On Episode 7, campaign strategist and policy advisor Varun Nikore joins us to provide the perspective on AAPI participation from a longtime political insider. This episode can be listened to as a companion to Episode 4 where we spoke to Brian Yang's experience as a new entrant into the realm of politics. Varun shares key moments in his decades of political experience, his observations on the recent "political awakening" of many AAPI, and where we should focus our efforts to keep the momentum going.
Favorite Hot Pot ingredients (1:37)
Asian American Education Project’s History of Asian American Trailblazers in Politics (3:53)
Varun joins the conversation (6:32)
How Varun started his career in politics (9:57)
Challenges for AAPI entering politics (12:36)
A new wave of AAPI participation (20:22)
The “Macaca Incident” (22:53)
Voter registration as the top priority (26:23)
NOTES
NPR: The Growing Power of the AAPI Vote
Bund to Brooklyn's Guest Food Map
Follow us on IG: @bundtobrooklyn
Follow us on Twitter: @bundtobrooklyn
Questions? Requests? E-mail us @ b2b@1990institute.org
Learn more about the 1990 Institute
Automatically generated by Descript
Final
[00:00:00] Lucia Liu: Everyone welcome to friends to Brooklyn. I'm your host Lucia. And today I'm actually going to be joined by our executive producers. Sean, Sean, how are you doing?
[00:00:30] Sean Niu: Executive producer. I liked the sound of executive I'm doing well doing well to show
[00:00:34] Lucia Liu: Did I get that wrong? Are you not an executive producer, but just a producer?
[00:00:37] Sean Niu: can, I'll be executive producer. You know, that works. That works for me.
[00:00:43] Lucia Liu: Well, I mean, it's good to see you again after a long break. Did you do anything fun for Thanksgiving or buy anything for.
[00:00:51] Sean Niu: It's good to see you again too. I bought something for Thanksgiving, which was a key lime pie from and flour. It is the best pie I've ever had in my life. I had half of it.
[00:01:02] Lucia Liu: by yourself.
[00:01:03] Sean Niu: Yeah. But myself. Yeah, exactly.
[00:01:05] Lucia Liu: big is this by?
[00:01:06] Sean Niu: Uh, you know, we don't need to go into the details of how big the pie is, but. It's a delicious, I encourage anyone who's in LA to, to check it out.
[00:01:16] I didn't buy anything this time on black Friday. I have my eyes on a camera lens, but uh, how about you?
[00:01:23] Lucia Liu: I did not buy a pie and then eat half the pie by myself. I actually, our friends brought over two cheesecakes and we hosted them for hotpot from Thanksgiving, which was refund followed by Katon.
[00:01:37] Sean Niu: Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What's your number one hot pot.
[00:01:41] Lucia Liu: That's so hard. Like how do you just said number one, hot pot ingredient. Like the whole point of hotpot is you have so many different types of
[00:01:48] Sean Niu: Yeah. True, true.
[00:01:50] Lucia Liu: Like that's the whole point about, but,
[00:01:52] Sean Niu: Pick a meat and a vegetable,
[00:01:54] Lucia Liu: uh, okay. And meat would have to be lamb, like fatty lamb,
[00:01:59] Sean Niu: right. I'm there with you.
[00:02:01] Lucia Liu: And then a vegetable, I think definitely by Ted Napa, Kevin.
[00:02:07] Sean Niu: Okay.
[00:02:08] Lucia Liu: That's my go-to. I love Napa cabbage.
[00:02:10] Sean Niu: All right. I do, you know, I'm not a big leafy greens person, but I also, I do appreciate the cabbage for when it soaks up the bras and when you get that. So I think it's probably the best time to eat cabbages in hotpot. So good choices.
[00:02:25] Lucia Liu: Well, what, what about you, Sean? I feel like you're judging me.
[00:02:28] Sean Niu: Not, well, I mean, well, you know, you passed, but, uh, I also agree with lamb and let me think about vegetables. I really like winter melon, winter melon.
[00:02:37] Lucia Liu: Oh, that's a good one. That's good. When we did not have winter melon, so we substitute it with daikon
[00:02:43] Sean Niu: well, it works. It works.
