In the heart of San Gabriel Valley’s “Little Taipei” community, Republican Congressman Ed Royce’s office sits like a planted flag.
Near Taiwanese restaurants, Korean BBQ, and a Charles Schwab branch with a Chinese-language sign, Royce’s shopping mall outpost is a conspicuous reminder: For years, white Royce and the GOP have comfortably represented one of the nation’s most diverse congressional districts, CA 39, in part by winning over Asian immigrant voters.
But in the November mid-term, at least part of that story will change. Royce announced his retirement earlier this year and now, for the first time in a generation, the seat is expected to be a toss-up — one that could be won on questions of immigration and race.
Candidates from both parties say immigrants could cast the decisive votes in a district where two-thirds of all residents are minorities and a quarter of registered voters are foreign-born. It’s a dynamic that’s spurring a multi-cultural political turf war, with both sides going block by block — or mall by mall — to woo the Chinese, Korean, Latino and Filipino communities that live in a district that touches Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties.
Standing in view of Royce’s office on a recent weekday afternoon, the Latino Democratic candidate, Gil Cisneros, addressed a group of Chinese business owners and local Mandarin TV stations with a recurring message.
“The Republican agenda is anti-immigration,” said Cisneros, 47, a retired naval officer and lottery winner turned philanthropist, standing in the plaza’s dim sum restaurant. “My opponent is just going to be a rubber stamp for that agenda.”
But the portrait Cisneros’ tries to paint doesn’t fit neatly with his actual opponent.
GOP candidate Young Kim – a former one-term Assemblywoman and long-time Royce aid — would be the first Korean-American woman to serve in Congress. With deep ties to the region and a long track record of outreach to local minority groups, Kim treads delicately when discussing President Donald Trump, careful to differentiate her stances from Trump’s hard-line rhetoric and policies on immigration and trade.
“This community knows who I am,” said Kim, 55, who gives campaign speeches in English and Korean. “I make sure people understand that I’m an immigrant, just like them.”
But with the immigration debate weighing heavily, and the contest getting national attention, the race could test one of the pressing political questions of 2018:
Can any GOP candidate successfully distance themselves from Trump and his policies?
Diverse district
A mile south of Royce’s Rowland Heights office, sitting at rows of desks in a strip mall storefront, a team of Kim’s multilingual campaign volunteers spend their days calling potential voters, switching easily from English into Mandarin, Korean and Spanish. In Cisneros’ Orange County office, his staff does the same, boasting Tagalog and Vietnamese speakers too. And both camps have enlisted teams of bilingual outreach directors and volunteers to walk door-to-door and campaign in the language of every house.
The stakes in this are huge. The 39th is one of a half-dozen GOP-held congressional seats in California where Hillary Clinton beat Trump in the 2016 election. A flip in all or most could greatly boost the Democrats’ chances of getting the 23 seats they need, nationally, to take control of the House of Representatives from the GOP.
Of the targeted California seats, Royce’s is the most diverse, with Asians and Latinos each comprising about a quarter of registered voters, with most of the rest being non-Hispanic whites. It’s the only competitive district in the region with two minority candidates. And it’s projected to have the narrowest margin of victory; a few hundred votes figure to determine the winner.
While the Latino vote is set to swing largely Democratic, and the white vote leans GOP, much of the Asian-American vote is seen as up for grabs.
That’s true even though Kim has been reaching out to that voting bloc for most of the past 30 years.
As Royce’s longtime community liaison, Kim helped form the Asian Pacific Congressional Advisory Council, helping local Asian leaders communicate with federal officials. In her non-English campaign communications, she emphasizes that local small-business background, her work helping local schools, and what she touts as the benefits of GOP tax cuts.
Meanwhile, Cisneros, as a newcomer to the district (he moved from Newport Coast to Yorba Linda last year), is fighting for name recognition and to define himself to voters. The man who holds an MBA, and won a $266 million lottery in 2010, talks about his philanthropic work helping Hispanic students go to college. In conversations with local business owners, he has criticized Trump’s tax reform and tariffs, while espousing what he views as the benefits of Medicare-for-all.
