A recent Wednesday saw dozens of Vietnamese-speaking volunteers cram into a community center to phone bank for Representative Michelle Steel, a Republican from California who represents Korean Americans. The community center walls were covered in campaign posters and flyers in Vietnamese and English.
A few neighborhoods down, Jay Chen, a Democrat and Navy reservist of Taiwanese descent who is opposing Ms. Steel, distributed flyers in front of Zippost, a shipping company that locals frequently use to send packages to family members in Vietnam. To assist locals in registering to vote, Mr. Chen, wearing a Navy hat, walked around the plaza, followed by a Vietnamese volunteer.
Asian Americans make up a quarter of the voting population in this area of Orange County, and Ms. Steel and Mr. Chen are competing to win over these voters. Their race, one of only a few dozen competitive ones, is being closely watched for hints about what might sway voters in this increasingly important bloc. The outcome of their race could determine which party controls the House.
The executive director of the nonpartisan resource center Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance, Mary Anne Foo, asserted that “the Asian vote can give enough votes for a candidate to win.” “Asian Americans are running for office in record numbers right now, and that’s significant. It’s exciting to have representation.
The fastest-growing group of eligible voters in the nation is Asian Americans, who made up 4% of the electorate in 2020. According to the July results of the Asian American Voter Survey, almost half of Asian Americans identified as Democrats, about a third as Independents, and a fifth as Republicans. According to polls, about two-thirds of voters preferred Mr. Biden to Mr. Trump.
The New York Times analysis revealed that as immigrant communities saw a rise in voters in the 2020 election, they shifted to the right. In contrast to younger Asian voters, the Asian American Voter Survey found that older Asian voters were more likely to identify as independent or Republican. Vietnamese Americans, who comprise a sizable portion of Orange County’s Asian population, tended to lean more to the right.
Asian Americans make up a quarter of the voting population in this area of Orange County, and Ms. Steel and Mr. Chen are competing to win over these voters. Their race, one of only a few dozen competitive ones, is being closely watched for hints about what might sway voters in this increasingly important bloc. The outcome of their race could determine which party controls the House.
The executive director of the nonpartisan resource center Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance, Mary Anne Foo, asserted that “the Asian vote can give enough votes for a candidate to win.” “Asian Americans are running for office in record numbers right now, and that’s significant. It’s exciting to have representation.
The fastest-growing group of eligible voters in the nation is Asian Americans, who made up 4% of the electorate in 2020. According to the July results of the Asian American Voter Survey, almost half of Asian Americans identified as Democrats, about a third as Independents, and a fifth as Republicans. According to polls, about two-thirds of voters preferred Mr. Biden to Mr. Trump.
The New York Times analysis revealed that as immigrant communities saw a rise in voters in the 2020 election, they shifted to the right. In contrast to younger Asian voters, the Asian American Voter Survey found that older Asian voters were more likely to identify as independent or Republican. Vietnamese Americans, who comprise a sizable portion of Orange County’s Asian population, tended to lean more to the right.
However, the race has cast a shadow that has occasionally been ugly over the election. Ms. Steel, born in South Korea and raised in Japan, claims that Mr. Chen made fun of her accent when he said that one needed “an interpreter to figure out exactly what she’s saying” at a campaign event in April. Mr. Chen later said in an interview that his remarks were misunderstood and meant he did not understand her policies.
In the campaign spat, he has charged Ms. Steel with “red-baiting” by portraying him as favoring China’s authoritarian regime. Many of the country’s refugees still harbor bitter memories of fleeing a communist government, so an accusation of communist sympathies might strike a particularly raw nerve with them.
The Harvard-educated son of immigrants, Mr. Chen, who also runs a local real estate company and serves on the board of trustees of Mount San Antonio Community College, claimed that he had made an effort to appeal to right-leaning voters through his military service. He spent time with the Seventh Fleet in the Middle East and on the Korean Peninsula, where he assisted in the refugee evacuation following the Vietnam War.
People connect with it every time I bring that up, Mr. Chen said. The former county board of supervisors member and local business owner, Ms. Steel, is fighting to keep her seat in the new political climate. She became one of the first three Korean American women to hold a congressional seat in 2020 by narrowly defeating Democratic Representative Harley Rouda in a Republican-leaning district along the California coast. She chose to run in a new community with a slight Democratic lean, but she was forced to do so due to redistricting.
Ms. Steel is focused on confronting China and lowering taxes, according to a statement from her campaign’s communications director, Lance Trover. According to Mr. Trover, who used the acronym for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, “Michelle is the campaign’s greatest asset because AAPI voters know and trust her.” Ms. Steel opted against being interviewed.
President Ronald Reagan once referred to Orange County as “where the good Republicans go before they die.” Still, its partisan orientation has since changed as a younger, more diverse population has emigrated from the Los Angeles metropolitan area in search of more affordable housing. According to the most recent data from the county voter registrar, Democrats now outnumber Republicans in terms of voter registration, and there is a sizable no-party preference voter bloc.
In 2018, the pendulum swung for the first time as Democrats took control of all seven congressional seats in the county and swept into the House majority by winning four local seats. When Republicans won back two seats in Orange County in 2020, the pendulum swung the other way.
However, the changes reshaping the area are long-lasting. They mirror those in suburban communities across the nation as immigrant communities leave cities, according to Christine Chen, executive director of Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote, which assists in the Asian American Voter Survey. According to her, the same pattern is observed in Georgia and Virginia, two states that have recently favored Democrats.
Mr. Ramakrishnan added that similar dynamics are being felt in New Jersey districts and the suburbs of Houston and Dallas. Since there has been such a significant increase in the Asian American population in each of those places, Ms. Chen, who is not related to the Democratic challenger to Ms. Steel, said that elected officials “really have no choice but to make sure they engage and develop a relationship with the Asian American voters, because they’re coming out to vote.
In Orange County, renowned for having the highest concentration of Vietnamese people outside their native country and where many sought refuge after the Vietnam War, Asian Americans make up more than a fifth of the population. Little Saigon, a section of Vietnamese-owned homes and businesses in Westminster, is included in the district.
It has the characteristics of most aging Southern California suburbs: palm trees, stucco single-family homes, and signs with sun-bleached letters. On storefronts, most of the characters are Vietnamese, with sporadic Korean and Chinese characters, and candidates with Asian surnames predominately appear in the political signage that clogs street corners. Campaigns and regional businesses have both made significant investments in Vietnamese-language advertising.
In July, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced that it intended to spend seven figures to reach Asian voters in California. In contrast, the Republican National Committee has opened some Asian Pacific American community centers throughout the county as part of a multimillion-dollar effort to enlist volunteers for voter outreach to support Republican candidates, with one of the first beings in Little Saigon.
Putting partisan politics aside, John Le, a 57-year-old Lake Forest-based Vietnamese American Microsoft engineer who identified as a traditional Republican, said he was proud to live in a district where two other Asian Americans were running for office. He declared that Ms. Steel would receive his vote. Mr. Le remarked, “It’s the American dream. “These individuals who give back to the community are to be commended. Who best represents me will be considered by me.
