By Nimfa U. Rueda
DNC Chief Executive Officer Amy Dacey (photo courtesy of https://twitter.com/amykdacey)
LOS ANGELES – As the race for the White House heats up, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) continues to tap better ways to reach Filipino-American and other Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) voters.
DNC Chief Executive Officer Amy Dacey told reporters yesterday (Wednesday in Manila) they have expanded their grassroots outreach to members of the nation’s fastest-growing ethnic group.
“We’re looking at how we’re communicating with them…and how they’re getting their information about the party, what we stand for, the general election and our candidates,” Dacey said in a roundtable discussion with the media in downtown Los Angeles.
“We’re working on the local level everyday to do that. Peer-to-peer conversation, people hearing from members of their community matters a lot.”
Studies show AAPIs will soon outnumber Latinos as the largest immigrant group coming to the United States.
While AAPIs are concentrated in California and New York, they are also rapidly growing in the battleground states of Nevada, Virginia, and Florida.
That means capturing the Asian American vote is important in the November elections, according to the Asian American Advancing Justice, which is set to release new polling data on AAPIs today (Thursday in Manila).
In the last few presidential elections, Fil-Ams and other AAPIs had leaned heavily democrat, and the DNC hopes to get more of them to vote.
“The issues that (Democrats) are focusing on are very tuned in to the Filipino-American community, especially the issues of immigration and health care,” said Fil-Am Fritz Friedman, former Sony Pictures senior vice president of worldwide publicity who serves on the credentials committee for DNC’s national convention this July in Philadelphia.
“Also, the Democratic Party is much more inclusive. They understand people of color, as opposed to Republicans (who), in my opinion, are not as sensitive to the interests of the ethnic minorities in this country.”
Dacey said she’s confident the party will have a presidential nominee before the national convention and that nominee will win the race for the White House.
“I am confident that one of our candidates will be the 45th president of the United States,” said Dacey, who is scheduled to meet with party leaders in California.
She declined to say who she thought would be the presidential nominee.
“Both (Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders) have run campaigns that are worthy of the office of the president,” she said.