[00:02:46] Lucia Liu: kind of tastes the same. So transitioning over to what we're going to talk about this episode, since we are targeting, uh, and mostly talking about Asian American politics students not joining us for this episode today, but today we speak to Varuna decor. Who's the president of the AAPI victory fund. And in contrast to our earlier episode with Brian Yang, who really was an outsider, hearing the call to action to get involved in politics.
[00:03:15] In more recent years, we actually speak to Varun. Who's an insider. And he gives a really insider perspective on Asian-Americans and politics and policy. So we ask him to share his experience as a lifelong policy leader and activist and government official, ever rune likes to describe himself as like behind the scenes and trying to get everything ready for Asian-Americans.
[00:03:40] Step up in the political sphere. Uh, and so we talked to him about how he got involved in politics, where he sees a APIs engagement and political interests moving forward. And you know, his involvement in the AAPI victory.
[00:03:53] Sean Niu: Yeah, it's a great talk. You know, he's one of those people that are. Helping make everything happen behind the scenes. And as we talk about in the interview, Asian-Americans are increasing their participation in politics a lot recently. And there are a lot of key wins that are happening for Asian Americans and the recent past, but even going back to, you know, the seventies and the sixties and before.
[00:04:18] Asian Americans have been involved in politics ever since we've been here some key names. And there are many that we're not mentioning here just because it will take a long time, but a few of them include Elaine Chao, who was the first Chinese American and Asian American woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, Tammy Duckworth.
[00:04:37] Lucia you've interviewed before she was the first time American elected to Congress. Hiram Fong was a speaker of house in Hawaii Mazie Hirono. She was the first democratic female nominee for governor in 2002. First liked the female Senator from Hawaii. Daniel anyway was a United States Senator serving Hawaii and Patsy mink was the first woman of color to serve in the us Congress.
[00:05:01] She was also a. Author and sponsor for the title nine law. So a lot of big names that have been influential in politics. And of course, recently you have Andrew Yang who ran for president and Kamala Harris who also ran in is now of course our vice-president as well as many others, you can find kind of more information about this on the Asian Americans.
[00:05:26] Advancing justice website. They're partnering with the Asian-American education project on a few learning modules. If you wanted to learn more about the, kind of the history of Asian Americans and politics.
[00:05:37] Lucia Liu: All right. Um, definitely check that out because we have such an extensive history here in America, and you'll be surprised of what you learn so gold. Before we jump into the conversation with Varun, just a quick reminder that you should follow us on social media at been to Brooklyn, uh, on Instagram. And, uh, you can also email us@b2batnineteenninetyinstitute.org.
[00:06:04] That's B the number two B. 1 9 9 0 institute.org, and be sure to subscribe to us on Spotify, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right on to rune.
[00:06:18] b2b_7_varun_bounce_music_only: Um,
[00:06:28] Um,
[00:06:32] Lucia Liu: All right. So Varun, I'm so excited to be talking to you today. Do you mind quickly giving yourself an intro and then we can dive right in.
[00:06:40] Varun Nikore: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. The subject of today is politics and sort of political awareness for the API community. I'll maybe talk a little bit about that background in.
[00:06:48] there, but also my weaving path, I guess, to, to politics. So I grew up in a small rural town north of DC about an hour north.
[00:06:56] And I guess from an early age, I was always interested in planes and that led me to almost a 25 year career in aviation, but a very. Big passion of mine that was almost equivalent to planes and aviation was politics. And it's something that I, I, I think I got from my father, we used to sit down and watch the news together.
[00:07:16] Walter Cronkite back in the days that was back in the mid to late seventies. And, uh, so that's how I got my interest in politics was just watching news with my dad. And then after I graduated from college, even though I was working in the Asian industry, being in DC, It's hard not to be around government and politics and policy and all that.
[00:07:38] And so, uh, even while I was working in the aviation industry, I was still involved in campaigns, minor campaigns here and there and that sort of thing. And then one thing led to another, my volunteer work in the Clinton gore campaign back in 91, 92 led me to eventually to be in the administration, the Clinton gore administration for a few years.
[00:08:01] And that started my. Three more formerly in politics. I served as the appointee and then I worked on the gore campaign when he ran in 2000, I worked in headquarters with folks like Ron Klain, who is now the chief of staff in the white house, and many other folks I see almost on a daily basis on MSNBC.
