Both parties have focused with new intensity on this expansive immigrant population. New battleground: The Asian vote

FAIRFAX, Va. – Even in a national election shadowed by geopolitical instability and a heated debate over immigration, it’s a rare campaign that has voters hearing about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and maritime disputes between Japan and the Republic of Korea.

But in these suburbs a few miles from the nation’s capital, these are only a few of the unconventional issues rearing up in the battle for control of Congress. Candidates up and down the ballot have hurled themselves into winning over the area’s swiftly growing Asian-American population, striving to sell themselves as champions of small business and public education, and as masters of even the narrowest ethnic preoccupations.


At a recent event hosted by minority-led business groups, Congressman Gerry Connolly greeted the crowd in half a dozen languages, including Korean, Chinese and Thai. Former Lt. Gov. Don Beyer, running for Congress in a nearby, Alexandria-based district, highlighted the number of foreign-born employees at his eponymous Volvo dealerships. Republican state Del. Barbara Comstock, a contender for the open 10th District House seat here, touted her support for legislation mandating that textbooks refer to the Sea of Japan also as the East Sea, the name favored by Koreans.

( See more from POLITICO's Polling Center)

Nonpartisan voter turnout leaflets emphasized the importance of participating in the democratic process, recalling the specters of World War II-era Japanese internment and racially restrictive, 19th Century immigration rules.

Fairfax is only one of a lengthening list of urban and suburban battlegrounds – from northern New Jersey to the greater Atlanta area, to the streets of Minneapolis and Las Vegas and up and down the West Coast – where the two national parties have focused with new intensity this year on wooing this expansive and diverse immigrant population.

Spurred by President Barack Obama’s landslide victory among Asian-American voters in 2012 and new government data showing Asians outstripping Latinos as the fastest-growing immigrant population, prominent elected officials on both sides of the aisle have called for a stepped-up focus on Americans of Asian descent.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn, whose campaign has run TV ads in Vietnamese and offers versions of its website in Mandarin and Hindi, called it essential that the GOP start “showing up” before these communities’ distrust of Republicans gets cemented in place.

( POLITICO Podcast: Midterm countdown)

“That is a trajectory for permanent minority status and we have to do something about it,” said Cornyn, the number-two Republican in the Senate. “I’m astonished to hear what our opponents tell people about Republicans, to some groups, when we’re not there.”

California Rep. Judy Chu, the Democrat who leads the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, said both parties increasingly see Asian Americans as a “margin of victory” population in some especially challenging races. She pointed to the Virginia race pitting Comstock against Democratic Fairfax County Supervisor John Foust as a prime example.

“That race is quite striking, in that they even talk about the Chinese Exclusion Act. That’s pretty specific,” Chu said. “They have been doing mailers in different languages. The candidates have both gone to an Asian-Pacific Islander debate … This is very different from the past.”

( Also on POLITICO: 2014 elections: The final sprint)

Pollsters warn that it’s difficult to generalize about Asian-American voters, mainly because it’s a vastly diverse population. Indian Americans, Thai immigrants and voters of Korean descent may share an ancestral continent, but it’s hard to say they represent a cohesive electoral bloc.

Yet partisan strategists and Asian-American activists say that even across culturally disparate immigrant groups, there are common preoccupations – an intense focus on education, for instance, and concern about the economic environment for small, family-owned businesses.

Increasingly, there is also a broad affinity for the Democratic Party – seen overwhelmingly as the party that stands for racial and ethnic diversity, and a more inclusive federal immigration policy.

In 2012, Asian Americans voted for the president by a larger margin – 47 points – even than Latinos. In swing-state Virginia, where Asian Americans made up 3 percent of the electorate, they supported Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine by 32 points. Two years earlier, in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s close-shave reelection fight, Asian voters were 4 percent of the Nevada electorate and nearly four in five supported the embattled incumbent. (Chu and her California colleague, Rep. Mike Honda, crossed the state line to stump for Reid’s campaign.)

So if various Asian-American communities can’t match the clout of Latinos on the national level – Asians were 3 percent of the presidential voter pool, versus 10 percent for Latinos – they are a large enough population to make the difference in a handful of exceptionally important states.

They’re also, Republicans hope, persuadable enough to make them susceptible to a renewed charm offensive from the GOP. It was less than a political lifetime ago that President George H.W. Bush won a majority of Asian American votes for his 1992 campaign. More recently, Nevada Sen. Dean Heller won 54 percent of his state’s Asian voters in 2012, just two years after Reid’s epic landslide.

Cornyn is not the only Republican this year working to build bridges to the community: the Republican National Committee named a new field director focused on Asian Pacific Americans, Jason Chung, and has helped organize outreach events across the House and Senate landscape. (The Democratic National Committee has had an Asian-American outreach program for more than a decade.) Colorado’s Republican Senate candidate, Cory Gardner, has held events for voters of Korean and Chinese extraction, while Louisiana Rep. Bill Cassidy has campaigned among Vietnamese Americans with former Rep. Joe Cao.

Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate Allan Fung – the lone Asian-American candidate for governor in the continental U.S. – urged the GOP to connect with Asian Americans in states where high taxes weigh heavily on small businesses. He has made his family’s story a part of his campaign, tracing his fiscal conservatism to his upbringing by immigrant parents who owned a restaurant.

“What [Republicans] have to do is continue to show up and listen to what’s on the minds of the community,” said Fung, currently the mayor of Cranston. “The reason I’m running is to make sure that the next generation of Rhode Islanders – and I’m not just talking about minorities – [has] the same opportunity my parents had when they came to this country to start a business.”

Fung credits the strong support of Chinese Americans, in part, for his victory in Rhode Island’s September primary. A few states away, Democratic congressional candidate Roy Cho says the engagement of Korean Americans and other members of the Asian community has helped fuel his unexpectedly stiff challenge to New Jersey GOP Rep. Scott Garrett, whose district includes parts of heavily diverse Bergen County.

A financial services attorney who launched an underdog campaign against Garrett last year, Cho said he initially faced skepticism from Democratic and Korean community leaders alike. “A lot of people shrugged their shoulders and said, yeah, there’s a big Asian American population but the numbers don’t really make up a high rate of political participation,” Cho said, acknowledging: “A lot of the community involvement, the social involvement, revolves around charities and revolves around churches.”

Now that his campaign has picked up steam, Cho said, “We’ve had Korean American people, business people, who just come up to us and say they want to be involved in the campaign.”

Here in Fairfax, local leaders call Northern Virginia a snapshot of the whole country’s political and demographic future, with both elected officials and ethnic community leaders a few big steps ahead of other swing-state colleagues when it comes to political engagement and community outreach.

Even here, however, the change has come swiftly enough to transform the politics of the region in less than one political generation. Beyer, who will easily capture a safe Democratic House seat next week, recalled his early campaigns for public office: “My first race was 25 years ago and I don’t even remember [Asian American outreach] being in my list of 24 campaign priorities.”

“Now, increasingly, the Asian American vote, along with the Latino vote and the Muslim vote – which of course is kind of pan-Asian – they’re very important,” said Beyer, who emphasized just how heterogeneous the ethnic groups of his future district are. “The Chinese are different from the Filipinos, who are different from the Japanese. I don’t find any one theme works – except for economic opportunity and inclusion.”