Asian-Americans are moving up the ladder in US politics, winning key positions in Congress, state legislatures and local council in elections held parallel to the nail-biting presidential race.
The community has become an influential voting group in the US, with some 6 million of them registered as voters in Tuesday's elections and courted by both the Republicans and Democrats.
Leading the Asian American campaign was Piyush "Bobby" Jindal, who became the first Indian American in 46 years to win a House of Representatives seat. He ran in his district in suburban New Orleans.
Several other Asian Americans successfully defended their House seats. Among them were Japanese Americans Mike Honda and Robert Matsui from California and Chinese American David Wu in Oregon.
Asian Americans also made forays into state legislative councils from among 200 from the community who ran for office in the elections.
"Each candidate, whether they win or lose, they help to galvanize, educate the Asian-American community about the political pro-cess," said Daphne Kwok, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies.
The group focuses on getting more Asian Americans involved in the political process.
Americans picked 435 mem-bers of the House of Representatives, a third of the 100-member Senate and governors of 11 states and many local officers in Tuesday's elections.
Expecting an "exponential" population increase over the next decade, Asian-Americans are gaining national political clout and proving to be a force to be reckoned with in local politics, said Janelle Hu, national director of APIAVote, a coalition of groups promoting public policy and the electoral process among Asian Americans.
"We are no longer a discounted community," she said.
In Hawaii, for example, increasing support from Filipino Americans to Republicans nearly cost the Democrats their traditional four electoral votes from the islands in the presidential vote. A pre-election poll found more than half of Filipino-Americans in Hawaii planned to support President George W. Bush and they had the highest number of undecided voters after those of Japanese descent.
Among Asian-Americans who made breakthroughs in state legislatures were Vietnamese Van Tran and Hubert Vo. They become the nation's first Vietnamese American state legislators.
Van Tran, a city councilman who received political support from around the nation, became a California lawmaker while Vo emerged as legislator in Texas.
Most Vietnamese Americans backed Bush because Senator John Kerry, a Vietnam war hero, had returned from combat in the 1970s to denounce the US for going to war against North Vietnam.
"Growing political influence is getting translated to more Vietnamese Americans progressively becoming higher office holders," noted Dan Hoang, representative of an advocacy group promoting awareness among Vietnamese American voters.
China-born immigrant Jimmy Meng, a successful businessman in Flushing, became the first state lawmaker of Asian-American heritage in New York. Meng, who lived in Taiwan before moving to the US in 1973, became the second Asian American from New York City elected to a legislative body.
In Washington state, Bob Hasegawa emerged as the first Asian American to enter the Washington state legislature.
Indian Americans found an-other of their number, Nikki Randhawa Haley, entering unchallenged into the South Carolina state assembly. Indian Americans now have five representatives in state assemblies -- Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota and New Jersey.
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
A Croatian town has come up with a novel solution to solve the issue of working parents when there are no public childcare spaces available: pay grandparents to do it. Samobor, near the capital, Zagreb, has become the first in the country to run a “Grandmother-Grandfather Service,” which pays 360 euros (US$400) a month per child. The scheme allows grandparents to top up their pension, but the authorities also hope it will boost family ties and tackle social isolation as the population ages. “The benefits are multiple,” Samobor Mayor Petra Skrobot told reporters. “Pensions are rather low and for parents it is sometimes
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
A documentary whose main subject, 25-year-old photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza weeks before it premiered at Cannes stunned viewers into silence at the festival on Thursday. As the cinema lights came back on, filmmaker Sepideh Farsi held up an image of the young Palestinian woman killed with younger siblings on April 16, and encouraged the audience to stand up and clap to pay tribute. “To kill a child, to kill a photographer is unacceptable,” Farsi said. “There are still children to save. It must be done fast,” the exiled Iranian filmmaker added. With Israel
RSS