[00:08:21] And after the gore campaign, more interestingly, unrelated related to API politics, I started an organization that was focused on empowering the Indian American community, trying to get more representation. And so we focused on identifying training and funding indeed American candidates, and then did that for several years.
[00:08:41] And I did a lot of Virginia politics. And then more recently in the subject, I guess, of this conversation. Is that about six years ago, I started as a founding president of the API victory fund, which is a national pack and super pack. That's focused on turning out and mobilizing the Asian American community.
[00:09:02] And about two years after that, we started a sister organization called the API victory Alliance that does a lot of the same things, but yeah. It's more related to communicating with API voters and citizens year round agnostic of election. Just making sure that we're showing up at their door or in their digital footprint in some way.
[00:09:23] So that's how I got my start in what I do today and where my passions are.
[00:09:28] Lucia Liu: Amazing. Great. And I mean, I think you already went through some of your background around growing up in the outskirts of DC. You, you talk about your passion for aviation and we also, you know, prior to this recorded conversation, previous conversation around how I think it's just not really a common path for Asian Americans to be in politics.
[00:09:49] Can you talk a little bit about that and how you sort of navigated through this uncommon path?
[00:09:57] Varun Nikore: Yeah, well, I caused someone's consternation for my parents. Right. Breaking the mold in many respects, right? Like doing, not, you know, one thing that is not sort of this traditional Asian American path?
[00:10:08] but two things aviation and then politics. So certainly my parents wanted me to follow my passions, but I think like a typical first generation, Asian American or any immigrant family, they want to make sure their kids are on a solid footing.
[00:10:22] So that's why I think in, in many respects they want their kids to do something that's safe and secure and that can provide, . So that's why maybe we're overrepresented in a lot of fields like medicine and. And, uh, I guess more lately law and accounting and engineering. Right. So I didn't do any of that.
[00:10:41] I said I wanted to be a pilot and they were like, you're crazy. And then later on, I was like, I really like this political thing. And they're like, nobody does that. You're crazy. And so I think eventually now my mom, my dad passed several years ago, but my mom was like, she sort of sees what I do cause she sees my, my name in the paper every now and then, but it took a while before I think.
[00:11:01] Non-traditional type things like this became more accepted overall.
[00:11:06] Lucia Liu: Yeah. And in your path to getting more Asian-Americans involved into politics, you started this first ever political action committee for Asians to train Indian candidates, to run for office. Have you ever considered running for office?
[00:11:22] Varun Nikore: You know, maybe like once a year, I sort of, I have a thought that comes in one year and then kind of goes out the other, you know, there, there are people certainly meant to be out front and never say never. I mean, who knows one day I'll wake up and maybe change my mind. But I always felt like I'm the kind of person who's this tactician behind the scenes who loves to make things happen.
[00:11:40] And, and for me, what really gets me out of the bed every morning, frankly, is creating something. Out of nothing. I love like making notes on the back of these envelopes that I get in the mail. ? Like literally my desk right here, I have four envelopes and I don't know why it just seems to be my thing, but I make notes and I strategize, but I feel like for me anyway, that's my calling right now, anyways, is to just continue there.
[00:12:03] There's so much infrastructure to build in the Asian-American community. I mean, some people think. That. Oh, there's so many Asian American groups out there. How do I know who does what I kind of feel in a way we need 10 times the number of API groups out there simply because we're the fastest growing population in the country.
[00:12:24] We need to be ready for this. The fact that we could be, we very much will be the largest minority group in the country in the next 10 to 15 years. And so we need to have that infrastructure be built.
[00:12:36] Lucia Liu: Yeah, absolutely. And as you mentioned, like we are the fastest growing population in the United States. We need to be more politically involved. What are some of the challenges that you kind of see facing. Traditional like Asian candidates that you've sort of seen in helping train Indian candidates and, or other Asian American political candidates.
[00:13:00] Varun Nikore: Well, let me say this, that, you know, when I first started doing this work in the Asian-American sense 20 years ago, I saw the fact that it was a lot more education needed in terms of what is really involved in not only running for office, but being an effective office holder, you know, at the end of the day.
