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Committed young APA volunteers, activists, and future office-holders helped make the 2003 APA Presidential Candidate Townhall Meeting a success.
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General Information
Each campaign cycle, the AAA-Fund works with student organizations to plan activities on campus and in the community. Students are the future of APA political empowerment, so your ideas and suggestions are welcome!
Volunteers are needed at every AAA-Fund event. It is a great way to meet the community and the candidates, and to make connections for jobs and summer internships.
Please join our email newsletter list, and fill out our volunteer form.
If you have specific ideas for programs or anything else you'd like to discuss with the AAA-Fund, please write to info@aaa-fund.org.
How to be a candidate
The AAA-Fund provides community education seminars and workshops for community groups and student groups. Here is a report from a workshop held at the Hmong National Development conference near Washington D.C. in April 2003:
Cy Thao: How I won my seat, Asian Week, 4/3/03
You can tell that Cy Thao was an actor from the moment he enters a room. His wide grin, prancing eyes, and sure steps convey a “presence” that is magnetic. He knows how to modulate his speech, and moves easily from Hmong to English while keeping his multi-cultural audience on the edge of their seats.
But Thao, a freshman state representative from St. Paul, Minnesota, is not just an entertainer these days. "Politics drove me to art, and art drove me back to politics," he joked at the 8th Hmong National Conference, held last weekend near Washington, D.C.
Rep. Thao served as an intern at the Minnesota state capitol ten years ago, but decided that he would rather be a painter and actor. After ten years working as an artist, teacher, and non-profit executive, however, he realized that his community, his art, and, indeed, his whole life, were controlled to varying degrees by decisions made by lawmakers. Instead of writing letters, lobbying, and then protesting bad decisions, he decided that part of his energy should be devoted to becoming a legislator himself.
At a workshop on "What It Takes To Run For Office," convened by Irene Bueno of the Asian American Action Fund (www.aaa-fund.org), Rep. Thao shared the evolution of his thought process as he made up his mind to run for State Representative. Here is a summary:
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Do some initial research. Find out about the job you aspire to fill. Work, like he did, as a student intern in the office. Make sure you will find the job fulfilling, because any public service job is going to demand long hours.
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Do some family planning. Make sure your family is behind you, as there will be some sacrifice. Thao worked on his campaign full-time for a while, so his wife had to support the family.
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Stand for something. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to community service. Thao had spent years as a community volunteer, so he knew that the key issues in his neighborhood were fixing the housing stock, reducing crime, improving education, and providing economic development. These issues helped him relate to people of all backgrounds in the neighborhood, not just those of Hmong descent.
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Create a team. With years of helping others behind him, Cy Thao had a lot of favors he could "call in" as he began his campaign. A Treasurer agreed to register his campaign and add up the money raised. A Campaign Manager agreed to run the operation while he did the television appearances, voter drives, and fundraising calls. A Volunteer Manager who had just graduated from college was able to recruit college-age friends to supplement the support of older constituents. Marching in parades, posting year signs, and other outdoor activities take time and energy, and this younger crowd had some of both. Finally, the Communications Director wrote the first draft of the press releases, talked to the media, and kept the campaign "on-message."
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Start walking. Rep. Thao wore out a pair of shoes while visiting 10,000 people in his district over a three month period. There is no substitute for going to a door and saying, "Hello, I would like your vote." This allowed him to meet his neighbors, hear their concerns, develop some rapport, and ask for their votes.
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Start raising money. Getting the word out takes more than time and commitment. As Rep Thao joked, "This job pays only $30,000, and I spent that much just getting elected." Direct mail pieces to people in the district can cost $2,000 each, and must be done four times. A website, radio, television, and other communication channels also cost money. A candidate must be able to approach friends and family and ask for a contribution.
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Plan way ahead. Almost two years before his election, Rep. Thao was already making his plans. He was pulling together his team, learning the relevant filing deadlines, and exploring how to raise money for his campaign. The Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor (DFL) Party (www.dfl.org) has a caucus system where delegates to the party convention are picked from volunteers at a caucus meeting long before the convention. Thao encouraged 200 local Hmong Americans to come to the caucus, and half were chosen as delegates. By the time the party was ready to endorse a candidate for state representative from Thao’s district, many of the delegates already knew him and were pre-disposed to voting for him.
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Be a uniter, not a divider. Family and clan ties are very important to Hmong communities, as in many other communities, so Thao made sure to reach out to people outside the Thao clan. Lots of one-on-one meetings were needed, and the years he had spent as a teacher of ESL to Hmong elders helped him to have the Hmong language skills he needed at this crucial moment.
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Deal with setbacks. Opponents decided to challenge the Hmong American voters by saying that they had to bring certificates of citizenship before they could vote in the delegate meetings. Thao, with the assistance of high-ranking DFL leaders, got his opponents to back off by asserting that if Hmong had to bring citizenship papers, then EVERYONE would have to bring their birth certificates to prove where they were born. Aside from dealing with a potentially fatal blow to his campaign, Thao used this as a "teachable moment" to educate his own party members about immigrant rights.
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Get out the vote. On election day, Thao and his supporters worked the phones and called potential voters five times between 8am and 8pm. Volunteers were ready to drive supporters to the polls to vote.
Victory on election day was sweet, but then the work began. He was no longer Cy Thao, advocate for Hmong Americans, but Rep. Cy Thao, representative of all people in Minnesota’s District 65A. |
