{"id":15439,"date":"2022-11-19T07:25:48","date_gmt":"2022-11-19T17:25:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/?p=15439"},"modified":"2022-11-19T07:25:49","modified_gmt":"2022-11-19T17:25:49","slug":"michelle-steels-shame-mejias-rise-and-an-exit-poll-that-includes-filipino-voters-in-the-2022-midterms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/2022\/11\/19\/michelle-steels-shame-mejias-rise-and-an-exit-poll-that-includes-filipino-voters-in-the-2022-midterms\/","title":{"rendered":"Michelle Steel\u2019s Shame, Mejia\u2019s Rise, And An Exit Poll That Includes Filipino Voters In The 2022 Midterms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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by Emil Guillermo<\/em>

I knew it wasn\u2019t going to be a \u201cred wave\u201d even before CNN said Brian Schatz won in Hawaii. That was really a given.

No. My telltale sign was watching Republican Allan Fung, dubbed by Fox as one who could flip Rhode Island\u2019s decidedly blue Cong. District 2. When he lost, I knew some election day prognosticators would be confounded.

America did not exit from democracy on November 8. Voters went to the polls and saved it.

That included many Asian Americans, and thanks to the AALDEF exit poll, I will share what some of them thought.

But don\u2019t think November 8 was a return to normalcy where losers conceded gracefully, and we were all working together.

It\u2019s not that normal yet. There\u2019s still some odious Trumpism present.

Yes, election deniers mostly lost on election day. But the Jay Chen deniers won.

And for that, we must say, shame on you Michelle Steel.

Make that Michelle Park Steel. That\u2019s her name when the Korean American isn\u2019t hiding behind her GOP operative husband\u2019s surname and wants to show her AAPI-ness.

Steel is going back to Congress representing California District 45, but she did it by lying and slurring the good name of her Democratic opponent Jay Chen.

Steel used race twice in diabolical ways against Chen.

First, she played the victim game by falsely claiming Chen was making fun of her accent. He wasn\u2019t.

But then as the race tightened in October, Steel doctored ads to make it look that Chen had ties to the Chinese Communist Party and was teaching propaganda in schools.

That wasn\u2019t a red wave, more a red splash of racist lies.

Chen, a decorated Navy intelligence officer, whose grandmother fled China for Taiwan, and is a proud Asian American was being portrayed by Steel as a communist sympathizer.

He definitely is not.

But Steel made that her doubly racist, Asian-on-Asian weapon, pandering to her constituents in the Little Saigon part of Southern California\u2019s Orange County. And then by defiling Chen\u2019s good name.

Steel already had the white conservatives in Orange County. But there\u2019s nothing like a little racism to invoke generational trauma in the Vietnamese community to boot.

District 45 is a strange mix in Southern California, with the larger part in conservative Orange County. That enabled Steel to win handily 55% to 45%.

But a smaller part of the district is in Los Angeles County, which Democrat Chen won 53.9% to 46.1%.

That\u2019s redistricting for you. Steel already had a huge advantage over Chen. But then she added a little racism just to make sure. She must have figured she had lots of money pouring in from Kevin McCarthy\u2019s PAC.

What\u2019s a small lie compared to \u201cthe big lie\u201d?

There is none. It\u2019s still despicable, and yet it\u2019s Steel who\u2019s going back to Congress.

After the racist lies in her campaign against a fellow Asian American, how can she be trusted as a worthy public servant?

AALDEF<\/strong>\u2019s Asian American exit poll: Election deniers among Asians<\/strong>
What does an Asian American think? That\u2019s not just a subtitle of the daily web show I do, it\u2019s what people should want to know about us on all issues great and small. Because we\u2019re here.

And we won\u2019t be ignored.

But we are, ignored that is. When does anyone ever highlight us in media exit polling. There\u2019s never a big enough sample to get a reliable sense of what we think when they think to think of us.

Enter the AALDEF exit poll for the 2022 midterm elections, a multilingual (11 languages) poll of 5,351 Asian American voters in 15 states on November 8.

For me, it served as confirmation that roughly two-thirds of Asian American voters are Democrats, with a third Republican. That was true for the House, Senate, and Gubernatorial races.

