Obama wins Filipino vote at last-hour
By Gus Mercado
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 11:13:00 11/10/2008
Filed Under: Politics, Minority groups, Elections
A pre-election survey of 840 active Filipino community leaders in America showed a strong shift of undecided registered voters towards the Obama camp in the last several weeks before the elections that gave Senator Barack Obama of Illinois a decisive 58-42 share of the Filipino vote.
The survey was done by phone, email and personal conversations with community leaders of two party-neutral national Filipino federations, the National Federation of Filipino-American Associations (NaFFAA), who recently attended a national conference in Seattle, Washington and the business-oriented Federation of Philippine-American Chambers of Commerce (FPACC). The survey was also conducted in a recent meeting of community leaders in L.A., with almost a million Filipino residents, the largest concentration of Filipinos in the U.S., and in a meeting with Texas community leaders from Dallas, Houston, Tyler, McAllen and Austin at a fundraiser for Hurricane Ike victims a day before the Nov. 4 elections.
In validating the survey, it is important to note that California is a strong bastion of the Democratic Party while Texas has traditionally voted Republican since the Lyndon Johnson era. In the Tuesday elections, Senator Obama won California by a large 61-37 margin, while Senator McCain won Texas by a 55-44 margin.
The pre-election survey showed that 36% of Filipino leaders favored Obama, 30% aligned with McCain and a large 34% were still undecided a few weeks before Nov. 4.
Of the undecided, a large segment avidly supported Senator Hillary Clinton who lost the primary battle to Senator Obama. Some described themselves as party independents. Many sat on the fence for a long time, but in the end, more than two-thirds of the undecided and independent voters veered towards Obama and less than one-third went for McCain.
The Filipino vote compares to how the other minority groups voted: Obama won 96 percent of the African-American vote as expected, 67 percent of the Latino group and 63 percent of the Asian vote.
Deciding Issues
Following the national trend, Filipino voters were influenced by the economic factors such as family income, jobs, housing and health care – referred to as "pocketbook issues," closely followed by issues important to Filipinos such as immigration and the veterans' issues, national security and the Iraqi War.
While national security and the Iraq War were top issues among Fil-Am voters in the 2004 presidential elections compared to economic issues, they were bottom dwellers in the 2008 elections, closely following the concerns of mainstream stream voters. Pocketbook issues trumped fear, war and foreign relations issues elections by a wide margin last Nov. 4.
There is one caveat to the sampling methodology used in the survey. Being community leaders, professionals and business owners who can afford to attend national conferences, the respondents are presumed to belong to more prominent, upper-middle income segments of the Filipino population.
Hence, the "pocketbook issues" did not resonate as strongly among the Filipino voters surveyed as they did with mainstream American voters who seemed to have cast their vote as a strong repudiation of the "failed economic policies" of the Bush administration and the Republican Party.
Many associated John McCain closely with the present administration and heeded the Democrats' warning that a vote for McCain is a vote to continue the policies of President George W. Bush, who in modern history has the lowest popularity rating among U.S. presidents at the end of their terms.
The housing crisis, the stock market meltdown that caused the erosion of people's savings, the disastrous Iraqi War and the burgeoning deficits and looming recession that all happened during the past 8 years of Republican rule all contributed to the Republicans' defeat.
The race factor was insignificant. While a small number said they were not voting for Obama because of his race, about the same number said they could relate positively to Senator Obama's early years growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia.
Although most of the Filipino respondents were presumably financially independent upper-middle class, there is reason to believe that their political sentiments fairly represented those of their constituents.
There are also strong indications that if the Filipino "working class" members such as the school teachers in the border states, the health care givers in rural America and the casino dealers and hotel workers in Nevada, the support of "pocketbook issues" favoring the Democratic platform would be even more pronounced.
It must also be noted that the Filipino youth vote represented in the survey came from the youth leaders at the NaFFAA conference only. There is strong evidence from Filipino youth e-mails and Internet blogs that first-time Filipino voters overwhelmingly supported Senator Obama. He won 68% of all voters in the 18-29 age groups.
Therefore, if the survey had included a greater number of Filipino youth voters and the Filipino "working class" sectors, which would have been ideal but logistically unfeasible, Senator Obama's margin of victory among Filipino voters would have been larger than the 58% that our survey indicated.
Overall, the Filipinos who voted in the historic elections that catapulted the first African-American to president of the most powerful nation on earth agreed with the mainstream Americans who saw in Obama their best hope to change their lives for the better. They believed that Obama had the best chance and the best abilities to rebuild an American economy that has grown dangerously unstable.
They also believed that Obama was the best choice to rebuild the American position and image in the world, to restore our ties with traditional allies and to end the disastrous Iraq war.
They felt confident that with his extraordinary ability to reach out to people from all walks of life, regardless of social stature and color of skin, the newly-elected President could emerge as a strong, vibrant, fresh and charismatic leader who will inspire the people and change the course of the nation.
What an Obama Presidency would mean
This crucial question of how the Obama victory would benefit Filipinos and Filipino-Americans has not been clearly answered to the satisfaction of both those who voted for him and those that did not. By contrast, Senator Hillary Clinton had enjoyed a huge following among Filipinos in America partly due to her personal closeness to Filipino leaders and her straightforward and clear-cut commitment to support issues near and dear to Filipinos.
As proof of this special care and attention to the needs of Filipinos, Mrs. Clinton was the only one among the four senators vying for the presidency who suspended her campaign in the vote-critical Pennsylvania primary to return to Washington to vote for the all-important Senate Bill 1315 that approved equity pension benefits for our hapless Filipino WWII veterans.