[00:13:18] But I'm finding today. This Trump effect, if you will, in that when Donald Trump got elected, all of a sudden our community, because we were effectively fighting for our survival, uh, being attacked on almost a daily basis that our community got smart overnight. We got engaged civically
[00:13:37] Lucia Liu: was an awakening.
[00:13:38] Varun Nikore: And it's still unfolding, right?
[00:13:40] I mean, it's not something that had ended just because Joe Biden got elected last November, It, it is still happening. And part of the result of that I think is right. We had three Asian American mayors elected this November. Actually, it was more than three, but the three most prominent. And the mayor of Seattle elect Bruce Harrell, Cincinnati off top Harvey y'all and Michelle Wu of course in Boston.
[00:14:04] Right. I mean, Groundbreaking for us. We, we never really ran from. It was, I went to Yale, I went to Harvard, I ran for Congress. That was 20 years ago. And now our community has gotten so much more sophisticated, but you know, let's say in Bruce Harold's case in Seattle and in Michelle Lou's case, they were both, they both served on city council.
[00:14:26] Right. So they started local and then they, you know, worked their way up and off Tom's case in Cincinnati. He ran for Congress twice, but he was also. The clerk of Hamilton county courts. So he also followed the same trajectory. And, and so, you know, there is a roadmap in the future. So to get back to your early question, I'm finding the candidates of today in infinitesimally, more sophisticated than they were 20 years ago.
[00:14:53] And we need a lot more running. We're still. Underrepresented as a community, but I I'm hoping that this provides the roadmap for all to see. So for folks who are thinking about getting engaged in the future, Hey, follow their leads because this is a much more tried and true path than just running for Congress or federal office or something like that.
[00:15:16] Right out of the gate.
[00:15:18] Lucia Liu: Yeah, absolutely. And you talk about this, like awakening of Asian Americans, especially after the Trump election. And I'm wondering how many of these people who have served on city council or who have a start as being a clerk to a particular judge or. Background and initial passion for politics who didn't pursue politics, sort of decided and said, look, look like I have this background.
[00:15:43] And I think this is the time for me to make a change. And it's a time for me to start thinking about politics or even like considering running right. I wonder how much of that has happened in the last four years and will continue to happen. And one thing that we sort of talked about as well as the tremendous voter base that Asian American serve and the country, you talk about Asian Americans being the fastest growing minority group within America.
[00:16:09] And we have seen in the 2020 elections that they have, I think helped in swaying a lot of these traditionally red states to. Blue states. Right? So let's talk a bit about just your involvement and activating the Asian American community and what the community can continue to do to stay involved.
[00:16:29] Varun Nikore: Yeah. When I am asked, what's it like doing politics, trying to turn out the Asian-American community. I often say it is literally the most complex politics in the United States of America. Because. No other demographic in the country has to face multiple generational barriers. We have first-generation Chinese Americans.
[00:16:56] We have sixth and seventh generation Chinese Americans, So we have with the first generation, uh, of any API ethnicity, sometimes language barriers, which are impediments to civic engagement, oftentimes impediments to voting. And impediments, frankly, in terms of how they receive information. And unfortunately in this highly digital age, how misinformation and disinformation affects not only their vote, but their worldview, because it's so easy to click send and share something on, we chat WhatsApp talk,
[00:17:35] Lucia Liu: Absolutely. Yep.
[00:17:36] Varun Nikore: So we have those, those generational barriers, those language barriers. And the fact that when, for example, let's say we're working on an election in a certain congressional district, let's say Houston as an example, One of the most highly diverse congressional districts in the entire country surround the Houston metropolitan area. So when you. Doing your outreach. You need to be aware for example, of the, the Muslim community there. And there's different factions in the Muslim community, That you have to be aware, you need to know. Okay. Well, there are this pocket of Vietnamese that since Katrina had moved into Houston and were, were at one time displaced, right.
[00:18:20] And a lot of them stayed in the Houston area. So you need to know how to talk to them in a authentic. Language with messages that they understand. Right? So essentially what you're doing is you're looking at each sub ethnicity. You're trying to determine what languages they speak, where they shop, how they get their information.
[00:18:40] And essentially what you do is you have to come up with at minimum. Four or five or sometimes six separate campaign plans to reach every single sub ethnicity. Because some white guy in the census in the seventies came up with this term API when our population was about a million. And now We're 24 million.
