Vice President Kamala Harris has dropped her first two presidential campaign ads speaking to Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander voters, and they focus on health care and anti-Asian hate.
The two spots, shared first with NBC News, are airing both digitally and on television and are part of a larger $90 million media buy across several battleground states.
The ads, which coincide with this week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, are airing across Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada among other swing states. They will run on apps including Snap, YouTube and iHeart Radio, and also on ethnic media outlets in the U.S. like The Filipino Channel, 3HmongTV, SBS Television Korea and Zee TV.
Asian Americans, the fastest growing segment of the electorate, are expected to make up more than 6% of the eligible voters in November, including 1,444,503 eligible voters in battleground states. But in some particular swing states, like Nevada, where they constitute 11% of the population, they could make up the margin of victory.
The ad “The Seal,” which began airing Monday, criticizes Republican nominee Donald Trump’s using language like “kung flu” at the height of the pandemic — language that has been condemned by many in the Asian American community as “anti-Asian.” The ad compares his words to those of Harris, who says in a speech featured in the ad that Trump’s language promotes “xenophobia” and that he shouldn’t be allowed to again stand behind the “seal of the president of the United States.”
“When Trump called Covid the ‘kung flu,’ he unleashed a wave of hate against our community,” Terry Vo, Nashville Metro Council member and an Asian American community leader, says in the spot. “I was scared. People didn’t feel safe.”
A 2020 report by the nonprofit Stop AAPI Hate shows that 1,843 incidents were reported to the group from March 19 to May 13 of that year, the last of Trump’s term. In more than a quarter of such incidents, assailants invoked the words “China” or “Chinese” in their acts of discrimination. And in 17.5 percent of cases, they parroted the term “Chinese virus.”
In a statement, Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign senior adviser, said there has been “no bigger advocate for the AAPI community” than Trump.
“He created an environment where diversity, equal opportunity, and prosperity were afforded to everybody. Anyone who says otherwise is disgustingly using the AAPI community to play political games for their own benefit,” Cheung said. “The 2024 campaign is poised to build upon the strength and successes of Asian Americans during President Trump’s first term to propel him to a history second term victory.”
The second Harris ad, “Reduced,” began airing last week and accuses Trump of attempting to “rip” away the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as Obamacare. It points out that the ACA has reduced the number of uninsured Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders (AANHPI) by 63%.
“Trump scares me,” said longtime Las Vegas-based community leader Rozita Lee. “He wants to terminate health care protections for people in our community.
Trump has been inconsistent in his stance on the ACA. During his term, he tried but failed to repeal the act. And last November, he declared that if re-elected, he would “replace” the plan, writing on social media, “Obamacare Sucks!!!” But earlier this year, he denied he was tossing the policy.
“I’m not running to terminate the ACA as crooked Joe Biden says all over the place,” Trump said in a video. “We’re going to make the ACA much better than it is right now and much less expensive for you.”
Andrew Peng, AANHPI spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign, said that the ads remind communities that the “choice in this election is clear.”
“Leaders like Rozita and Terry know how much AANHPI communities suffered during Trump’s first term — and that a second term would be far worse.”
The ads follow the launch in July of the campaign’s outreach program toward AANHPI, according to a press release. Since, Team Harris-Walz have also hired more staff focused on the community, who are planning in-language canvassing and phone-banking, in addition to more culturally specific, direct voter contact activities, the release said.
