Inside a room at the North Carolina General Assembly, a few dozen people listened to Fayetteville City Council member Mario Benavente share how he got elected in 2022.
“I won my city council election by just six votes,” he said, sparking applause and praise from attendees. “So it speaks very directly that every vote counts. The Asian American vote came out in a way that a lot of folks never came out before. We had folks at the polls that came out to vote for the first time in a municipal election.”
Benavente, the first Korean American elected official in North Carolina, was speaking at Asian American Advocacy Day, an event the nonprofit North Carolina Asian Americans Together (NCAAT) organized on May 8 to help Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders meet directly with state legislators to discuss issues that impact their communities. Chavi Khanna Koneru is the nonprofit’s co-founder and executive director.
“This is a really important time for Asian Americans in the state because we are the margin of victory in some really key counties in the state,” Khanna Koneru said to attendees. “And it shows folks in the state that we have power, which means we have to be heard.”
At just 4% in total, Asian Americans represent a relatively small amount of North Carolina’s overall population. However, this group is the fastest-growing electorate in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center. And throughout the South, their population is increasing rapidly — in North Carolina, the AAPI population jumped by 68% from 2010 to 2020. Currently, there are more than 450,000 people in the state who identify as AAPI, representing more than 20 ethnicities.
Compared to other racial groups, Asians and Latinos have among the lowest rates of voter registration. But academic experts and advocacy groups emphasize that it’s not due to a lack of interest in politics. In North Carolina, a growing number of Asian American advocates and elected officials are making significant efforts to make voting more accessible and raise civic engagement among their communities.
A powerful but overlooked voting bloc
Asian Americans have historically had relatively low voter turnout rates, but in 2020, they increased their turnout rate more than other racial groups. The turnout from AAPI voters made an impact in some swing states, including Georgia, where President Joe Biden won by a small margin.
And yet, a large portion of Asian Americans in North Carolina, as well as nationally, report that political campaigns have never contacted them regarding elections. According to a 2022 survey conducted by NC Asian Americans Together and the U.S. Immigration Policy Center, 61% said that they had not been contacted by either party for that year’s November midterm elections.
“For many people, we were the first outreach that they had,” said Shruti Parikh, NC Asian Americans Together’s head of education and voter engagement.
Political parties tend to overlook Asian Americans largely because they do not have a long voting history, so parties are less certain if Asian Americans will support their candidates, said Janelle Wong, professor of government and American studies at the University of Maryland and co-director of AAPI Data.
“There's little investment in Asian American turnout,” Wong said. “And then because that group is not mobilized and not contacted to vote, they might also then vote at lower rates. So we see this kind of vicious cycle.”
When there is outreach to AAPI communities, those efforts tend to assume that Asian Americans mainly care about education, Wong said.
“People really misunderstand the Asian American vote,” she said. “So they rely on stereotypes, and they often think because of the model minority myth, the idea that Asian Americans have a special value for education, they think Asian Americans are really preoccupied with educational issues.”
“In fact, Asian Americans don't rank education as the very top issue,” she added. “Like other voters, they are most concerned about the economy, and jobs, and inflation. And they are no more likely to say that education is a top issue for them than other voters.”
Research from AAPI Data has shown that Asian American voters tend to rank the economy, environmental issues, and healthcare as the most important issues to them. This is partly because Asian Americans, on the whole, tend to lean more politically left than the general population, Wong said. The Pew Research Center’s data supports this as well, but notes that more Vietnamese Americans tend to identify as Republican.
Among North Carolina’s AAPI population, 52% are registered as unaffiliated voters, 31% as Democrats and 17% as Republican, according to Carolina Demography.
When asked about outreach to Asian Americans, Minu Lee, chair of the NC Democratic Party’s AAPI Caucus, said that the party is working on new strategies to better engage with communities during this election year.
“We’re knocking on their doors, calling folks up, impressing upon everyone that hey, there’s an important election coming up that expands beyond the presidential level,” he said. “We have to make sure Republicans don’t get control of that governor’s mansion. We have to elect council of state candidates who will invest, not divest, in our communities. We need to elect judicial candidates who will stand up for our rights and break that supermajority in the General Assembly.”
In March, the Biden campaign announced the launch of a $30 million ad buy aimed at Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) voters living in battleground states.
“Republicans are committed to winning the votes of all individuals and families this year,” a spokesman for the NC Republican Party emailed in a statement to WUNC. “The issues that are important to voters: inflation, cost of living, Biden’s open Southern border, and school choice, all affect Asian Americans. Our party puts forth a family first agenda that makes the lives of all North Carolinians better and that is the key to winning up and down the ballot this year.”
Representation is increasing, but challenges persist
In the state legislature and across municipal offices, Asian American representation has been building over the past decade. Many are the first to represent their communities, such as Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, D-Wake, the first Indian American state legislator in North Carolina, and Rep. Ya Liu, D-Wake, and Rep. Maria Cervania, D-Wake, who in 2022 both became the first Asian American women elected to the legislature.
“It’s actually the increased level of political engagement in the Asian community that got me that win,” Liu told WUNC, noting that she won in a largely Republican district. “Most of my volunteers were Asian Americans.”
