AAA-Fund Endorsement of Candidates
Each campaign cycle, the AAA-Fund selects a limited number of Democratic candidates to endorse. The AAA-Fund board decides which candidates to endorse based on a variety of factors, including the nature of the office sought, the strength of the candidate and his or her campaign, and the candidate's commitment to Asian American issues. Following endorsement, the AAA-Fund works together with the candidate to determine how best the AAA-Fund can support their candidacy. In the past, the AAA-Fund has supported endorsed candidates by contributing to their campaigns, hosting fundraisers for the candidates, assisting in online and media outreach, and door-knocking and phone-banking for the candidate.
The AAA-Fund board strives to endorse a group of candidates who represent diversity by gender, geography, and Asian ethnicity. The AAA-Fund generally endorses Asian American candidates but also endorses non-Asian candidates who have demonstrated a commitment to Asian American issues and whose election is important to the Asian American community.
In the most recent election cycle of 2006, the AAA-Fund endorsed 24 candidates, with 18 of those candidates winning office. The endorsed candidates ran in races all across the United States, including Minnesota, Illinois, Texas, Hawaii, Maryland, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Oregon, and competed for the offices of state representative, state controller, U.S. representative, and U.S. senator. The candidates included Americans of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, and Korean ethnicity.
How to Become an Endorsed Candidate
If you are a Democrat and would like to be considered for endorsement by the AAA-Fund, please send us your resume and a brief explanation of why you should be endorsed to info AT aaa-fund.org.
Other AAA-Fund Support for Candidates
The AAA-Fund provides other services to Asian American candidates aside from endorsement:
- If you have a campaign website, please send the URL and we will place a link on our site if it shows a commitment to APA issues and the APA community.
- You also will be eligible for announcement in our email newsletter, which is sent to everyone on our list.
- You and your staffers and volunteers are welcome to participate in our campaign training seminars, which we organize in various parts of the country. Join our email newsletter list to get updated information.
Advice for Candidates
The AAA-Fund seeks to help future candidates by providing advice and training through community education seminars and workshops for community groups and student groups. For example, the AAA-Fund hosted a workshop titled "What It Takes To Run for Office," in April 2003, at the Hmong National Development conference held near Washington D.C. The workshop featured Cy Thao, a Hmong-American currently serving as a Minnesota state representative, who shared his advice with workshop participants. The following is an AsianWeek story on Cy Thao's presentation, including his advice to potential candidates.
Cy Thao: How I won my seat, Asian Week, 4/3/03
You can tell that Cy Thao was an actor from the moment he enters a room. His wide grin, prancing eyes, and sure steps convey a "presence" that is magnetic. He knows how to modulate his speech, and moves easily from Hmong to English while keeping his multi-cultural audience on the edge of their seats.
But Thao, a freshman state representative from St. Paul, Minnesota, is not just an entertainer these days. "Politics drove me to art, and art drove me back to politics," he joked at the 8th Hmong National Conference, held last weekend near Washington, D.C.
Rep. Thao served as an intern at the Minnesota state capitol ten years ago, but decided that he would rather be a painter and actor. After ten years working as an artist, teacher, and non-profit executive, however, he realized that his community, his art, and, indeed, his whole life, were controlled to varying degrees by decisions made by lawmakers. Instead of writing letters, lobbying, and then protesting bad decisions, he decided that part of his energy should be devoted to becoming a legislator himself.
At a workshop on "What It Takes To Run For Office," convened by Irene Bueno of the Asian American Action Fund (www.aaa-fund.org), Rep. Thao shared the evolution of his thought process as he made up his mind to run for State Representative. Here is a summary:
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Do some initial research. Find out about the job you aspire to fill. Work, like he did, as a student intern in the office. Make sure you will find the job fulfilling, because any public service job is going to demand long hours.
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Do some family planning. Make sure your family is behind you, as there will be some sacrifice. Thao worked on his campaign full-time for a while, so his wife had to support the family.
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Stand for something. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to community service. Thao had spent years as a community volunteer, so he knew that the key issues in his neighborhood were fixing the housing stock, reducing crime, improving education, and providing economic development. These issues helped him relate to people of all backgrounds in the neighborhood, not just those of Hmong descent.
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Create a team. With years of helping others behind him, Cy Thao had a lot of favors he could "call in" as he began his campaign. A Treasurer agreed to register his campaign and add up the money raised. A Campaign Manager agreed to run the operation while he did the television appearances, voter drives, and fundraising calls. A Volunteer Manager who had just graduated from college was able to recruit college-age friends to supplement the support of older constituents. Marching in parades, posting year signs, and other outdoor activities take time and energy, and this younger crowd had some of both. Finally, the Communications Director wrote the first draft of the press releases, talked to the media, and kept the campaign "on-message."
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Start walking. Rep. Thao wore out a pair of shoes while visiting 10,000 people in his district over a three month period. There is no substitute for going to a door and saying, "Hello, I would like your vote." This allowed him to meet his neighbors, hear their concerns, develop some rapport, and ask for their votes.
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Start raising money. Getting the word out takes more than time and commitment. As Rep Thao joked, "This job pays only $30,000, and I spent that much just getting elected." Direct mail pieces to people in the district can cost $2,000 each, and must be done four times. A website, radio, television, and other communication channels also cost money. A candidate must be able to approach friends and family and ask for a contribution.
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Plan way ahead. Almost two years before his election, Rep. Thao was already making his plans. He was pulling together his team, learning the relevant filing deadlines, and exploring how to raise money for his campaign. The Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor (DFL) Party (www.dfl.org) has a caucus system where delegates to the party convention are picked from volunteers at a caucus meeting long before the convention. Thao encouraged 200 local Hmong Americans to come to the caucus, and half were chosen as delegates. By the time the party was ready to endorse a candidate for state representative from Thao’s district, many of the delegates already knew him and were pre-disposed to voting for him.
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Be a uniter, not a divider. Family and clan ties are very important to Hmong communities, as in many other communities, so Thao made sure to reach out to people outside the Thao clan. Lots of one-on-one meetings were needed, and the years he had spent as a teacher of ESL to Hmong elders helped him to have the Hmong language skills he needed at this crucial moment.
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Deal with setbacks. Opponents decided to challenge the Hmong American voters by saying that they had to bring certificates of citizenship before they could vote in the delegate meetings. Thao, with the assistance of high-ranking DFL leaders, got his opponents to back off by asserting that if Hmong had to bring citizenship papers, then EVERYONE would have to bring their birth certificates to prove where they were born. Aside from dealing with a potentially fatal blow to his campaign, Thao used this as a "teachable moment" to educate his own party members about immigrant rights.
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Get out the vote. On election day, Thao and his supporters worked the phones and called potential voters five times between 8am and 8pm. Volunteers were ready to drive supporters to the polls to vote.
Victory on election day was sweet, but then the work began. He was no longer Cy Thao, advocate for Hmong Americans, but Rep. Cy Thao, representative of all people in Minnesota’s District 65A.
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