Politico | Asian-Americans are the least likely to hold elected office in US
- Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders are the fastest growing demographic in US
- But both groups account for less than 1 per cent of all elected US leaders
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Rishika Dugyala on politico.com on May 4, 2021.
Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders are dramatically under-represented in elected office and particularly in the criminal justice sector – even as they’re the fastest growing demographic group.
A Tuesday report from the Reflective Democracy Campaign, obtained exclusively by POLITICO, revealed that AAPI members made up just 0.9 per cent of elected leaders across all levels of government, but 6.1 per cent of the population as of mid-2020.
Even among states with high AAPI concentrations (think New York, California, Nevada) representation drops off. Hawaii is the only state whose share of AAPI elected leaders is nearly equivalent to its population. And the report found that a mere 0.24 per cent of elected prosecutors and 0.07 per cent of county sheriffs were of Asian/Pacific Islander descent.
Currently, AAPI representation in the 2021 Congress includes Democrat senators Mazie Hirono and Tammy Duckworth and 15 representatives, nearly evenly split between men and women. Nearly half won elections in majority-white districts, according to Tuesday’s report. There are 152 AAPI state legislators across 31 states, with one-third of them representing majority-white districts.
“Voters, regardless of party identification, really want to see reflective leadership,” said Brenda Choresi Carter, the director of the Campaign, which tracks the diversity of elected officials. “Political power has been concentrated in the hands of white men in the United States since the very beginning. And I think we are seeing the limitations of that.”