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As we look ahead to the 2024 general election, one undeniable truth emerges: In nearly every contested congressional seat, you can bet that the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community will be the game-changer. AAPI voters constitute the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group in the United States and are poised to be the crucial swing voting bloc for control of the House next year. Nowhere is this dynamic more apparent than in my home, Orange County, where the path to a Democratic congressional majority hinges on the strength and engagement of our diverse community.
Long considered a conservative stronghold, famously dubbed by former President Ronald Reagan as the place "where good Republicans go before they die," my home in Orange County has rapidly transformed into a contested political arena—in part due to the rise of Donald Trump, and in other ways due to shifting and diversifying demographics.
The AAPI electorate is front and center in that discussion. Roughly one-fourth of Orange County's population, including about 20 percent of registered voters in the 47th Congressional District, identify as AAPI. And as recent elections have made clear, AAPI voters are key swing votes, in Orange County and elsewhere across the country.
In the 2018 "Blue Wave" election, Asian Americans voted overwhelmingly for Democrats in Orange County and were instrumental in the victories of four new congressional members. AAPI voters were also critical for Democratic victories in other parts of the country. In Georgia, 57.9 percent of AAPI votes went Democratic in the 2020 general election, and 58.1 percent in the 2021 Senate runoff, providing the narrow margin necessary to elect Democratic Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock and help the Democratic Party retake the U.S. Senate.
This trend of Asian Americans voting Democratic has not gone unnoticed by the Republican Party, either. In 2020, Republicans in Orange County clawed back two of the four seats won by Democrats in 2018 by fielding Korean American candidates who substantially overperformed with AAPI voters.
At the end of the day, outside of a handful of "culture war" issues, the core values of today's GOP are fundamentally contradictory to the family-forward values and kitchen table issues of most Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. While the AAPI community in my district is incredibly diverse and far from a monolith—representing countries of origin that make up roughly two-thirds of the world's population—we share the core priority of caring for and investing in our children. After all, someone close to us in our family tree made the decision to come to this country, far away from their friends and family, to make a better life for themselves and their children. This ethos of long-term investment for the benefit of future generations is one that speaks to AAPI communities across the spectrum—and it's also the antithesis of Republican economic policy. Time and again, the GOP has shown a fundamental belief in disinvesting from the long-term economic priorities of our families—with repeated efforts to oppose Democratic-led funding for infrastructure, public education, and child care—and instead subsidizing the investor class, with the idea that increased wealth for the wealthiest Americans will "trickle down" to working people.
Similarly, while Republican appeals on public safety have devolved to straw man arguments and scare tactics that fall flat, their attacks aren't matching up with the support for campaigns like mine. I'm endorsed by public safety organizations and law enforcement unions alike because I support investing in solutions to make all of our communities safer, with real solutions to combat gun violence and prevent hate crimes, particularly alarming against our AAPI seniors. Republicans have no solutions, just talking points, and have made no calls to tackle gun violence nor the myriad of public safety priorities my constituents have asked us to address.
But even if Republicans were to better align with AAPIs on policy, the xenophobia and white nationalism at the heart of today's MAGA Republican Party still remains. While there are certainly legitimate national security concerns about China, former President Donald Trump has crassly warped these into a broader anti-Asian message, one which demonized Chinese Americans as the cause of COVID-19, and sanctioned the broader enmity toward all Asian Americans that has sparked a surge in anti-Asian rhetoric and hate. Even in my neighboring Orange County congressional district, congresswoman Michelle Steel ran a blatantly racist campaign last year against Taiwanese American Jay Chen, which baselessly smeared the decorated U.S. military veteran as an agent of the Chinese Communist Party.
Republicans have a handful of wedge issues in their playbook, and they'll continue using these tactics to divide our communities. But as long as the GOP continues divesting from our families' economic priorities and lending a platform based on anti-Asian ignorance, Asian American voters will always have a home in the Democratic Party.
I'm proud to highlight my Korean American heritage and to be on the precipice of representing the best of the AAPI community and its values in the halls of Congress. During AAPI Heritage Month, we must remind our neighbors that Democrats are working overtime to uphold the promise of the American Dream that so many of our loved ones came here to achieve—and that in order to preserve that promise, we must replace the House leadership routinely failing our families in Washington.
Dave Min is a father, former UCI law professor, and a current state senator representing about 85 percent of the congressional district for which he's running. After graduating from Harvard Law and working for the SEC and Senator Chuck Schumer, Dave moved back home to California to continue his public service—flipping a Republican-held Senate seat in 2020 and championing abortion rights, gun violence prevention, and climate solutions during his tenure.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
