In Georgia, Asian Americans are remaking the state’s politics

Michelle Kang had the man’s attention.

“This is a life or death situation,” she said to the South Asian man standing in the door frame in pajamas and slides. Kang was pitching her candidacy for the Georgia state House of Representatives and the election’s impact on his existence, “especially for Asian Americans like us.”

Kang, a Democrat and first generation Korean American immigrant, is running in Georgia’s State House District 99, challenging incumbent Matt Reeves, a first-term White Republican who also has been courting the Asian American vote.

An influx of Asian Americans have transformed this once predominantly rural, Republican district in north Gwinnett County to a more multicultural suburb — about one-third of the population is the state’s fastest growing racial group. Those demographics have created one of the most competitive races in battleground Georgia, with national Democrats promoting Kang and six other candidates as ones to watch in Georgia state races. Meanwhile, Gov. Brian Kemp (R) chose Reeves as one of four vulnerable Republicans to back with a significant amount of downballot money.

Two decades ago, no Asian American representatives were in the Georgia legislature. But as the number of Asian Americans have increased in Georgia and the United States, the number of politicians of Asian heritage in the Georgia legislature has jumped.

By 2021, five Asian Americans were in the legislature. Three years later, that number has more than doubled to 11 — nine Democrats and two Republicans in a legislature of 180 in the House and 56 in the Senate. That’s more than California (10), where Asians represent 15 percent of the population, and in New York (10), where people of Asian descent represent 10 percent. Although Asian Americans are only 4.5 percent of Georgia’s population, the state’s AAPI Caucus boasts the largest membership in the continental United States.

“Organizers have really seized an opportunity to demonstrate the potential impact of Asian Americans on politics in the state despite being much smaller than the White or African American communities,” said Bernard Fraga, a professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta.

It’s unclear which party will benefit more. For White and Black Americans, Georgia is a state where party identification and race are highly correlated. White Americans mostly vote Republican, and Black Americans tend to vote for Democrats, said Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University.

Newly arriving Asian American voters are less predictable, in part because they are more likely than any other racial group to have been born outside the United States in countries such as China, Vietnam and South Korea. They come from foreign political environments — some democracies, other autocracies — and are hardly a monolithic community.

Some churchgoing, socially conservative Asian Americans vote for the candidate who is a member of their ethnic group, but others prefer a candidate who may align more with their religious values. For conservative Asian American voters choosing between Kang and Reeves in November, the question will be which of their identities they prioritize more in politics.

“From the young adults that I know, I think ethnicity is a bit more of a trustworthy base to vote from, as opposed to religious common ground. Particularly a lot of Korean Americans and East Asian Americans who have been traditionally bound to evangelical or conservative churches are starting to see that their faith and their ethics don’t match,” said David Park, a pastor at Open Table Community, a multiracial Christian church in Brookhaven, Ga.

“With the older generation, they’re still more socially conservative, and for the majority of older attendees of church, matters like pro-life and family values still carry a lot of weight,” Park said.

Asian Americans also have been raised in households that were neither Democratic nor Republican, and this weak party affiliation gives them greater potential to reshuffle state politics.

Asian Americans can “offset the deficits that Democrats have with White voters,” or reinforce Republican dominance, Gillespie said. Asian American votes exceeded the margin of victory in the 2020 presidential race in Georgia.

Asian American voter turnout in Georgia almost doubled to 2.7 percent of the overall vote in 2020, the highest increase in Asian American voter turnout in any state during that year. African American and White voter turnout in Georgia increased by 16 and 10 percent, respectively, according to TargetSmart, which analyzes political data. Daniel Franklin, professor emeritus of political science at Georgia State University, said that after the 2020 election, minority voting declined in the state in 2022, with the exception of Asian Americans.