[00:19:00] Lucia Liu: a monolith. Right,
[00:19:02] Varun Nikore: Yeah. We were never a monolith, but you know, now we're even more, not a monolith.
[00:19:08] Lucia Liu: Yeah. And just a quick note on this term API or like Asian American, the term Asian American was actually coined, I believe in UC Berkeley in conjunction with the black power movement where I think a lot of Asian Asian-Americans, so to speak came together because they recognize that separately. Right?
[00:19:26] Like if they were to just fight for Chinese Americans or Vietnamese Americans or Filipino Americans or all the different subjects, There, their populations are too small. And so they had to gather everybody together in order to create this like bigger pool that could move the needle. And it's a double-edged sword, right?
[00:19:46] Because we are a bigger pool. We can move the needle. You mentioned this 24 million number, but within that number, There are so many different other like nuances to these different people. And you've already mentioned the challenges of reaching those different people. But I think the tactics that you deployed really worked because if you look at voter turnout in 2020, Asian Americans have shown up in the largest volume, I think the growth from 2008 elections to 2020 elections was 25%.
[00:20:15] And you've mentioned at some point that voter turnout has been at an all time high for Asian-Americans in 2020.
[00:20:22] Varun Nikore: It really was the, I would say one of the biggest single shifts in American politics in 2020, like entire American politics. The fact that between the 2016 election and the 2020 election, there was a 48% growth in Asian-American. That is four times the national turnout increase. So this was a once in a hundred year election, as we all know, we, and it, and it represented a 12% increase between 16 and 20, but for our community, as I said, it was four times at 48% is never, as far as we can tell.
[00:21:02] And I've, you know, Scoured the internet. I have not found where any other community in one, four year election cycle increase their voter participation by that margin. It's absolutely astounding. And one thing I want to add to that is that we had recent elections, of course, in the states of New Jersey and in Virginia.
[00:21:23] And there was some, I would say question as to whether that momentum was still going to continue. Well, the initial results point to yes, that there was still an increase in Asian-American voter participation in Virginia by approximately 6%. That will be verified in a couple of months when all the voter files get updated and that sort of thing, the databases, but there is anecdotal evidence to point to this momentum is still a continuing.
[00:21:50] Amazing. Because if you look at that 20, 21 election in Virginia, that just happened that 6% increase was based upon an already high base. In 2017, we had record turnout because it was the first major election after Donald Trump got elected. So to say that we still grew 6% this year, just absolutely.
[00:22:11] Lucia Liu: Yeah, that is fantastic. Um, the, the fact that I think people recognize the importance of being civically engaged. I think there's a couple of folded. And why the turnout was so high, possibly one of the biggest reasons was because you got to mail in your vote, right? And you didn't have to actually take time off of work in order to go vote or travel.
[00:22:30] I think that really helped increase a ton of photo visitor engagement. The second piece is around just, I think recognizing the importance of being civically engaged in pushing for the things that we want for our community and having a seat at the table and having. I know that there was a story that you sort of shared in your childhood around an incident that really kind of spurred your thinking as well.
[00:22:53] And like your kind of political awakening. I'd love to hear about it. I think you've referred to it as the Macaca incident.
[00:23:01] Varun Nikore: Yeah, that that actually happened more recently. So there was two incidents. Really one incident was when I was in middle school. The. The Shaw Veran was overthrown, of course. And there was a hostages kept in the embassy in Tehran. And so there was this fervor all over the United States, this nationalist fervor, and anybody that was brown, including Latinos for that matter were, were vilified.
[00:23:26] And, and I was young and impressionable. So that, that was one of my sort of defining moments where I really thought, you know what? I knew I was new. Different, but now I'm being treated differently. In fact, I'm not being treated very nicely. So that was one thing. But the Macaca incident.
[00:23:41] that you referred to is that in election for Senate in Virginia, there was a democratic operative who served as the opposition tracker and he was following around the Republican Senate candidate, George Allen and George.
[00:23:59] You know, new this tracker because this tracker showed up at every single one of his campaign events. That was his job. But for some reason, at one of the events, he looks at the back of the audience and he points to the tracker who happens to be Indian American, Sr Siddharth is his name and looks at him and says, look at that Macaca over there and starts to go on a little bit of a diatribe.