But even in positions of power, some have expressed challenges in advocating for their communities. For example, Liu co-sponsored a bill in 2023 that would require the teaching of Asian American history in K-12 curriculum in the state. But even with bipartisan support, that effort has been stalled. At a press conference during Asian American Advocacy Day, Liu said “there wasn’t enough interest” in the bill, but she’s still interested in pushing it forward.
At that same press conference, Rep. Cervania shared how redistricting this year would change her district. With the new maps, District 41 would shift from covering Cary and Apex, to covering Cary, Morrisville, and the Brier Creek area of northwest Raleigh.
“The majority is designing voter suppression laws that’s drawing these maps. …They want to crack and pack the AAPI community and dilute our voices. This is a sign that our advocacy is actually working,” she said.
She also said that she’s treated differently than her other colleagues at the legislature.
“I'm often told … that I don't look like other legislators and I'm not always treated like one,” Cervania said. “But I cannot let this discourage me and my fellow legislators from helping our community because it's so important and we don't want to foster that worry and doubt. … We have a powerful voice and we're not going to allow anyone to let us think otherwise.”
Many of the participants at Asian American Advocacy Day prepared to talk to lawmakers about their support for DEI and ethnic studies, protections for voter ID exceptions and the establishment of an independent redistricting commission. But not all Asian Americans lean progressive. Some Asian Americans in the state, such as the group NC Asian American Coalition, tend to lean to the conservative side of the aisle. While there are fewer Asian American Republicans among the state’s elected officials, their influence is growing as well.
For example, Raleigh-based Kenny Xu has been building notoriety in the past few years as a board member and spokesman for Students for Fair Admissions, the plaintiffs in the Affirmative Action lawsuit against Harvard and UNC, arguing that race-based admissions hurt Asian American applicants. He also is the co-founder and president of an anti-DEI advocacy group, Color Us United, which claimed last year that it compelled the UNC School of Medicine to get rid of its DEI task force. The group also has received support from former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Xu had attempted to run for Congress in North Carolina’s 13th district, but lost the primary in March. He received 4.3% of the vote and finished sixth in a field of 14 candidates. Brad Knott won that election after a second primary in May.
“I ran for two reasons,” Xu told WUNC. “One was to support my country and to share with my country the increasing problems of DEI and CRT (Critical Race Theory) in all kinds of professions, whether it’s in the schools, military, higher ed, medicine. I thought if I won, then I would get to act on it in Congress, but if I didn’t win, I would get to expose it to the wider population.”
Xu said he believes that DEI efforts do not promote inclusion, but rather “a more divided, fractured society, where people of different races dislike each other.” While Xu’s values differ greatly from NCAAT’s, the one thing they have in common is the belief that the Asian American electorate in NC should not be underestimated.
“We actually have a fairly strong Asian American coalition here in North Carolina,” Xu said. “Even though we are small, we are mighty and we’re productive. That’s the other thing — we’re productive, meaning we actually have wealth to spend on political candidates.”
'We've become that trusted messenger'
At the local level, Asian American advocacy groups are primarily taking on the labor of mobilizing voters in their communities ahead of elections. Shruti Parikh at NCAAT oversees the endorsement of candidates at their sister political advocacy organization, NCAAT in Action. She said their work has helped guide many Asian American voters at elections.
“We send out slate cards to our community of people we’ve endorsed,” Parikh said. “And we’ve seen people show up to polling sites with our slate cards in their hand. So we know that our message is working, we’ve become that trusted messenger.”
Parikh said that NCAAT in Action plans to announce its endorsements in August.
Asian American community organizers are also trying to make voting more accessible for those with low English proficiency. At a picnic hosted by the North Carolina chapter of the Chinese American Friendship Association in April, Shuyun Mu set up a voter registration booth, where she said she had just helped register a grandmother.
“She doesn't understand English well,” Mu said. “That's the reason, even (though) she's a citizen, she never registered because she's afraid her English is bad and (would) not be able to understand the process of registering. But today we helped her.”
Mu hears this often from other Asian immigrants, which is partly why she’s dedicated herself to addressing the challenges her community experiences at the polls. Mu is the board chair of a PAC called MOVENC, which stands for Margin of Victory Empowerment Fund North Carolina, in December to raise civic engagement among Asian Americans in the state. The group has also endorsed NC Attorney General Josh Stein for governor.
Mu, who moved to the U.S. in 1998 from China, said she’s felt for many years that politicians have ignored Asian Americans, but the rise of anti-Asian violence during the COVID-19 pandemic pushed her to take action.
“During COVID, I realized how weak our voice was,” Mu said. “We are always voiceless and the policymakers don’t realize we actually have so many needs — we need protection from discrimination, we need (access to) social services, healthcare programs, education programs.”
MOVENC wants to expand the AAPI voter base not just by registering voters, but also by encouraging green card holders to apply for citizenship. However, Mu said she often finds it challenging to persuade people in her community to vote.
“I talked to many friends. Many of them think voting is not important because they think they cannot change anything. It's wrong,” Mu said. “It was really tiring to persuade them to participate, to register, to vote. If we have many, many Asian Americans realize we should participate, our voice will be bigger and will be heard and the policymakers will realize our power.”
—
Are you an AAPI voter in North Carolina and would like to share your thoughts on the 2024 elections? Please reach out to reporter Eli Chen at elichen@wunc.org.