In this district northeast of Atlanta, signs in Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese line the roads, advertising restaurants and shops selling everything from Ube sundaes to skin care. Asian cafes in the area far outnumber Starbucks, offering red-bean pastries, lychee drinks, and specialty beverages popularized in Seoul, including a sweet drink simply labeled “Korean coffee.” There are two Nam Dae Mun Korean markets – named after the largest traditional market in South Korea – within 20 minutes of each other.

“Every third house you’ll find is an Asian family, but that hasn’t changed in terms of the leadership,” said Aisha Yaqoob Mahmood, who ran for the House in 2018. “It’s still very White, Republican heavy, and I think Asian communities and urban communities are trying to build influence there, but because it’s still the old guard that’s in power, it’s been challenging to flip those seats in particular.”

The Asian American community was initially spurred to action by rising racial violence, some stemming from anti-Chinese rhetoric during the Trump administration and particularly during the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, when President Donald Trump blamed Asians for bringing the virus to the United States. Then, in 2021, a gunman murdered eight people, six of whom were Asian women, in two spas in Atlanta. The gunman said a sex addiction motivated the shooting, but Asian American activists widely regard it as a racial hate crime.

“The March 16th shootings really were a watershed moment for the Asian American community,” said Russell Jeung, the co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate. “The anti-Asian hate had been surging for a year during covid but it reached its apex with the shootings.”

A few years ago, many Georgia politicians considered the Asian American vote dispensable. State Rep. Michelle Au, who previously served as a state senator, recalled dispiriting advice she received during her 2020 bid.

“I was told by a pretty experienced Democratic operative at that point, ‘You know, Michelle, because of your background and your experience, you are going to want to talk to a lot of Asian voters,’” Au recounted. “‘However’— and this is a direct quote — ‘do not waste too much time talking to Asian voters. Because Asian people don’t vote.’ This was not in the days of yore, this was not decades ago, this was in 2019.”

But in 2020, Asian American voters turned out in record numbers. In 2022, the year after the shootings, a “historic slate, truly, of AAPI candidates” decided to run for office, Au said.

The shootings were a “paradigm shift” that caused people of Asian heritage to recognize “that it is insufficient to be a model minority in order to protect your community,” said Sam Park, a state House representative who in 2016 was the first Asian American Democrat elected to the legislature.

“We need to make sure that we have a seat at the table,” he added.

Kang, 57, decided to run for office after the 2021 shootings. She had previously worked for other campaigns and managed the Asian American Resource Center in Gwinnett County and worked to increase the Korean community’s voter turnout.

“I just needed to do something more,” Kang said. “I realized the importance of public policies we need to introduce that really affect people’s lives here, so I wanted to be a legislator. I’ve been an advocate, but I want to be a legislator to help AAPIs.”

Reeves, 46, a business and real estate lawyer who won the seat in 2022 after two unsuccessful state Senate runs in 2018 and 2020, often attends AAPI cultural events, including some that are unlikely to draw huge numbers. In July, he spoke at a “Korean Senior Fraud Prevention Seminar” inside a local police department. Just 10 Korean seniors and one young child listened to a few speakers as they unspooled horror stories about people who pose as kidnappers or new lovers who turn out to be con artists.

“I spend a large amount of my time attending events in the Korean community as well as other ethnic groups in the community,” Reeves said. “I think it’s a cumulative effect of living here for 21 years, raising my family here, doing business, being active in civic life here in the area for that long.”

Kang also appeared at Asian American cultural events over the summer, including a brewery mixer with the Philippine American Chamber of Commerce of Georgia, and a Taiwanese heritage showcase in Dunwoody — which lies outside of her district, but helped her increase her recognition within the community, according to her former campaign manager, Jorge Granados.

At times, Kang has faced obstacles from the Asian American community itself. When she asked five Korean churches to host a “multicultural concert” in support of her campaign, all but one rebuffed her. The church is usually the center of gravity in the Korean immigrant community, and Kang noted that “the majority of the time, Korean churches are very conservative.”

Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center.