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RNC launches its first Asian Pacific American center ahead of 2022 midterms

Republicans made gains with AAPI voters in 2020 and hope to continue their trajectory with aggressive outreach.
Republican Reps. Young Kim (left) and Michelle Steel (right), who both flipped critical House seats in California last year. Both are among the first Asian American women to serve in Congress. Photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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The Republican National Committee (RNC) has opened its first Asian Pacific American Community Center in Orange County in an effort to reach Asian American voters ahead of the 2022 midterms and California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) recall election.

The new office, located in a strip mall in the heart of Orange County’s Little Saigon, is the RNC’s first voter outreach center of the 2022 cycle. Its strategic placement signals a new drive to mobilize Asian voters after lackluster attempts in 2020. Orange County is home to the largest concentration of Vietnamese people outside Vietnam.

“We’ve never opened an office this early in a community like this ahead of an election,” RNC chair Ronna McDaniel told the crowd at the opening ceremony. “We are here because we want to represent every single vote.”

Asian Americans saw record voter turnout last November. Though they overwhelmingly voted for President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump did make gains among Vietnamese Americans and Indian Americans, according to a survey by AAPI Data. (The Trump campaign made South Asians a key demographic for ads leading up to the election.)

The GOP also flipped two critical seats in California, securing wins for Reps. Michelle Steel (R) and Young Kim (R). Along with Rep. David Goncalves Valadao (R-California), the two Asian American women became the first Republican congressional candidates to unseat an incumbent House Democrat in California since 1994.

It’s one of the few areas where the GOP is making inroads in the blue state. 

In the 2020 election, Asian voters in Steel’s district had an 89% turnout rate, an increase of nearly 14 percentage points from 2016, RealClearPolitics reports. Asian Republican voter turnout also jumped nearly 13 points from 2016 to 2020. (Asian Democratic voter turnout increased by 12.1 points.)

Rep. Amata Catherine Coleman Radewagen (R-American Samoa), the most senior Republican elected federal office holder of Asian Pacific heritage, won the highest number of votes in American Samoan history with her re-election in 2016 and pulled ahead to victory once again in 2020. Radewagen was appointed to the President’s Advisory Commission for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders by both Trump and former President George W. Bush

Republicans ultimately narrowed the Democratic majority in the House with gains among voters of color in states including California, Texas, and Florida. Now, they’re looking to continue edging into Democratic territory. 

The newly debuted center marks one of several across the country aimed at organizing Black, Hispanic, and Asian American voters. “It demonstrates we are doubling down on our commitment to invest in the APA community long-term and shows we are serious about earning every vote,” McDaniel said in a statement to The Hill. “It’s one of many ways we’re putting Democrats on defense here in California and across America.”

Steel and Kim, who are among the first Asian American women to serve in Congress, praised the RNC’s outreach to Asian Americans. Lauding the new center, Kim called the GOP the “Grand Opportunity Party.”

“The work being done here will help spread our party’s uplifting message and optimistic agenda to even more Americans in Southern California’s APA community,” Steele said in a press release. 

Trump lost support from some Asian American voters after using anti-Asian rhetoric to describe the coronavirus last year. His language led to upticks in anti-Asian harassment and contributed to scapegoating of Asians across the U.S.

Republicans remain somewhat split on Trump’s behavior, with some criticizing the former president while others have defended the speech. A House resolution to condemn anti-Asian racism passed last September with 164 votes against the bill. All 164 were from Republicans.

But in recent weeks, some have accused Democrats of failing to protect Asians.

“Democrats pushed to defund the police. Then, we saw a wave of anti-Asian hate crimes, and now homicides and violent crime are up nationwide,” Kara Subach, deputy director of AAPI media affairs, said in a blog post on the RNC website. “Democrats have put politics first and your safety last, and now people are getting hurt.” 

Another blog post by a Korean American Republican argued that Asians shouldn’t listen to Democrats on the need for gun control. “As an Asian, you want to be able to have the means to defend yourself,” Christopher Lee wrote. “You do not want to be in a situation where you are restricted from defending yourself in any way. Your business, your life, and the life of your loved ones are at stake.”

The GOP’s appeal to AAPI voters has largely rested on its branding as the anti-Communist, pro-military party of free speech, meritocracy, and opportunity. 

Thousands of Asians fled Communist regimes to come to the U.S., and many see efforts to ensure equity and inclusion as policing that echoes experiences in their native countries. Believing claims that the policy discriminates against Asians and whites, conservative Asian Americans have joined the fight to dismantle affirmative action. 

Pacific Islanders, meanwhile, have a high rate of enlistment in the armed forces and often associate the GOP with patriotism. Conservative values that espouse Christian ideals also attract large swaths of Pacific Islander voters.

“Our success with Reps. Kim and Steel showed that APA candidates are strong candidates because they can building winning coalitions that can activate the APA community behind them,” Republican National Committee spokesperson Keith Schipper told the San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday.

But the GOP has lost AAPI voters, too, especially after Trump enacted the Muslim ban, lowered the U.S.’s refugee cap, ignored the climate crisis, and enabled the Justice Department to increasingly target Asian researchers under the China Initiative.

In an unexpected move last year, the head of the National Committee of Asian American Republicans denounced Trump and urged its members to back Biden instead. “Our powerful country needs a reboot. Making America great again starts from all sides coming together, to heal a divided nation,” Cliff Zhonggang Li, who had ties to former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, the RNC, and Trump White House officials, wrote in a statement.

“We need a president with empathy, integrity, and broadness capable of bringing all sides to the table to find common ground, and work together overcoming serious challenges ahead.”

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