“The right process”
Despite Kim’s deep ties to the district, some in the region say Trump, and his efforts to curtail immigration — and the rhetoric they’ve heard from the White House on issues of race — has soured their taste for the GOP.
Sam Ho, 19, a green-card holder who emigrated from Taiwan four years ago, said his San Gabriel Valley community has seen the naturalization process become significantly slower since Trump took office. That claim is supported by a recent Washington Post story, which found that processing times for citizenship applications nearly doubled under Trump.
“We pay attention to this,” Ho said.
Tammy Kim, managing director and co-founder of the Korean American Center in Irvine, which helps Korean immigrants throughout Orange County apply for citizenship, said her clients fear Trump’s threats to end what he calls “chain migration” – when naturalized citizens sponsor relatives to come to America.
“Most Korean Americans came to this country as a result of family chain migration,” said Tammy Kim, who also serves as a board member with the Korean American Democratic Committee. “Their concern is that Trump at any moment will stop allowing for your children or parents to come here.”
Young Kim says she’ll fight any effort to cut family-based immigration, noting that she and her parents came to the U.S. after they were sponsored by her U.S. citizen sister. Kim opposed Trump’s recent family separation policy to curtail immigration, though not until after Trump reversed his own position. And her broader immigration policy – for substantial border security and a path to citizenship for DACA recipients – though ill-defined, is nearly indistinguishable from Cisneros’ platform.
But Tammy Kim said some in the Korean community were disappointed with Young Kim’s first TV ad.
In the spot, the candidate recounts how her family came to America “legally, and not because we wanted handouts.” Tammy Kim heard the line as a subtle dog-whistle to those Trump voters who view immigrants as a financial drain. She also noted that the sibling-sponsorship immigration path used by Young Kim’s family has become, under Trump, so lengthy that it’s now difficult to replicate.
“I’m not discrediting (Young Kim’s) work for the community, but so many second-generation Korean Americans were very disappointed in hearing that ad,” Tammy Kim said. “On one hand, you tell the community, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be soft on immigration.’ But on the flip side, in English, you’re appealing to Trump’s base.”
Young Kim dismisses that criticism, saying she was simply telling her own story and not denigrating others. But in the ad’s most recent iteration, Kim’s campaign cut that portion of the commercial.
Others in the district view Kim as wholly distinct from Trump.
Wan Cho, 39, of Brea, who immigrated with his family when he was 9, said locals know Kim from her outreach efforts. And he isn’t convinced by Democrats’ anti-Trump messaging.
“Being anti-Trump isn’t a policy,” said Cho, a marketer. “Republicans are better for the middle class. I’m pro-DACA and pro-immigration, but not illegal immigration. Our family took all the right process to get here, and so did my wife’s family.”
Branding
In the end, the race to win the 39th might be decided by two questions, said Chapman University political scientist Fred Smoller: Will the Latino community turn out to vote in big numbers? And will a sizable portion of Asians break from the GOP?
“Trump is so unpopular among immigrant communities that you’re going to see some surprising results,” Smoller said. “The threat the Latino community feels will encourage turnout. And I think a high number of younger Asians will turn out (for Democrats), as well. There seems to be a generational split.”
Cisneros said healthcare is the top issue, driving immigrant and native-born voters alike. He thinks Kim’s affiliation with Royce – who voted to repeal Obamacare – harms her chances.
“I tell everyone that I’m going to Washington to make sure people have access to affordable, quality health care,” Cisneros said.
Meanwhile, Kim is billing herself as the pro-business, hometown candidate, and portraying Cisneros as a green newcomer.
“No one knows this district better than I do,” Kim said. “They can brand me however they want, but I’m not going to be put into some category that I don’t feel I belong to.”
“I’m running as my own person,” Kim said. “I belong to my own category.”
