8 Asians

I just caught this CNN story by Kyung Lah that was aired in earlier in October about the high number of Asian American candidates. Yes, there are a record 23 Asian Americans running for Congress (20 of them running as Democrats). My only issue with this piece is that Lah talking about Asian Americans as the fast growing ethnic group and the growing public identity from NBA basketball player Jeremy Lin to “Korea stylings” of Internet sensation PSY. PSY is Korean but he is not an American (though he did study in the U.S. – but never graduated).

I don’t care how popular PSY has become (I love the parodies), I am not sure how much his popularity reflects the Asian AMERICAN growth in public identity – I think such stories trying to conflate Asian Americans like Lin with Asians like PSY is kind of doing somewhat of a disservice, and possibly helping to reinforce the idea of the perpetual foreigner.

Beyond that particular annoyance, I thought the overall piece did a good job of reiterating what has been reported this past year about Asian Americans, including that many are undecided, and that we could be the swing vote in a few swing states – like in Nevada and Virginia.

NPR also did a similar piece over the weekend on More Asian-Americans Seeking Higher Political Office. However, this time, they cited:

A total of 36, including incumbents, launched campaigns this year — more than double the number from a record set just two years ago Of those, a record 21 contenders — 18 Democrats and three Republicans — claimed victories in their primaries and are now vying to represent districts across the nation.

I guess there is no definitive review of all the different candidates and incumbents running for Congress and for re-election. There are 435 Congressional districts in the United States House of Representatives – so that is a lot of races to cover. Back in August, The Examiner had 25 Asian Americans running for Congress: