Asian Americans and campaign finance in municipal elections

Abstract

This paper explores the political significance of Asian American campaign finance activity in municipal elections. We examined both the donation patterns of Asian contributors and the fundraising coalitions assembled by Asian candidates. From the contributor perspective, we found that Asians contributed in roughly proportional levels to their population as a whole, and were willing to contribute not only to coethnics but also to Asian candidates of other ethnicities and to non-Asians. As for Asian candidates, we found that they relied heavily on Asian contributors for campaign funds, especially coethnics. Asian candidates’ ability to draw on ethnic networks for campaign funds is an important political resource that enhances their ability to mount competitive campaigns. However, the value of these networks is limited by candidates’ inability or unwillingness to form panethnic fundraising coalitions.

Notes

1 New York's campaign finance program is voluntary, although the majority of candidates participate. Thus, our data does not include every candidate.

2 We would like to thank Wendy K. Tam Cho for providing the lists of Asian surnames. See Cho (2002, p. 380) for a description.

3 The biggest coding problem concerned the surname “Lee,” which is one of the most common Korean names, a variation of a common Chinese name (“Li”), and is also a non-Asian surname. We coded “Lee” as Korean, except if the contributor has an Chinese first name, in which case we coded it Chinese. This method is likely to overstate the number of Koreans, since many of these “Korean” contributors will be either Chinese with Anglicized first names or non-Asians. We believe, however, given how common “Lee” is as a Korean surname that this method will yield the most accurate results.

4 Contribution limits range from $250 for San Francisco Supervisorial candidates to $4,500 for New York Mayoral candidates. There are no limits on the use of candidates’ personal funds, but these contributions have been excluded from this analysis.

5 New York City prohibits contributions from corporations but allows contributions from sole proprietorships, partnerships, unions, and other nonindividuals.

6 The over-representation of Koreans in Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco may be due to coding errors surrounding the surname “Lee,” as discussed in note #3.

7 Median household income figures are from the 2003 American Community Survey.

8 The “weighted average” was calculated by summing total contributions from Asians for all 33 candidates and dividing it by the total contributions they raised. The disparity between this number and the nonweighted average is largely a result of Mike Woo's disproportionate influence on the weighted average.

9 John Liu, a New York City Councilman, raised about one-quarter of his contributions from out of state. However, the New York metropolitan area extends into three states (New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut), and most of his out of state contributions were within the metropolitan area.

10 A “coethnic” is a contributor who is of the same ethnicity as the candidate (e.g., both are Japanese), while noncoethnics are contributors who are Asian but of a different ethnicity.

11 Burton's fundraising efforts relied heavily on her father's political connections, explaining both the small amount of Asian contributions and the lack of a reliance on coethnics.

12 The likelihood of contributing to a particular ethnic group is heavily influenced by the availability of candidates; obviously, if there are no (or no serious) candidates from an ethnic group, there can be no contributions to them. Thus, the percentages in Table 7 are heavily influenced by the numbers of candidates in each category.