In Texas Senator Clinton had a much stronger support among Filipinos, Asians and Hispanics. It was widely felt by the non-black minority communities that she had a slightly stronger chance of winning the red state of Texas if she had won the nomination.
For his part, president-elect Barack Obama released his blueprint for "The Change We Need for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders", a comprehensive planning document that identifies the issues affecting the AAPI community and describes Sen. Obama's plans to address those issues.
In the Blueprint, Senator Obama declared: "By reaching out directly to the AAPI communities, we can ensure that AAPIs are well represented in this national dialogue about our future and the movement to write our destiny. The story of the AAPI communities is quintessential to the American story about drawing strength from our diversity to achieve extraordinary things. I will be a president who remembers that our separate struggles are really one. I will never walk away from the tough battles or the difficult work of bringing people together."
The Blueprint addresses a wide range of issues critical to Asian Americans, including more than 3 million Filipino now living in the U.S. These issues include economic opportunity, education, immigration, health care, home ownership, seniors, women, civil rights, foreign policy, veterans and faith.
Through his staff in Washington D.C., Senator Obama has given verbal assurances to Filipino leaders that he would support our WWII veterans' claims for equity benefits, as well as an all-encompassing and comprehensive immigration reform. It is also
For the next four years, three million Filipinos in America will put their interests and aspirations in the hands of a few young Filipino leaders who actively worked in the Obama campaign led by AAPI Democratic Youth Leader Ms. Charlene Manansala, who will most likely be appointed to important positions in the White House.
Hopefully, this group of young Filipinos will proudly carry the banner of the Filipino-Americans on their tender shoulders and speak for us and articulate our goals clearly and effectively.
Victory for FilVote and AAPI
A recent article in the Asian Journal gave an in-depth analysis of the voting history of Filipinos and Asian Americans in America. As the second largest Asian ethnic group in the U.S., Filipino-Americans represent a significant demographic that has become a most important target for ethnic and mainstream marketers. On the political mainstream, however, Fil-Am participation has been wanting.
Newly elected National Chair of the National Federation of Filipino-American Associations (NaFFAA) Greg Macabenta explained the critical need for Filipino political empowerment in lucid terms:
"Major events are occurring and laws are being passed that affect the interests of Filipino-Americans, such as those on immigration, affirmative action and social services. But our community is simply being swept by the tides of change and circumstance. We are not playing a significant role in shaping these events and enacting these laws, despite the fact that we make up one of the largest Asian ethnic group in this country. We have not struggled hard enough for empowerment. This is our challenge."
Macabenta concluded that, "We can gain political empowerment – but we must use Voting Power and we must be willing to accept trade-offs among ourselves."
To harness the Fil-Am voting power, Asian and Filipino organizations have formed programs and campaigns to push for FilVote – a non-partisan voter engagement project aimed to unite Fil-Ams across ideological, religious and class differences toward gaining genuine political power in the U.S.
According to the Asian Journal article, the Filipino American Service Group Inc. (FASGI) initiated the FilVote campaign in 1996, after an L.A. Times article wrote about the happy lives of Fil-Ams in the US, but criticized their lack of united voice and political empowerment. "Almost three-quarters of those Filipinos surveyed said they did not belong to a Filipino political organization, " according to the L.A. Times story, "Filipinos Happy with Life in the U.S. but lack United Voice."
Through the combined efforts of FASGI, NaFFAA and ABS-CBN's Balitang America, that story has changed since 1996. FilVote campaigns the last several years have resulted in the registration of thousands of new Filipino-American voters.
In the 2004 presidential elections, only 594,000 Filipino-Americans voted – a decline of 7 percent because 122,000 registered voters did not cast their ballots. "Potentially, there are 715,000 Filipino-Americans, or 40 percent of our total number, who can be mobilized to go to the polls," says Gloria Caoile, co-chair of FilVote. "But we need to register them and educate them on issues that directly affect our community so they will appreciate what's at stake, especially for our children and families."
Based on the enthusiastic response of Fil-Ams nationwide to the FilVote campaign this year, it’s safe to assume that new voters from Fil-Am communities have followed the national trend – an unprecedented surge of new voter interest that contributed to the record voter turnout in the Nov. 4 polls.
For the rest of the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI), the APIA Vote, a national nonprofit organization of Asian-Americans, have organized with different Asian American groups nationwide to register as many members and inform them about the significance of their vote.
There are nearly 15 million AAPIs nationwide. During the 2004 presidential elections, seven million AAPIs were eligible to vote, half of that number registered and three million or 85 percent voted, according to statistics compiled by APIA vote.
Strength in numbers plus power of coalition-building equal political empowerment for Filipinos and Asians in America. These are the very achievable empowerment goals for Filipinos in America, in cooperation and unity with our Asian American brothers who are more than willing to coalesce with us. Put together, these are the strengths and opportunities that we offer President-Elect Barrack Obama and his administration – in response to his call for cooperation and support from all sectors of society, that we may all be an integral part of his dream of rebuilding our great nation.
(Respond to gmercado@grandecom. net)
Author Gus Mercado has been an active leader of the NAFFAA and the FPACC national federations for more than 15 years, and community leader in Texas for the last 25 years. A three-time recipient of the "U.S. Jaycee of the Year" and numerous other distinguished community service awards, he is currently Executive Director of the Philippine-American Chamber of Commerce in Texas and Chairman/CEO of Datalogix, a thriving high-tech engineering company that has provided high-paying jobs and economic empowerment to hundreds of Filipino engineers in North America. He is mentioned in NaFFAA Chair Greg Macabenta's "The Challenge of NAFFAA" piece as "the Hero of the Texas 10."
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