 | This article contains promotional content .(June 2012) |
The 80-20 Initiative, officially the 80-20 Political Action Committee, Incorporated, is a national political action committee which seeks to unite 80% of the Asian American as a block vote behind the presidential candidate who best represents the interests of Asian Americans. The PAC refers to itself as independent but has backed the Democratic presidential candidate in every election since 2000.
The "Asia Gate" of 1996-97, [1] which was an alleged effort by the People's Republic of China to influence domestic American politics, sowed the seed for Asian American political empowerment. Frustrated by what he viewed to be the political exploitation of Asian American’s naïveté as evidenced by “Asia Gate”, Dr. S.B. Woo, former Lieutenant Governor of Delaware, set out to organize support to prevent its recurrence. In the foreword of the book, Click on Democracy, he related his disappointment with the media, the Democratic and Republican Parties for misrepresenting and misusing Asian Americans, and his despair over the Asian American community’s inaction and its failure to defend itself, rooted in its lack of political maturity and cohesiveness.
As a former politician, Dr. S. B. Woo believed that in order to defend themselves, Asian Americans must develop enough political clout, to reward politicians who cared for their rightful concerns and to punish those who didn't. To communicate effectively with all Asian Americans and to forge a bloc vote, he harnessed the power of the Internet. Dr. S. B. Woo, together with several other Asian American leaders, including Dr. Larry Y. Ho Professor of two endowed Chairs at Harvard University; Henry S. Tang, Chairman of the Committee of 100; and Dr. Chang-Lin Tien, Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, compiled an e-mail list of 300 like-minded individuals who donated $50,000 to pursue their vision. On September 26–27, 1998, in a meeting in Foster City, California, 80-20 was born. [2] [ unreliable source? ]
80-20 was rated one of the US's two most effective cyberspace political organizations in the 2000 election. [3]
80-20 holds its Endorsement Convention in the year of a presidential election, after candidates for both the Republican and Democratic Party have been determined. Each delegate to the convention is an unpaid volunteer who pledges in writing to advocate for 80-20’s endorsed candidate. The delegates are one third each of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, all elected by dues-paying members, to ensure an objective nonpartisan deliberation. [4]
In the 2004 and 2008 elections, 80-20's main criterion for endorsement was the response to 80-20's questionnaire by the presidential candidates. In both years, while the Democratic candidates for President answered 80-20's questionnaire with all affirmative responses (after 80-20 revised the questions by request of the candidates), the Republican candidates did not respond to the questionnaire at all. [5] [6] 80-20 had initially issued a "call to action" to defeat Obama, citing "almost farcical reasons why he would not reply to OUR questionnaire". [7] The call to action has since been deleted from the organization's sites.
80-20 has endorsed the Democratic candidate in the 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.
Once 80-20 endorses a candidate, it organizes Asian American bloc votes for its endorsed candidate, relying partly on volunteers, ethnic media radio, print and TV ads; and mostly on its e-mail communication with its 700,000 Asian American supporters[ citation needed ], their families and their friends.
Based on publicly available government statistics, Asian Americans have the lowest chance of rising to management when compared with blacks, Hispanics and women in spite of having the highest educational attainment. [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]
80-20 compiled these data which has been verified in writing by the Chief Statistician of EEOC, Ronald Edwards, into charts; and on September 6, 2006, 80-20 took out a full page Ad in The Washington Post in effort to educate the general public. [14] [15]
Subsequently, the ad was read into the Congressional Record by Senator Tom Carper of Delaware. [16]
80-20 obtained written commitments from nine of the eleven Democratic Presidential candidates, including then Senator Barack Obama and Senator Joe Biden, to enforce Executive Order 11246 for All Asian Americans. [17] [18] [19]
While Asian Americans make up 5% of the US population in 2008, only eight of the 867 (less than 1%) Article III Federal judges are Asian Americans. [20] [21]
During the 2008 presidential campaign, to remedy the underrepresentation of Asian Americans in the Federal judiciary, 80-20 sent out a questionnaire to all the presidential candidates. Senator Obama and Senator Biden responded and promised in writing to increase the appointment of Asian American federal judges. [18] [19]
By June 2010, President Obama has nominated six Asian Americans to a seat on the U.S. District Court, including Judge Jacqueline Nguyen and Dolly M. Gee for the United States District Court for the Central District of California, and Judges Edward M. Chen and Lucy H. Koh for the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, [22] [23] [24] Edmond Chang for the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, and Judge Leslie E. Kobayashi for United States District Court for the District of Hawaii. [25]
On October 6, 2009, President Obama nominated Judge Denny Chin to a seat on the U.S. Courts of Appeals in the Second Circuit, the first Asian American Appeals court judge to be nominated since 1996, more than 12 years ago. [26] [27] This was followed on February 24, 2010 by the nomination of Goodwin H. Liu to a seat on the U.S. Courts of Appeals in the Ninth Circuit. [28]
As of December 18, 2010, all of the above nominations have been confirmed by the Senate except for the nominations of Edward Chen and Goodwin Liu.
Edward Chen was confirmed on May 10, 2011 to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. [29]
On May 25, 2011, in a letter to President Barack Obama, Goodwin Liu withdrew his nomination for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. [30]
In the 2002 primary election, there were two racist attacks against Asian American candidates by their political opponents.[ citation needed ] As a result, 80-20 passed a resolution, aiming to stop such attacks. [31]
80-20 currently has a strategy to expand its influence and to encourage Asian Americans to be involved in local politics by establishing two chapters in the Detroit-Ann Arbor Area Chapter and the Great Washington DC Area (DC, MD, and VA) Chapter. [32]
The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies (FedSoc) is an American conservative and libertarian legal organization that advocates for a textualist and originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has chapters at more than 200 law schools and features student, lawyer, and faculty divisions; the lawyers division comprises more than 70,000 practicing attorneys in ninety cities. Through speaking events, lectures, and other activities, it provides a forum for legal experts of opposing conservative views to interact with members of the legal profession, the judiciary, and the legal academy. It is one of the most influential legal organizations in the United States.
The Reform Party of the United States of America (RPUSA), generally known as the Reform Party USA or the Reform Party, is a centrist political party in the United States, founded in 1995 by Ross Perot.
Democracy for America(DFA) was a progressive political action committee headquartered in Burlington, Vermont. Founded by former Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean in 2004, DFA led public awareness campaigns on a variety of public policy issues, trains activists, and provided funding directly to candidates for office, until it ended operations in 2022. At its peak, the organization had dozens of local chapters and more than a million members in the United States and internationally.
Jun H. Choi is an American entrepreneur and politician and the former Mayor of Edison, New Jersey, a community of over 100,000 people and the fifth largest municipality in the state. He was sworn in on January 1, 2006 as the youngest mayor in Edison history and the first Asian American mayor of a major city in New Jersey.
From the time of the Great Depression through the 1990s, the politics of West Virginia were largely dominated by the Democratic Party. In the 2000 presidential election, George W. Bush claimed a surprise victory over Al Gore, with 52% of the vote; he won West Virginia again in 2004, with 56% of the vote. West Virginia is now a heavily Republican state, with John McCain winning the state in 2008, Mitt Romney in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024.
A Shermanesque statement, also called a Sherman statement, Sherman speech, or the full Sherman, is American political jargon for a clear and direct statement by a potential candidate indicating that they will not run for a particular elected position.
The results of elections in the state of New York have tended to be more Democratic-leaning than in most of the United States, with in recent decades a solid majority of Democratic voters, concentrated in New York City and some of its suburbs, including Westchester County, Rockland County and Long Island's Nassau county, and in the cities of Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, and Ithaca.
The 2008 presidential campaign of John Edwards, former United States Senator from North Carolina and Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2004 began on December 28, 2006, when he announced his entry into the 2008 presidential election in the city of New Orleans near sites devastated by Hurricane Katrina. On January 30, 2008, Edwards returned to New Orleans to announce that he was suspending his campaign for the Presidency. On May 14, 2008, he endorsed Barack Obama at a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Diane Joyce Humetewa is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Arizona. Humetewa is the first Native American woman and the first enrolled tribal member to serve as a U.S. federal judge. She previously served as the United States Attorney for the District of Arizona from 2007 to 2009. Humetewa is also a Professor of Practice at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law.
The Thurmond rule in U.S. politics posits that, at some point in a U.S. presidential election year, the U.S. Senate should not confirm the president's nominees to the federal judiciary, except under certain circumstances. The basic premise is that the President and the Senate majority usually are of opposite political ideologies, and as such the Judiciary Committee will not allow an appointee to receive a floor vote from the entire Senate during a presidential election year.
Patricia Ann Millett is an American lawyer and jurist serving since 2013 as a U.S. circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She formerly headed the Supreme Court practice at the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. Millett also was a longtime former assistant to the United States Solicitor General and served as an occasional blogger for SCOTUSblog. At the time of her confirmation to the D.C. Circuit, she had argued 32 cases before the United States Supreme Court—once the record for a female lawyer. In February 2016, The New York Times identified her as a potential nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia.
Goodwin Hon Liu is an American jurist who has served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of California since 2011. Before his appointment by Governor Jerry Brown, Liu was associate dean and a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley.
U.S. President Barack Obama nominated over 400 individuals for federal judgeships during his presidency. Of these nominations, Congress confirmed 329 judgeships, 173 during the 111th & 112th Congresses and 156 during the 113th and 114th Congresses.
Padmanabhan Srikanth "Sri" Srinivasan is an Indian-born American lawyer and jurist serving since 2020 as the chief United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Before becoming a federal judge, Srinivasan served as principal deputy solicitor general of the United States and argued 25 cases before the United States Supreme Court. He was also a partner at the law firm O'Melveny & Myers and was a lecturer at Harvard Law School.
Marco Antonio Hernandez is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Oregon.
Cathy Bissoon is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. Previously, she was a United States magistrate judge of the same court. She was appointed a district judge by President Barack Obama and was confirmed by the United States Senate in October 2011.
The 2012 presidential campaign of Gary Johnson, the 29th governor of New Mexico, was announced on April 21, 2011. He declared his candidacy for the 2012 Republican Party nomination for President of the United States. On December 28, 2011, Johnson withdrew his candidacy for the Republican nomination, and declared his candidacy for the 2012 presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party. The 2012 Libertarian National Convention was held during the first weekend of May 2012. On May 5, 2012, after promoting his libertarian-oriented political positions to delegates, Johnson received the most votes at the convention and became the official 2012 Libertarian presidential nominee. On November 6, 2012, Johnson received just under 1% of the popular vote in the general election, amounting to more than 1.2 million votes, more than double what the Barr/Root ticket received in 2008. This was the most successful result for a third-party presidential candidacy since 2000, and the best in the Libertarian Party's history by vote number at the time. Johnson ran again in 2016 and received nearly four times his 2012 vote total.
Stanley Allen Bastian is an American attorney and jurist serving as chief United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Washington.
John Joseph Tuchi is an American lawyer who is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Arizona.
Florence Yu Pan is an American lawyer who serves as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia from 2021 to 2022 and a judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia from 2009 to 2021.