Over the past year, Roy Sekine has volunteered and helped organize fundraising events to ensure that Vicente Fong became the first Asian-American congressman to represent his hometown of Bakersfield, in California’s 20th District, which covers the state’s deeply conservative farm belt.
Sekine, who is Japanese-American and a retired technology services supervisor, said he believes Fong embodies the changing values and policies of an Asian electorate that is increasingly concerned about rising crime rates and living costs and became disillusioned with the state’s ruling party.
“The majority of Asians in Congress are Democrats. They always talk about Trump, but they never talk about crime,” said Sekine, 64. “I hate that elderly Asians are targets. I want an orderly society.”
Fong, a former member of the California State Assembly, was sworn in earlier this month to succeed former House speaker Kevin McCarthy, granting Republicans a crucial six-seat majority in the House of Representatives. Backed by McCarthy and former President Donald Trump, Fong ran on a staunchly conservative platform of controlling fiscal spending, reducing taxes and strengthening law enforcement to combat crime.
Fong, 44, says progressives have “moved in a direction that is antithetical” to principles that are important to Asian Americans.
California’s 20th Congressional District, which encompasses a collection of inland agricultural centers from Fresno to Fong’s hometown of Bakersfield, is one of the reddest districts in the State. McCarthy represented districts in the region from 2007 until last December, when he resigned after being ousted as speaker of the House. Fong, who served as McCarthy’s district director for more than a decade, won a special election in May to fill out the remainder of his mentor’s term. Fong will again face Sheriff Mike Boudreaux, whom he easily defeated in the Republican primary runoff, in the November general election and will likely secure a full two-year term starting in January.
For Fong, the son of Chinese immigrants who had little interest in politics, running for public office was not a career choice he envisioned. He didn’t catch the “political bug,” he said, until the summer after his freshman year at the University of California, Los Angeles, when he met McCarthy while interning with former Republican congressman Bill Thomas.
“He opened my eyes to making good public policy,” Fong said of McCarthy. “He saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself, the qualities of a good leader.”
In 2016, Fong became the first Asian American to represent Bakersfield in the state Legislature, a notable milestone in a state where Asian political representation has generally coalesced around urban centers like Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay Area. Francisco, which are home to the vast majority of California’s Asian population.
In the 20th District, Asian Americans comprise only 7% of the population. But many generations and communities of Asian Americans have left a mark on the Central Valley, Fong said, from the Hmongs in north Fresno to the Filipino farm workers who assembled the seminal 1965 Delano grape strikeand the Chinese immigrants who built the country’s first transcontinental railroad in the late 19th century. “It’s an honor to be a person sharing your story,” he said. “I never thought I would be a pioneer.”
California’s farm belt has also become a bastion of Asian American Republican politics and civic engagement. Karen Goh, a Republican of Chinese descent, is Bakersfield’s first Asian-American mayor. Vong Mouanoutoua, also a Republican, is the first Hmong mayor pro tem of Clovis, a city in Fresno County that is home to the second largest Hmong population in the country.
“Our needs in the Central Valley are not unique, but they are more pronounced due to the dominance of representation from Los Angeles and San Francisco,” Mouanoutoua said.
He said Asian-American voters in the Central Valley generally support lower taxes and living costs, greater access to water for drought-stricken farms, as well as protections for small businesses and free speech. “It’s not about right versus left or Republicans or Democrats,” Mouanoutoua said, adding that faith and family are crucial pillars in the lives of Asian families. “It’s about values and having a sense of right and wrong.”
Christine Chen, executive director of the nonprofit group Asian Pacific Islander American Vote, said the recent success of Asian American Republicans in the Central Valley shows that Asian Americans are largely independent voters who prioritize issues over party affiliation. .
“We’ve always said the AAPI constituency is at stake,” she said. “It’s always based on issues and the relationship voters have with the candidate.”
According to exit polls from the last two elections, the majority of Asian American voters supported Democratic candidates, but the share of voters who supported Republican candidates increased from 26% in 2018 to 32% in 2022. In San Francisco, the number of Chinese immigrants registered as Republicans increased by 60% since the beginning of the pandemic. The trend also followed those who ran for public office: a number of first-time Chinese-American Republican candidates won a lot in San Francisco’s election races this spring.
Janelle Wong, senior researcher at AAPI Data, said that while there is no denying that Asian Americans have moved to the right, the majority continue to be Democrats and the data on that shift requires further study.
“What’s confusing is that attention to anti-Asian hate crimes has grown as more attention to Donald Trump and Republican xenophobic rhetoric has grown,” Wong said. “However, Donald Trump still received a higher proportion of the Asian American vote in 2020 compared to 2016.”
Meanwhile, Fong said his main concerns in Congress are protecting the U.S.-Mexico border against human trafficking and drug smuggling, as well as expanding domestic production of oil, gas and renewable energy to support business owners, ranchers and farmers. of your district.
“Being able to represent my hometown in Congress is something I never imagined,” he said. “Now the real work begins.”
To learn more about NBC Asian America, sign up for our weekly newsletter.
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
