Andrew Yang Lauded For ‘Well-Fought Campaign’

AAPI Victory Fund President Varun Nikore praised New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang “on his well-fought campaign,” although falling short in the recent Democratic Party primary.

 

 

Yang had conceded he would not be the city’s next mayor. Early results showed him in a distant fourth place. The primary will decide the party’s official candidate in the November 3 election. The city being heavily Democratic, the primary winner is expected to win in November.

The winner in the primary will not be known until the new ranked choice voting process is completed in early July. Under the new system, voters select more than one candidate and rank these candidates as first, second or third choice, etc.

President & CEO Madalene Xuan-Trang Mielke of the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (APAICS) stressed the bright side of having Asian Americans endeavor to increase representation in the nation’s politics.

“It’s encouraging to see such diverse candidates run competitive races in NYC, from mayor to city council,” she said in an email. “It’s important that AAPIs are engaged in all parts of the political process in order to be represented.”

APAICS seeks to have more Asian Americans in elective and appointive positions at the federal, state, city and local levels across the country.

Nikore said Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are still underrepresented in American politics, and the NYC primary showed exactly why. He vowed that the AAPI Victory Fund would redouble its efforts to ensure an equitable society where everybody has the freedom and opportunity to succeed. “AAPIs are rising” he said. “It’s time our political power matches the moment and our communities are represented.”

 

‘Perpetual Foreigner’

While applauding Yang, who was the early frontrunner among a dozen candidates, AAPI Victory Fund President Nikore also rebuked the mainstream media for identifying the Asian American candidate as a token “foreigner.”

Remarked Nikore: “Candidate Yang ran a well-fought campaign, and we offer him the sincerest congratulations. Although his race didn’t amount to a victory, Yang gave the Asian American and Pacific Islanders community a platform on which to elevate pervasive issues that remain increasingly relevant in the minds and hearts of AAPI people across the country.”

He noted: “As legislators work to restore trust and end the hate crimes perpetrated against the AAPI community, the media must fall in line and stop portraying AAPIs as foreigners…Racist cartoons, discriminatory reporting and failing to explicitly report on the connection between violent crime and racism is an egregious failing on the part of the media.”

In a Washington Post article with a lengthy profile on candidates, Yang blasted a New York Daily News cartoon of him as a Times Square tourist. He said the cartoon was a “racialized caricature” stereotyping him as a “perpetual foreigner.” Yang, 46, has lived in NY for 25 years.

 

Misinformation and Violence

AAPI Victory Fund President Nikore said that when AAPI Victory Alliance announced its endorsement for Yang, “we were thrilled to support a candidate that could help New Yorkers build an inclusive, equitable society where everybody believes they can do anything if they set their minds to it.”

But he stressed that Yang’s campaign also highlighted “the insidious ways in which mainstream media feeds the misinformation, hatred and, ultimately violence our community experiences.”

“While the AAPI community is no stranger to the perpetration of hate crimes against them, the media’s portrayal of Yang as a foreigner only increases the invisibility AAPI’s face and perpetuates the notion that AAPI’s will never truly be ‘home’ in the places that we live,” Nikore pointed out.

He added that Andrew Yang is a New Yorker. “He was raised in New York, educated at American schools, he raised his two boys here and built his companies here. To assert anything different is offensive, harmful and outright dangerous.”

As the AAPI Victory Alliance continues to build national AAPI political power across the nation, Nikore urged every American to remember that “their words are powerful and that how we share information about groups of people outside of our own has repercussions that mean life or death.”

 

Why Frontrunner Faltered

“Despite having the most name recognition, Andrew Yang placed 4th” in the June 22 primary, reported reddit.com. Early returns of the first round ballot follow: Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, 31.7% of the vote; former civil rights attorney Maya Wiley Maya Wiley, 22.3%; former sanitation commissioner Katheryn Garcia, 19.5%. and Andrew Yang: 11.7%.

Yang, a successful Asian American entrepreneur, had been the early frontrunner among a dozen candidates. After running in last year’s Democratic presidential primary, he gained high name recognition and followers for his innovative ideas.

In the NY primary, he attracted the media and supporters with his upbeat image, particularly his hope and optimism in tackling the pandemic and the city’s problems.

A Washington Post article noted his platform included giving $2,000 to the poorest 500,000 New Yorkers, starting a “People’s Bank,” turning hotels into affordable housing, and requiring NY Police Department officers to live in the five boroughs (half of them don’t, based on 2020 data).

Yang’s candidacy lost steam when, among other things, public safety and crime became the voters’ top concern and surveys showed voters favored political experience. Yang has never held public office. At the same time, Brooklyn Borough President Adams, with his decades of public service as a NY cop and police captain, began to gain momentum.

“I am a numbers guy,” Yang was quoted by Reuters as he conceded the race on June 23. He acknowledged that he was not going to be the next mayor of New York City based on the numbers on primary night.

Among other things, Yang failed to attract the kind of coalition he needed to win, Lincoln Mitchell wrote in a CNN opinion piece. Instead of focusing on Black and Latino voters, “he tried to cobble together a new coalition of Asian Americans, ultra-Orthodox Jews and young moderates,” and seemed to have only partially succeeded.

In debates and media appearances during his campaign, he said Yang also transformed from the upbeat and innovative 2020 presidential candidate “into a seemingly angry urban reactionary. ”