By Thy Vo, Voice of OC
Once known as a bastion of white establishment conservatives, Orange County’s Republican Party says there’s a new face to the GOP: Asian American women.
(Left to Right) Young Kim, Michelle Steel, Janet Nguyen and Ling-Ling Chang at a dinner gathering. Photo courtesy of Shawn Steel / Voice of OC
Five high-profile Asian women — all Republicans — dominated Orange County races Tuesday night, with three candidates elected to state office and two to the county Board of Supervisors.
Supervisor Janet Nguyen, whose family fled Vietnam as refugees, won a seat in the State Senate. Former Congressional aide Young Kim, a South Korean immigrant, and Diamond Bar councilwoman Ling-Ling Chang, a Taiwanese American, were both elected to the State Assembly.
Korean-born Board of Equalization member Michelle Park Steel and Dana Point Mayor Lisa Bartlett, a Japanese-American, also won seats on the Board of Supervisors.
In Orange County and nationwide, party leaders are co-opting Democrats’ strategy of identity politics with hopes of changing perceptions of the GOP as anti-immigrant and unwelcoming to women and minority voters.
“We’re changing the face of the party. When you say Republican Party, people think, middle-aged white male,” said Michelle Steel, who sits on the California Republican Party Board of Directors. “People always portray Asian women as quiet and obedient.”
“We just proved that we are fighters.”
In the lead-up to the election, Steel’s husband, former state GOP chairman Shawn Steel, penned several newspaper editorials making the pitch that his wife, Chang, Nguyen and Kim are a testament to how the party is evolving to incorporate Asian voters with local candidates — all legal immigrants — who look like voters and speak their language.
Statewide, Republicans have failed to have a long-term presence in Hispanic and Asian communities, Shawn Steel said.
“The party needs messengers in these emerging communities – the fact that Michelle, like Young Kim, is in the Korean papers virtually every day is having a profound impact on those voters. And it’ll balance out the monopoly that the Dems have had,” Shawn Steel said.
Michael Schroeder, who served as the state party chairman from late 1997 to 1999, said that while the GOP has tried to build up grassroots minority leaders and candidates, past party leaders haven’t always put the time and funding behind it.
“Everyone has realized that you can’t be disrespectful and you have to be there. If you show up five days before the election with a mariachi band, you look like an idiot,” Schroeder said.
Schroeder says the emergence of Asian candidates in Orange County isn’t a new trend, but the result of demographic changes where successful candidates have naturally emerged.
“The Republicans in Orange County have had, for the last twenty years, numerous Asian American politicians that gave a face to the Republican party,” Schroeder said, pointing to politicians like former Vietnamese American State Assemblyman Van Tran.
Vietnamese Americans, who number more than 183,000 in Orange County, have historically favored the Republican Party. Nearly all of the county’s Vietnamese American elected officials are Republican.
On the other hand, OC Republicans have failed to successfully support and elect Hispanic candidates, he said.
“Lou Correa was originally a Republican as was Loretta Sanchez – but they didn’t get a lot of support in the Republican side,” Schroeder said of the two Democrats. “People who looked like they had real potential turned out really badly, like Carlos Bustamante.”
Bartlett, whose election makes her the first Japanese American to serve on the Board of Supervisors, says she is skeptical of the party’s message of inclusion. She was not among the Asian candidates endorsed by the county GOP.
“When it came time to endorse, we had requested that the party stay neutral, but they went ahead and endorsed my opponent,” Bartlett said, referring to her close race with Republican and former Laguna Niguel mayor Robert Ming.
“So they’re saying we need to diversify the party, and include more women, but…[there’s] a contradiction,” she said.
This isn’t the first time California Republicans have heard a pitch for supporting more minority candidates.
In 1997, political strategist Stuart Spencer, who ran Ronald Reagan’s gubernatorial campaign in 1966, wrote a memo to state GOP leaders urging them to embrace Latino candidates, or else commit “political suicide.”
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