Asian American wins across the nation

There are a number of incumbents who have proven thehir mettle and won their seats including California Rep. Mike Honda, MN state sen. Mee Moua, Sen. Daniel Akaka from Hawaii, and many more.

In races that were hotly contested, the margin of error was much less than the Asian American population in the district:

Virginia Senate: Asian Ams are 3.1 percent of voting Virginians. The margin is currently a fraction of 1 percent.

Pombo-McNerny (california): Asian Ams are 10.9% and the race is still uncalled.

Miissouri Senate:
Missouri's Asian and Pacific Islander race category experienced the largest percent increase, 55.1% growing from 41,758 in 1999 to 64,773 in 2000. Missouri's total population grew by 9.3% from just over 5.1 million in 1990 to slightly under 5.6 million in 2000.

These are the 2000 Census figures so you can expect the numbers to have risen some over 6 years. If the race is won by under 70,000 votes, you can better believe that Asian Americans had a role in it.

I wanted to give a shout out to all the political newcomers who are running against incumbents this cycle:

Connecticut: William Tong pulls an upset win over two term incumbent Donald Scherer for the State House. I had heard he was an up and comer, and I'm glad that he made it.

Kris Valderrama for Maryland State House in the lead

Mazie Hirono for Hawaii Congress leading

Votes still beiing counted:
John Chiang, who is running a serious, credible, and tightly contested race for Calif. State Comptroller

Not out of the running yet:
Bob Underwood for Gov. of Guam and former Congressman

TJ Cox, hapa businessman running in Modesto

Phillip Shinoda, running for Texas State House in Dallas

Wish them luck next time:
Tammy Duckworth (IL candidate) against Peter Roskam

Finally, reasons from AALDEF via the AFL-CIO why the Voting Rights Act matters:

• Forty percent of the 14 million Asian American citizens have limited proficiency in English.
• Asian American voter turnout jumped by 71 percent between 1996 and 2004, far outpacing increases for Latinos (57 percent), blacks (26 percent) and whites (15 percent).
• In 2004, one-third of the Chinese American and Korean American voters said they used an interpreter to help them vote.
• Asian American voters still are being disenfranchised in many states by a series of familiar anti-voter techniques such as incomplete voter rolls, improper identification, poor training of election officials and lack of interpreters.

It all ties together folks, we gotta turn out AND Protect our votes! Gnight for real.