But 2022 was not just about donkeys and elephants, this was an election about the fight between the election deniers vs the defenders of our democracy.

When asked if the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election was legitimate (asked in DC, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Texas and Virginia only) 59.2% said Yes.

But 16.3% said No, putting them solidly among the election deniers. 24.5% said they didn\u2019t know.

Compare that with the national generic numbers in the CNN exit poll, where 63% said yes. But more than a third said no.

Asian Americans aren\u2019t election deniers.

And they offered up a higher approval rating for Joe Biden, 45.3% vs. 31.4% disapproval. 23.3% said they didn\u2019t know.

Asian Americans also won\u2019t deny your right to an abortion, according to the AALDEF exit poll.

When asked if they support access to legal abortion, 63.8% supported. 15.8% didn\u2019t know. 20.4% were opposed.

Abortion was ranked high in mainstream exit polls after inflation as a motivating factor to vote.

But the AALDEF poll showed the top three factors influencing their House vote to be: Economy\/Jobs (15%), Health care (14.5%) and Education (13.1%).

Exit polls are also famous for asking other extraneous yet relevant questions along the lines of \u201cwhile you\u2019re here, let me ask you about\u2026\u201d

So when asked if one had been a victim of Anti-Asian Harassment or violence in the past two years, only 21.6% said yes while 78.4% said no.

These are answers the mainstream public should be interested in.  But what does it mean? That non-voters are more likely victims? Or it could mean that the more you are a full participant in the system, the less likely you are to be a victim of anti-Asian harassment or violence. Perhaps that\u2019s one more motivation to vote.

Another area that was surprising was on the question of trans rights.

When AAPI voters were asked if they support laws to protect transgender people from discrimination, 65.2% supported; 20.9% said don\u2019t know, 14% were opposed.

Who would\u2019ve known? The large number is a revelation for me with transgender members in my family. I am glad the question was asked.

Finally, there was support requiring teaching a unit of AAPI history in K-12, 82.7% yes. Only 17.3% no.

It\u2019s important in an era when school boards are seen as latest battlegrounds in the battle for inclusion or censure. The past is important, but so is the present because every Asian American first is history.

And this election there was one small one worth noting.

Do you know Kenneth Mejia?<\/strong>
I am more NorCal than SoCal, but my Los Angeles friends were telling me about Kenneth Mejia for some time.

Mejia, 34, a Filipino American CPA allied with progressive labor groups, won for Los Angeles City Controller, the guy who signs the checks. Mejia beat a veteran termed out Los Angeles City Council member.  And he won convincingly by a landslide.

With a number of progressives winning for city council, there appears to be a sea change going on in the most populous Asian American city in the most Asian American state. A coalition driven by labor is gaining traction in LA.

Mejia is a bit of an odd duck wild card. He\u2019s outspoken and has had to delete some tweets in the past. But he\u2019s also an accountant. A fiscal progressive? In this long game of politics, I\u2019d say he\u2019s both evolving and emerging as a new generation politician to watch out for\u2014in a good way.

Interesting to note, Mejia did not appear to have the endorsement of Filipino American pol of the hour, Rob Bonta, the California attorney general. I suspect Mejia was considered too extreme for the generally progressive Bonta? At least for now.

So on the national scene, we may have averted disaster with a rousing win for democracy. But these local races help define November 8 too.

Michelle Steel is a shameful disappointment. Was Trumpism rebuked on election day? Steel\u2019s Asian Trumpism where the ends justify the means is disgusting as well as dishonest. It she still won. She shouldn\u2019t have.

There were also negative things that were observed by AALDEF poll watchers, significant things like missing interpreters, or poll workers asking for identification.

But we can take hope from the emergence of young pols like Mejia on the mainland, and an understanding of what Asian Americans are thinking as they exit the polls.

Asian Americans are engaged and involved. Perhaps Hawaii has known this better than all of the rest of us for some time. But in 2022, it\u2019s something the rest of the country needed to hear when the perception of a threatened democracy is very real.

EMIL GUILLERMO<\/strong> is a veteran journalist and commentator. A former member of the Advertiser editorial board and a Star Bulletin columnist, he does a web show on <\/em>www.amok.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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