Biden released his first Biden-Harris campaigning ad featuring two Asian American small business owners. The ad is part of a greater series meant to target Asian American and Pacific Islander voters, with this one specifically targeting small business owners.
The ad, first shared with NBC news, begins with Jenny Poon, a Vietnamese-American woman, recounting how her parents opened a small restaurant in America after fleeing from Vietnam during the Vietnam War. From growing up in the restaurant, Poon says she’s “learned what it takes to build a business and raise a family.”
Odeen Domingo, Poon’s husband and a Filipino American praises Biden for directing their attention to smaller businesses instead of corporations since “it wasn’t like that before.”
According to the U.S Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, Asian Americans own more than 2.9 million businesses alongside Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders owning 90,000 in 2019. The U.S Census Bureau reported that in 2020, there were 612,194 Asian-owned businesses employing about 5.2 million people in the U.S. Asians own more businesses than any other minority group.
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Biden’s first ad in his 2020 campaign with Harris targeting AAPI voters was titled “Stand Together.” The 1-minute ad featured a montage of Asian people with the message of standing together in America on values like compassion and community.
“Our first ad, ‘Family Business,’ communicates the clear choice facing the AAPI community next November — between President Biden’s commitment to investing in our small businesses and our families, or MAGA Republicans solely focused on tax breaks for the wealthy and powerful corporations,” said Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez in a statement.
According to NBC, campaign representatives said they will be rolling out more programming, especially in-language material that speaks to the Indian, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese and other South Asian communities.
In 2020, the voter turnout for Asian Americans increased dramatically from 49% in 2016 to 59%, according to the U.S Census Bureau. They were a crucial demographic in the 2020 election with 72% of Asian voters contributing to Biden’s victory and 28% voting for Trump, reported Pew Research Center.
