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The progressive political organization AAPI Victory Alliance is entering a strategic partnership with the social welfare nonprofit Emerging Voters in a move aimed at building the community’s bargaining and political power ahead of the next presidential election.
AAPI Victory Alliance, founded in 2017, started off as the nonprofit arm of the super PAC AAPI Victory Fund. The organization, which is no longer affiliated with the PAC, aims to politically activate the AAPI community nationwide by localizing civic engagement efforts, supporting AAPI political candidates, and conducting research and polling. Most recently, it has focused on organizing around climate change, gun violence, and misinformation within the AAPI community.
Emerging Voters, meanwhile, was founded last year with the objective of winning seats in state legislative elections using values-based, in-language messaging.
The two groups have historically relied on different tactics to connect with the AAPI community—the new partnership will integrate those efforts.
In interviews with The Yappie, Emerging Voters co-founder Ning Mosberger-Tang said providing information and political education in Asian languages rather than just English is helping the group connect with the AAPI electorate in ways that the community hasn’t seen before.
Some AAPI community members may want to see change through gun control policies, for example, but “they don’t realize that if you don’t go out and vote—and vote for the right people—then actually this may not happen,” Mosberger-Tang added. “So we tried to talk to people about their values and also help them to see the connections between their values and voting.”
With Emerging Voters active in target states, AAPI Victory Alliance “as a constellation will connect to these groups and direct resources to them and add their voices to national campaign strategies for the party as well as for candidates who are running in those districts,” AAPI Victory Alliance's board chair Katie Nguyen Kalvoda told The Yappie.
The Victory Alliance’s nationally harnessed resources will funnel into a “50-state strategy” that prioritizes community engagement and building a pipeline at local levels, Kalvoda noted—something they hope will bolster “subpar” Investments in AAPI communities.
Asian Americans are showing up to the polls at increasingly higher rates, and the rise of formal organizations such as AAPI Victory Alliance and Emerging Voters is solidifying the AAPI presence on the political stage.
In the 2020 presidential election, Asian American voter turnout increased by 47% since the previous election, a rate higher than any other racial and ethnic group, according to analyses by the nonpartisan organization APIAVote. The demographic served as the margin of victory in several battleground states.
In the 2022 Senate election in Georgia, AAPI voter turnout was also key to the re-election of Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, with 78% of AAPI voters backing him in the runoff election.
Despite an increase in AAPI candidates in state and local elections, progressive political operatives have said the Democratic Party continues to neglect the community’s power as a voting bloc. To combat that, AAPI Victory Fund teamed up with the Latino Victory Fund and The Collective PAC in 2021 in a similar bid to pool resources and better support candidates of color.
“We’re all getting prepped for the battle in 2024,” AAPI Victory Alliance Executive director Varun Nikore said to The Yappie. “And it's incumbent upon all of us to educate our community on the issues that matter.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to specify that AAPI Victory Alliance is no longer affiliated with AAPI Victory Fund.
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