Shift in San Francisco politics serves as warning from Asian American voters to Democrats in 2024

(CNN) Allene Jue used to vote the easy and quick way — scan the names on the ballot and select the Asian-sounding names.

That was before 2020.

“Something turned on during the pandemic and started a fire,” said Jue, a Chinese American mother of two girls, ages 3 and 5, who lives in west San Francisco. During the pandemic, Jue watched as violent hate crimes against Asian Americans terrified the community with no response from local law enforcement or prosecutors. As school closures continued in California, Jue saw her local school board discuss progressive political issues like school renaming before focusing on simply getting students back into the classroom.

Jue, who generally sees herself as a Democrat, recalled her anger at liberal local politicians.

“They care about policies that don’t really help someone who just lives in the city and just wants to be safe, who wants their kids to get a good education,” she said. “You have forgotten the core problems of normal people. I wanted to do something to try to change and take that power back. It was fear and frustration, a lot of frustration, that I acted on.”

Her involvement began with stuffing recall envelopes against the district attorney and several school board members, and then grew—even appearing in Chinese-language campaign ads for a moderate Democrat running for city governor.

It was a political awakening, emulated to varying degrees by other Asian Americans in San Francisco, that led to a series of political upheavals in one of the most progressive cities in the United States — including a moderate white supervising a progressive Chinese-American incumbent deposed the mostly Asian-American Sunset District

California activists warn that these policy changes in San Francisco — a place that has long been a beacon for progressives — are a signal to the National Democrats ahead of 2024 that the party needs a course correction with America’s fastest-growing racial group USA – Asian Americans.

“I see this frustration with the direction of the party,” said Charles Jung, a civil rights attorney and local Bay Area attorney. “Asian Americans feel that the Democrats are focused on the wrong things, that they are letting ideology run amok. Unless Democrats redouble their efforts to focus on core Democrat issues, they will lose people of color over time.”

progressive game

Supervisor Joel Engardio, a gay married man who is a liberal by most national standards, describes himself as a moderate in San Francisco. And he is quick to criticize the word “progressive”.

“For me, progressive means thinking ahead, going into the future and building a better city,” said Engardio of his office at San Francisco City Hall. “We haven’t followed this definition of progressive for too long. Progressive is a city that works and works and builds for the future.”

Joel Engardio was the first non-Asian supervisor to represent San Francisco’s Asian-majority American Sunset District in more than 20 years.

Engardio ousted an incumbent Chinese-American incumbent last year, becoming the first non-Asian supervisor in more than 20 years to represent the majority of the Asian-American district. He worked to eliminate small business roadblocks, get more cops on the streets, and use public school performance standards. He said that while his supervisor race was nearby, it was sending out a broader political message about the limits of liberal ideology.

“We should all make sure that San Francisco, the most liberal place in America, says enough. We want safe roads. We want good schools. That should tell everyone – pay attention,” said Engardio.

CNN national exit polls show that the pendulum has shifted among Asian American voters in the last election. In 2018, during Donald Trump’s presidency, Asian Americans overwhelmingly supported Democrats at 77% versus Republicans at 23%. In 2022, Asian Americans continued to support Democrats, but that preference dropped 58% over Republicans to 40%.

That’s a significant shift, Jung warns. “You’ve seen a significant double-digit erosion of Asian American support from these midterm elections through 2018. And by the way, it’s not just Asian Americans, you’ve seen the same thing among Hispanic voters,” he said. “I think if Democrats don’t redouble their efforts to focus on core Democratic issues, over time they will lose people of color.”

While Asian Americans can be considered a Democratic constituency, Jung warns that recent history shows this has not always been the case.

CNN’s historic congressional exit polls show that Asian American voters in the 1990s were narrowly divided or slanted toward the Republicans. But since 1998, they have generally, at varying distances, turned to the Democratic Party.

The erosion among Asian and Latino voters, said Kanishka Cheng of grassroots community-building organization Together SF, is because Democrats are forgetting core values ​​for immigrant communities.

Kanishka Cheng is the founder of the community building organization Together SF and Together SF Action, whose mission includes fighting crime, homelessness and high housing costs through changes at San Francisco City Hall.

“Democrats have a really hard time talking about public education and public safety,” Cheng said. “That’s the common denominator between the Asian and Latino communities—we’re immigrant communities. We came to America to find stability and opportunity. Public safety and public education are the things that give us stability and opportunity. We need education and we need to feel safe.”

Engardio said that message came through loud and clear as he “knocked on 14,000 doors and spoke to voters. My advice is to talk about what they need and actually listen.”

Listening to Asian American voters is the work Forrest Liu continues in the Sunset District as 2024 approaches. A former Bay Area finance worker, Liu left the business world and became an advocate for the Asian community to fight hate crimes targeting Asians.

Liu spends his day conducting field interviews to try to understand the political shift that has taken place among Asian voters in San Francisco, as Liu believes it is an indication of what will happen in the upcoming national election . “I want to understand why they made the decisions they made last year and what they want for the future. And what we should stand up for,” Liu said.

What he’s learned so far, he said, is that the community is a lot smarter than politicians might think.

“There are some politicians out there who say, ‘Let me take a picture with some Asian guys. Let me walk through Chinatown, shake hands with some Asian community leaders and that’s it. I got the Asian voice,'” he said liu “No. They actually need to be in tune with the needs of that demographic.”

Liu said the political discontent that led to Engardio’s victory remains, although publicity surrounding “Stop Asian Hate” may have faded.

“‘Why should I feel insecure?’ I would say that sums up the emotions of the people I interview, they still feel insecure.”

“I can’t live in a city like this”

You will hear three languages ​​spoken at Jue’s house – English, Mandarin and Cantonese. Their 5-year-old daughter, Eloise, is in a Cantonese immersion kindergarten, although she also speaks Mandarin. Lucille, 3, speaks Mandarin with her parents. Jue jumps from one language to the next, a product of San Francisco’s multilingual public schools.

“I’m a public school kid, kindergarten through college,” she said. “There is a common background from my core group — children of immigrants who went to public school.”

Working hard, striving for academic success, and building a safe community—that’s what Jue and her generation were looking for.

The impact of the pandemic began to shatter all of those core values. Attacks on Asian Americans — which increased 567% in San Francisco from 2019 to 2021 — worried Jue.

“I am Asian, my family’s Asian. If I have to worry about just going out to run an errand, I think that’s a big problem and I can’t live in a city like that,” she said.

Amid those concerns in 2021, Jue noted the school board’s vote to rename 44 schools whose names have been associated with former presidents like Abraham Lincoln, stating the names are associated with “the subjugation and enslavement of people / or the oppression of women” connected.

The school district had not yet shared a public plan for reopening schools at the time.

Jue, who has to balance her job as a technician and raise children who are about to enter preschool, was outraged.

Jue was among the Asian Americans in San Francisco who first launched recalls against the school board, recalling three members. Jue then helped in the successful effort to recall San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, which was supported by a majority of West Asian communities.

Last November, Jue volunteered for her neighboring district’s supervisor race — where Engardio successfully challenged the incumbent Sunset district city supervisor. She was featured in two campaign ads for Mandarin and Cantonese.

Like many political changes, Jue said, the Sunset District was driven by discontent. And Jue said that while the discontent runs deepest in her city, it’s not limited to San Francisco.

The self-proclaimed social liberal-fiscal conservative said that despite being a registered Democrat, she struggles with the party’s current state in 2024. “I don’t think they haven’t figured out those basics like crime and education,” Jue said. “I know people who have traditionally voted Democrats who are now voting Republicans because they don’t feel the Democratic Party represents them.”