Investments in Vietnamese and AAPI organizing is impacting battle ground states
/November 1, 2020
Hieu Le, PIVOT Board Member
Why we started
The PIVOT fellowship and internship program is an organizing and political program designed to increase civic engagement within the Vietnamese-American and Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities. It also is designed to build leadership and experience for those interested in politics, public policy, and government. Our goal is to build a pipeline of more Vietnamese American leaders in politics.
Through partnerships with local c3 and c4 organizations, PIVOT hired 11 fellows and interns working in battleground states to conduct voter contact work in our communities, helping to increase voter turnout in Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Arizona, and help flip these states blue. According to 538 polling averages, all these states are extremely competitive and flipping any one of them may be the difference between electing an experienced leader and unifier in Joe Biden or suffering and enduring another four more years of an incompetent and divisive Donald Trump.
The 2016 election was decided by less than 80,000 votes that were spread across three states. Our data shows that there are enough Vietnamese-American and Asian-American voters out in these states that could potentially be the tipping point and the difference on the margins in this election.
The Vietnamese-American and Asian-American population is among the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States, but for far too long, our communities have been ignored. Decision-makers and other organizations have prioritized resources elsewhere. In the 2018 Asian American Voter Survey, 50%-60% of Asian-American voters received no contact by either political party. This shows an unmet need for voter outreach to the Vietnamese and Asian-American community, creating an opportunity for PIVOT’s fellowship and internship program to meet the political needs of our community members.
Watch our fellows introduce themselves at our Launch into Action event!
Georgia (CPACS and AAAF): Alexis Le, Vu Anh Nguyen, Angie Tran
Texas (OCA Greater Houston and BP-SOS): Carol Cao, Lillian Trinh, Frederick Tran
North Carolina (NCAAT): Minh-Thu Dinh
Arizona (AZ AAHNPI Advocates): Summer Tran, Minh-Triet Dao
Pennsylvania (API-PA): Ngan Tran, Vinh Dang
The PIVOT Fellows and Interns have contributed to historic turnout
Since beginning in late August, our fellows and interns have trained an army of volunteers with their local organizations and contacted nearly 2 million voters and counting across the battleground states of Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Arizona. These voters were contacted in person, by phone, text, mailers, postcards, and were provided vital information on how to vote, being urged to vote, where their polling location is, and what the voting deadlines are. This is all being done in both english and in-language. Here are some few examples:
PIVOT Fellow Vu-Anh Nguyen delivering in-language voter guides at a Vietnamese supermarket in Georgia.
PIVOT Fellow Minh-Thu Dinh organizing a text bank to contact 5,000 Vietnamese voters
PIVOT Fellow Lillian Trinh set to mail our post cards to voters in Texas.
“This election year is totally different. With PIVOT as my foundational support and resource, they helped me reach out to the AAPI community and Vietnamese community in ways I couldn’t imagine,” says Alexis Le, Georgia PIVOT Fellow, “We debunk misconceptions with VietFactCheck and outreached to thousands with text and phone banking. I’m proud to say we’ve impacted the Vietnamese community locally in Atlanta, GA and nationally as an organization!”
The work of Alexis Le and 10 of our other fellows and interns has resulted in tremendous voter outreach. Below is a current breakdown of the voter contact numbers (phone and text banking) thus far that were achieved by a combination of our fellows, the volunteers they trained, and their local host organization:
But it’s not just phone and text banking. The fellows and interns are reaching voters through media, radio, billboards, and social media.
Turnout in all these states are at record breaking pace. And the work of our fellows and interns are contributing to increased turnout and political awakening among Vietnamese-Americans and Asian-Americans, representing an important share of the electorate in these close races.
With still election day votes looming, we’re confident that the investments we’ve made and the work of our fellows, interns, and local organizations will contribute to turnout that far surpasses the 2016 vote total. This will put us in position to flip these states blue from the Presidential race and down the rest of the ballot. We hope the impressive community outreach thus far, which surpassed our original expectations will result in election victories in these states.
Building communities from the ground up
We’re also seeing that significant community investments are fruitful in building intergenerational connections and young leadership, which will lay the foundation to ensure our communities are seen and heard.
Through the incredible voter outreach, relationships and trust are being built. The partnerships with our local c3 and c4 organization has helped facilitate this. Many of these voters have never had a political party or organization contact them in-language asking for their needs and providing them vital information on voting. Some of our fellows have also gone beyond typical voter contact work and have organized free flu shot events and spreaded information on the census.
Our work will be critical moving forward beyond this election. Misinformation has specifically targeted communities of color, and this is why Trump has made some inroads within the Vietnamese-American community this campaign cycle. Through the work that the fellows and interns have done in building communities, we now have the capacity, surrogates, and numbers to push back on a conservative agenda that has been unchallenged in the past, and to provide representation for progressive Vietnamese-Americans.
“The PIVOT Fellowship program has been amazing - in addition to the GOTV work I did with BPSOS Houston, I was able to run a #BlueTexas campaign for PIVOT, targeting the Texas State House races where there is a strong AAPI presence in the districts,” says Frederick Tran, Texas PIVOT Fellow, “The GOTV work that we’ve been doing on the ground with our partner organizations is very valuable and working - otherwise Harris County wouldn’t have Nguyen’s as the highest voting surname!”
I urge you in these last few days to put everything on the line to phone and text bank voters in Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carlina, and Arizona, and consider donating so we can maintain and extend this amazing program beyond 2020 and build future Vietnamese leaders who will engage our communities for years to come.