[00:24:27] I'm not sure anybody in the crowd really picked up on it. In fact, even after the video was processed by the democratic side, it took several days for people to say, you know, to go through the tapes say, cause nobody really knew what that term meant. And so after they did some digging there, they were like, basically they were calling him the N word and then they were digging some more and they found out that George Allen basically.
[00:24:52] Call them a pejorative and it blew up the entire campaign, frankly. And it didn't, it, he ended up losing, uh, in the end, but that the, the, the person who was the father of, of this tracker is shaker Narasimhan. And who happens to be the. Uh, and chairman of the API victory fund, and that sort of sent him on his own trajectory and his own political path.
[00:25:13] I won't speak for him, but I think he'd be the first to admit that it sort of certainly changed his worldview and not only how, uh, immigrants are viewed in this country, but his own son who was born in Virginia. And I remember speaking to shaker and he said, look, if, if someone like my son who was born in.
[00:25:32] Fairfax county, Virginia is not considered Virginia and or American. No one of have, Yeah. Who will? Well, we will always be that perpetual foreigner. So you, you know, shaker and I had known each other several years before that, and that's how I got introduced to the, to the victory fund and started working for him at the end of the day, but sort of an incident that still kind of rears its ugly head every now and then.
[00:25:56] Lucia Liu: Yeah, and I love that this comes back full circle about the victory fund and building infrastructure for Asian Americans. So I guess like to just wrap up on the last question, I'd love to hear you talk about what sort of infrastructure you think that we could help put in place to get more Asian Americans politically engaged.
[00:26:15] Like what does that sort of look like? And for somebody who's sort of maybe politically curious, like where could they start.
[00:26:23] Varun Nikore: Yeah, I would say there's a couple dire needs in terms of infrastructure that needs to be built, but needs to be built locally in states that not only mean a lot. To the electoral equation, presidential years, the battle ground map that everybody refers to, but elsewhere all over the country, even in New York city or in LA, for example.
[00:26:47] So what we really need to do first is focus on voter registration. There are still somewhere. 4 million unregistered API APIs in this country. And we're, we're, we're, we're starting to make a difference, but for us to truly realize our power, we need to invest in groups like API vote, Christine Chan, who runs that fine organization, and many others, frankly, to register folks, it's a team effort.
[00:27:14] Varun Nikore: All of our families need to get involved in that. So, but once people are registered, the question always becomes. Who do I vote for? That, that initial civic information is all important. And it's very important. Also that progressive groups, I work for Democrats and progressives that we start talking to these newly registered voters.
[00:27:37] As soon as they are registered, we need to persuade them. Our party that our community is much better served by the policies of Democrats, but we need to build those organizations that do the talking and do the door knocking in those localities. They can't be, you know, we're DC groups. Exactly. And that's the only way we're going to be able to do it authentically so that it's sustained for the long haul.
[00:28:06] Lucia Liu: Amazing. All right. Well, Varun, thank you so much for all the transformative work you do for the AAPI community. We like to wrap up with our guests by asking them what their favorite restaurant is and making a recommendation so that if anybody were in the DC area, they know where to go eat.
[00:28:23] Varun Nikore: Well first, let me give a shout out to the Eden center, which is just a steps for my home in Northern Virginia. And if anybody knows this area, the Eden center is sort of an institution. It is a little Saigon in, it is a home to 50 shops and about 50 restaurants, Vietnamese restaurants, and my favorite place, uh, for five.
[00:28:47] My kids grew up on five-year up on Chinese food as Asian food. And my kids grew up on Vietnamese food because this is so close to our home, but high dong, and I'm sure you're going to put it into the chat or whatever, the, the podcast equivalent so that your listeners can hear this, but that's our favorite place for amazing spring rolls and, and green onion pancakes.
[00:29:07] And what is it? Salty? Seafood Curry.
[00:29:12] Lucia Liu: Varun you need to stop cause it's making me hungry.
[00:29:16] Varun Nikore: And of course there's about five Boba tea shops there as well.
[00:29:19] Lucia Liu: Sounds great. Amazing. Can't wait to check it out over and thank you so much for being on the fide. Really glad that you were a guest.
[00:29:26] Varun Nikore: so much for having me Lucia.