80-20 Initiative believe, is by getting at least 80% of Asian Americans to vote as a bloc.

Achieving that will not be easy. It will require bringing together voters who not only split their votes among Democrats, Republicans and independents, but also are from 30 distinct ethnic groups separated by language, culture and, for some, historical enmity of their ancestral nations.

Asian Americans range from fifth-generation Chinese and Japanese Americans to Southeast Asian refugees and burgeoning populations of Filipinos, Koreans and Indo-Americans. Each ethnic group is too small by itself to make a difference politically. What they all have in common is an eagerness for political recognition that has eluded them despite their individual successes in academia, business and professions.

“The notion of pan-Asian community is still a work in progress,” said Dennis Hayashi, director of the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing, who previously served in the Clinton administration. “We have to work through some of these [challenges] together.”

One such challenge for the community has been Japan’s crimes against its Asian neighbors during World War II--old baggage that still affects Asian Americans. Last year, Assemblyman Mike Honda (D-San Jose) sponsored a resolution urging Japan to apologize for its wartime atrocities. The Legislature easily passed the nonbinding resolution.

Honda, who is running for Congress this year, may have alienated some of his Japanese American supporters. But he also won many friends among Chinese, Korean, Filipino and other Asian Americans whose ancestral countries suffered under Japanese imperialism. Since taking a stand, Honda has emerged as a leader who represents the broader interests of Asian Americans.

Some Asian Americans are still smarting from the beating they took during the 1996 Democratic fund-raising scandal, when the image of the entire community was tarnished by the improper and illegal actions of a few.

During the 1996 campaign, Asian Americans had thought that writing a check to a politician was the way to gain influence. Now, they say, “smart giving” to specific candidates is more effective.

“We are learning from our painful experience [of 1996], and we are growing,” said former Monterey Park Mayor Lily Lee Chen, a delegate to the 80-20 Initiative.

Asian Americans are meeting other challenges head-on by conducting vigorous naturalization and voter registration drives. They are also recruiting and supporting viable office-seekers at the local, state and national levels.

As a rallying call, community leaders underscore that Asian Americans, who make up 6% of California’s registered voters, could help decide the state’s presidential race in a close election. Nearly 40% of the Asian Americans in the country live in California.

The 80-20 Initiative is relying on electronic messaging to get its word out. The group can already send e-mail to more than 300,000 supporters, and by November 2001, it anticipates being able to communicate with 1 million Asian Americans online.

That e-mail reach was demonstrated recently when the group put out a notice seeking Asian American actors for 30-second TV spots. Within 24 hours, 60 actors and producers had responded.

Former Delaware Lt. Gov. S.B. Woo and Tien are among the leaders of the 80-20 Initiative, which is a nonpartisan political action committee. It was put together two years ago in reaction to the frustration that Asian Americans felt over the fund-raising scandal.

The organization’s 33 delegates, nominated by 60 founding 80-20 members, were elected online by group supporters. Representatives of the Democratic and Republican national committees are scheduled to appear Saturday at the 80-20 convention at the Universal City Hilton.

The representatives will be questioned on what each party has done to improve the status of Asians in the United States.

“We want to squeeze the political establishment as much as possible,” said Woo, a physics professor at the University of Delaware.

Seeking to Combat Bias

The 80-20 Initiative calls for aggressive federal efforts to combat workplace discrimination and for placing more Asian Americans in prominent policymaking roles, including Cabinet posts.

Woo says that wealthy Asian Americans, especially those in the Silicon Valley, are waiting to hear the organization’s choice so they can make donations.

Many Asian Americans saw the Democratic convention last week as a chance to showcase Los Angeles’ Asian American community, the largest in the nation. They also viewed the convention, where Asian Americans were more visible than ever before, as a time to put the 1996 fund-raising controversy behind them.

Because of the scandal, the Democratic National Committee had returned about $3 million in donations, raised mostly by John Huang, after it was suspected that the contributions were linked to foreign sources and thus illegal.

A number of figures connected to the controversy, including Los Angeles immigrant consultant Maria Hsia, who raised funds for Gore, have been convicted of or have admitted illegal activities. Hsia was convicted last March of five felony counts stemming from her role in a fund-raising luncheon that Gore attended at Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights.

Huang, a former executive with the Indonesian conglomerate owned by Riady family members, who are longtime friends of President Clinton, pleaded guilty to one felony charge of conspiring to violate federal election law.

The news coverage and televised hearings of the scandal, in which about a dozen figures of Asian descent were implicated, bewildered and angered the community. Especially troubling for Asian Americans was the suggestion that they would put foreign interests before those of the United States.

“What lesson was learned was that the fund-raising component of participating is only one way to become effective,” said Maeley Tom, senior advisor to the California Democratic Party. “Asians [now] understand that they cannot rely on their ability to raise money.”

Unlike most African Americans nationally and Latinos in California, who tend to vote for Democrats, Asian Americans have diffused their potential political voice because they are more inclined to vote on the basis of candidates and issues, regardless of party.

But after California’s anti-immigrant Proposition 187 in 1994 and congressional proposals to restrict the welfare benefits of noncitizens, the ranks of Asian Democrats have grown.

In last March’s presidential primary election, a significant percentage of Republican Asian Americans in Los Angeles and Orange counties crossed over and voted Democratic, according to an exit poll by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center.

Voters Split Among Parties

The legal center’s survey of 3,000 voters--1,200 of them Asians--in heavily Asian areas in the two counties showed that 45% of Asians identified themselves as Democrats, an increase of almost 10 percentage points from the 1996 election.

In the center’s 1996 exit poll, 40% of Asian voters said they were Republicans, 36% said they were Democrats and 24% had other affiliations.

Most Japanese Americans are Democrats, while Koreans and Vietnamese are more likely to be Republicans. Chinese Americans are evenly split among the two major parties and independents.

The Asian American community still lacks a politician whose name has the recognition akin to that of Henry Cisneros, the former Clinton administration Cabinet member. But the ranks of politically prominent Asians have been growing in the past decade, and now include veterans Sen. Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, Rep. Bob Matsui of Sacramento, and Commerce Secretary Norman Mineta and newer faces such as Washington Gov. Gary Locke and Oregon Rep. David Wu. All are Democrats.

In Washington, one indication of a growing Asian American influence was felt during the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in May, when Clinton attended two Asian American events on the same day.

That same week, Gore promised a summit of Asian American leaders that if elected, he would appoint an Asian American to his Cabinet.

What was seen and said that week did not go unnoticed among Asian American insiders who have spent years learning the ropes.

The most important lesson for Asians is to be “involved and be smart about it,” said Hayashi. “The most important thing to do is to learn how the process works.”