Notable AAPI U.S. Politicians
Despite AAPIs making up about 6.1% of the U.S. population, they only make up just 0.9% of the elected leaders in the U.S. AAPIs are very underrepresented in U.S. politics and government, making it difficult to serve the AAPI population while not reflecting the nation’s diversity. Nonetheless, here are a few influential AAPIs involved in U.S. politics.
Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris is currently the first female vice president in U.S. history. Prior to this position, she served as a U.S. senator from California from 2017 to 2021, as well as an attorney general of California from 2011 to 2017, which made her the first woman, African American, and Asian American to do so.
As California’s attorney general, one of Harris’s accomplishments was in 2012 when she dealt with the housing crisis. Beginning her first year as an attorney general, she arranged a $25 billion settlement deal with five of the nation’s largest mortgage companies. This includes Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, GMAC/Ally Financial, and CitiFinancial. Through this, $18.4 billion in mortgage relief was given to California homeowners. In order for this to be effective, Harris had to take a risk by pulling out of a settlement from an earlier time in order to gain more money from holding out, which are then given to affected homeowners. This helped more than 84,000 families in California. Harris’s decision to do this was initially heavily criticized by the nation, but ultimately worked out.
During Harris’s time as a district attorney, she has made efforts to exhibit support for the LGBTQ community. From 2004 to 2011, she opposed Propositions 22 and 8, both of which were against same-sex marriage and only limited marriage to one man and one woman. Despite both propositions being passed in 2000 and 2008, respectively, both were eventually brought down while Harris was in office. In addition to Harris’s support for the LGBTQ community, she created a Hate Crimes Unit, which was intended to allow prosecutions of hate crimes committed against LGBTQ teens in school. Harris’s support of marriage equality in California ultimately contributed to the legal groundwork in 2012 when the Supreme Court made a decision to allow same-sex couples to be married.
Mazie Hirono
Born in Japan, Mazie Hirono became the first Asian American woman to be elected to the Senate in 2012, making history in the U.S. For nearly four decades, Hirono has been involved in state and federal politics. In 1981, she first joined Hawaii’s House of Representatives up until 1994. She later served in Congress for three terms before becoming a senator.
Mazie Hirono has advocated for immigrant communities through many ways. As a senator, Hirono has fought to pass programs that benefit and help Hawaii’s immigrant community. While comprehensive immigration reform was being pushed, she contributed to writing eleven amendments to the legislation. Although this was not completely fulfilled, Hirono continued to pursue numerous amendment goals.
One of the goals include ensuring that Filipino veterans from WWII have the chance to be reunited with their children. To acknowledge the service done by Filipino WWII veterans, thousands of them were granted U.S. citizenship. However, their children did not get this benefit. Thus, in 2016, after years of Senator Hirono advocating, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services implemented the Filipino World War II Veterans Parole (FWVP) program, which aims to reunite veterans and their spouses with their children and relatives. Because this program does not guarantee that Filipino veterans will be reunited with their families, Hirono introduced the Filipino Veterans Family Reunification Act. This modifies the Immigration and Nationality Act to remove the limits on the sons and daughters of Filipino WWII veterans who were naturalized under the 1990 law or other laws under Congress since 2007.
Ro Khanna
Ro Khanna serves as the U.S. Representative from California’s 17th Congressional District since 2017, located in the Silicon Valley. Additionally, he served as the co-chair of Senator Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign. Khanna has been a strong advocate of issues and the environment.
In 2009, Khanna was appointed to serve as Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Commerce by Obama. In this position, he led trade missions internationally. He organized clean technology trade missions, along with expanding the Green Embassy program. This allows American clean technology firms to show their products in embassies overseas. Later, he was appointed to the White House Business Council. In this role, Khanna worked with business and labor to promote bringing back American manufacturing jobs through policies. Additionally, he worked to increase American exports.
Khanna took leadership in 2009 and 2010 when he defended the rights of workers who got laid off by New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI) when the plant closed its doors in Fremont. He secured a $330,000 grant from the federal government for Fremont to search for new uses for the abandoned auto plant. This grant also funded training programs to assist skilled workers who were out of work as well.
SOURCES
[5 things Sen. Kamala Harris has done besides be interrupted] [Vox]
[Report: AAPI elected officials make up 0.9% of U.S. elected leaders] [Axios]
[Ten Influential Asian Pacific Americans in U.S. Politics] [Asia Society]
https://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/ten-influential-asian-pacific-americans-us-politics
[Immigration] [Senate]
https://www.hirono.senate.gov/fighting-for-hawaii/immigration?latest=128
IMAGES
Ro Khanna, official portrait [Wikimedia Commons]
Mazie Hirono, official portrait [Wikimedia Commons]
