Democrats target Asian American, Latino voters

Growing up in Georgia, James Woo was never approached by political campaigns, and his home rarely received any flyers or mailers for candidates. There was only one ethnic market to buy cultural food. He could count all the other Asian-American children in his high school class in Gwinnett County.

Now, Gwinnett is one of the most racially diverse counties in Georgia with significant Asian American and Pacific islanders and Latino populations – groups growing in the Atlanta metro and across the state.

Ahead of the pivotal Jan. 5 Senate second election that will determine control of the upper chamber, Democrats hope to tap the rising political power of AAPI and Latino voters across Georgia to help the incumbent GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler defeat and choose Jon’s challengers. Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock.

Woo is a communications manager and Korean outreach leader for Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, a non-profit organization that has been working to mobilize AAPI voters in Georgia for years. Promotion of Justice-Atlanta and other interest groups for colored communities have reached out to voters who have been overlooked by many political campaigns in the past.

A historic wave of Asian-American and Latino voters helped the state blue for President-elect Joe Biden, according to Democratic data company TargetSmart. Compared to 2016, AAPI’s overall turnout was up 91%, while Latino’s turnout was up 72%.

“This kind of turnout didn’t happen overnight,” said Woo. “We’ve worked with other black, brown, and immigrant communities and organizations to get them to vote.”

Leaders of AAPI and Latino advocacy groups say continued investment and grassroots are needed for Democrats to win 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 don’t quite fit into that frame in a tidy way,” said Emory University political scientist Bernard Fraga.

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

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

Fraga said the results of the November election in Georgia show a “ long-term model for Democrats that does not depend on an ever-shrinking proportion of white votes, and instead the turnout rates of Latinos and Asian-Americans. “

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

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

In the highly competitive Senate run-off races expected to hit the wire, increasing turnout among AAPI and Latino voters will be critical to Democrats hoping to maximize voter margins.

Georgia’s electoral rules called for run-off races when no candidate exceeded more than 50% of the voter share in both races in the Nov. 3 election.

After the general election, the Ossoff campaign hired constituency directors focused on AAPI and Latino outreach, 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 New Americans coordinator on the staff, the campaign told 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, Asian American and Latino voter turnout has declined in second elections compared to black and white voters. Since December 24, more than 2 million people have voted in Senate elections. The pace of turnout in the second round is at or above the rate of turnout in the Nov. 3 elections, while White’s rate of turnout is slightly slower, according to Fraga’s analysis of early voting data. The decline in Latino and AAPI turnout in the run-offs is the lowest of the racial groups, hovering between 80-90% of the turnout rate from the general election.

The campaigns, the Democratic Party and advocacy groups are all working to increase the turnout of AAPI and Latino voters as January 5 approaches. Before the voter 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 run-offs, in addition to the nearly 36,000 voters the organization registered for the general election.

“We know that turnout will be the biggest problem,” said María Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of Voto Latino. ‘That’s why we started registering voters again.’

Of the nearly 76,000 new voters registered in Georgia since the November election, Latino and Asian-American voters exceeded their total share of the electorate, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Language barriers and gaps in citizenship education are challenges that mainly affect Asian-American and Latino voters, many of whom are first-time voters, youth, or naturalized citizens. AAPI and Latino advocacy leaders say misinformation can quickly spread in their communities, particularly on group messaging platforms such as WeChat, WhatsApp and KakaoTalk, and sometimes through ethnic media. Asian-American and Latino voters aren’t monoliths either; they include different ethnicities, languages ​​and experiences between different communities.

Groups hope to address those challenges through multilingual and multicultural voter outreach: door-to-door research, literature editions, phone and text banking, advertisements and press in ethnic media – along with the goal of reaching hundreds of thousands of voters. During the early voting period and on January 5, advocacy groups will also organize election protection work and multilingual hotlines for voters.

In recent history, the work of mobilizing voters for these communities of color has mainly been taken over by local entities. Organizers from Asian America and Latin America cite the work of black organizers to pave the way, particularly leaders such as voting rights activist and former Democratic governor candidate Stacey Abrams, who has worked with AAPI and Latino groups for years.

“We really built our communities in a way that didn’t really exist there in the past, so when we talk about why Georgia turned blue this year, it’s largely thanks to the organization that took place in Communities of Color over the years. “said Aisha Yaqoob Mahmood, director of Asian American Advocacy Fund, a progressive grassroots group focused on AAPIs in Georgia.” In recent years, it has been very clear that to move Georgia forward, an investment in communities of color would be require.”

While Georgians can self-identify their race when registering to vote, making it easy for organizations to use voter rolls to contact key constituencies, it can be difficult to reach eligible voters who don’t yet have a voting history . Advocacy leaders say it can be more time-consuming and expensive to recruit in AAPI and Latino neighborhoods, because the high percentage of immigrants means that there is typically a smaller proportion of eligible voters compared to black and white neighborhoods.

Continuing the momentum in mobilizing Asian-American and Latino voters will require ongoing outreach and relationship building, organizers say. The investment is especially important to the Democratic Party if it is to empower AAPI and Latino voters as a core part of its base.

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

“We struggle to bring in investment every year,” said Pedraza of Latino Community Fund Georgia. “Now everyone’s paying attention, which is great … But can you make a commitment for the next five years?”

“Because Georgia may not be sexy next year, and will be sexy again in 2022 for the governmental elections, but it will be too late by then,” Pedraza said. “We have to build further next year, so we are ready for 2022.”