Over the past year, Roy Sekine has volunteered and helped organize fundraisers to ensure that Vince Fong became the first Asian American congressman to represent his hometown of Bakersfield in California’s 20th District, which includes the state’s deeply conservative farming region.
Sekine, a Japanese American and retired technology services supervisor, said he believes Fong embodies the changing values and politics of an Asian electorate increasingly concerned about rising crime rates and the cost of living and disillusioned with the state’s ruling party.
“Most Asians in Congress are Democrats. They always talk about Trump, but never about crime,” said Sekine, 64. “I hate that Asian elders are being targeted. I want an orderly society.”
Fong, a former member of the California State Assembly, was sworn in earlier this month to succeed the former Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy, helping Republicans secure a crucial six-seat majority in the House of Representatives. Supported by McCarthy and former President Donald Trump, Fong ran on a staunchly conservative platform to rein in budget spending, cut taxes and strengthen law enforcement to fight crime.
Fong, 44, says progressives have “moved in a direction that is contrary” to principles important to Asian Americans.
California’s 20th Congressional District, which includes a cluster of domestic agricultural centers from Fresno to Fong’s hometown of Bakersfield, is one of the red-lightest districts in the state. McCarthy represented districts in the region from 2007 until last December, when he resigned after being ousted as speaker of the House of Representatives. Fong, who served as McCarthy’s district director for more than a decade, won a special election in May to complete the remainder of his mentor’s term. Fong will again face Sheriff Mike Boudreaux in the November general election, whom he easily defeated in the Republican primary, and will likely secure a full two-year term starting in January.
For Fong, the son of Chinese immigrants who had little interest in politics, running for office was not the career choice he had in mind. He didn’t catch the “political bug,” he said, until the summer after his freshman year at the University of California, Los Angeles, when he met McCarthy while interning for former Republican Rep. Bill Thomas.
“He opened my eyes to good public policy making,” Fong said of McCarthy. “He saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself: the qualities of a good leader.”
In 2016, Fong became the first Asian American to represent Bakersfield in the state Legislature, a notable milestone in a state where Asian political representation has generally coalesced around urban centers like Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay Area, home to the vast majority of California’s Asian population.
In the 20th District, Asian Americans make up just 7% of the population. But many generations and communities of Asian Americans have left their mark on the Central Valley, Fong said, from the Hmongs of northern Fresno to the Filipino farm workers who organized the influential 1965 grape strike in Delano and the Chinese immigrants who arrived in the late 1800s built the country’s first transcontinental railroad. “It’s an honor to share their story,” he said. “I never thought I would be a pioneer.”
California’s farm belt has also become a bastion of Asian American Republican politics and civic engagement. Karen Goh, a Republican of Chinese descent, is the first Asian American mayor of Bakersfield. Vong Mouanoutoua, also a Republican, is the first Hmong mayor of Clovis, a city in Fresno County, home to the nation’s second-largest Hmong population.
“Our needs in the Central Valley are not unique, but they are more pronounced because of the dominance of representation in LA and San Francisco,” Mouanoutoua said.
He said Asian American voters in the Central Valley generally support lower taxes and costs of living, better access to water for drought-stricken farms, as well as small business protections and freedom of speech. “It’s not about right versus left or Republicans or Democrats,” Mouanoutoua said, adding that faith and family are crucial pillars in the lives of Asian families. “It’s about values and a sense of right and wrong.”
Christine Chen, executive director of the nonprofit Asian Pacific Islander American Vote, said the recent success of Asian American Republicans in the Central Valley shows that Asian Americans are largely independent voters who prioritize specific issues over party preference.
“We’ve always said that the AAPI voter base is up for grabs,” she said. “It’s always based on issues and the relationship voters have with a candidate.”
Exit polls from the past two elections showed that a majority of Asian American voters supported Democratic candidates, but the share of voters backing Republican candidates rose from 26% in 2018 to 32% in 2022. In San Francisco, the number of registered Chinese immigrants surged as Republican support increased 60% since the start of the pandemic. The trend was followed by those running for office, with a slew of first-time GOP candidates winning big in San Francisco this spring.
Janelle Wong, a senior researcher at AAPI Data, says there’s no denying that Asian Americans have moved to the right, but the majority are still Democrats. The data on that shift requires further research.
“What’s confusing is that attention to anti-Asian hate crimes grew as more attention focused on Donald Trump and Republicans’ xenophobic rhetoric,” Wong said. “Yet, Donald Trump still received a larger share of the Asian American vote in 2020 than in 2016.”
Meanwhile, Fong said his primary concerns in Congress are securing the U.S.-Mexico border against human trafficking and drug smuggling, as well as expanding domestic production of oil, gas and renewable energy to support his district’s entrepreneurs, ranchers and farmers .
“I never expected to represent my hometown in Congress,” he said. “Now the real work begins.”
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This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
