Field Notes of an Organizer
Part 1: Exploring running for state legislature; constituent organizing
Growing up, I never expected to call myself an “organizer”. In the Asian American world that I knew, it was always “scientist”, “engineer”, and later on, “software engineer”. To this day, it still feels strange for me to claim the title and mandate as an organizer — it is still a mode of action that feels foreign to who I am, though increasingly more familiar.
This is a multi-part story of how I:
explored running for Virginia state legislature, but ultimately decided against it. Instead, I ran various constituent organizing for Chinese Americans in my district
2021
It was in the aftermath of the November 2021 Virginia state elections that I started to pay more attention to state politics.
At that time, there was a lot of chatter over the new state districts released by the redistricting commission. For those who are unfamiliar, every decade, each state redraws its state legislative and congressional districts based on the new census. As a result of Democrat control of state legislature and the governorship in 2020, Virginia had for the first time district maps that were not drawn by the majority party in state legislature (i.e. “gerrymandered”), but by special masters who did not take into consideration existing incumbents or political voting patterns. The result was highly competitive districts, many with no incumbents, including the state house and state senate seat where I had lived and grown up my entire life. Indeed, where I lived, the state house seat was the most competitive seat in the state and had no incumbent, while the state senate seat was one of the top 5 most competitive in the state with a Republican incumbent.
The same Democrat trifecta in 2020 also passed a clean energy mandate, which legally required Virginia’s public utility commission and, by extension, Virginia utilities, to plan for and reach 100% clean energy by 2050. As I learned about this powerful combination of ending gerrymandering and enacting a clean energy plan, I began to realize that state legislatures are an incredibly underrated forum for political change. While much of the media focuses on the minutia of details between supreme court cases or congressional bills, there is a whole ocean of state-by-state progress (or regress) that is only reported on by specific state and local media. Indeed, because of the federalist system of government we have, there are oftentimes policy measures that are easier or better suited to pass at the state level than at the federal level (e.g. clean energy mandates).
The reason I even considered running for office is not because of any personal interest in politics — it frankly had never crossed my mind before that running for state legislature might be something I would undertake1. What motivated me was the realization of the neglected importance of state legislatures and more personally, the deep connection and love I have for the community that I grew up my entire life.
There were also some individual factors that would make me a unique candidate, if I did decide to run:
I’m born and raised in the district
I’m Asian American in a house district that is 20% Asian and my family and I have strong ties across those communities
I’m young in a state legislature that is fairly gerontocratic
2022
I spent much of 2022 exploring the local Democrat party – going to their events and getting to know people who were active in the local group. I think it helped that I was young – many of the organizers I met at events were excited to see more young people and specifically reached out to me and helped me get plugged in. What was most surprising to me was how small these groups really are. There were maybe 4 other people in their 20’s who were seriously involved (one of whom ended up running for local office that cycle).
One of the primary lessons I learned is that local political organizing is far more non-competitive and positive-sum than national politics. Local organizing is strictly a function of who shows up. The impact arbitrage is immense because while everyone is competing for power in DC, only the people who live in your area are “in the arena” and because the stakes are seen as lower, there are far fewer people engaged. As a result, even though I was showing up as a new person with no context, everyone was incredibly welcoming and actively worked to get me more involved.
Despite this, I ended up deciding not to run, for a variety of reasons:
Part-time state legislature makes it very difficult to hold a real career and be a legislator. In Virginia, the legislative session runs during the first couple months of the year, and there are few jobs that will let you take off from January-February, with potentially some late sessions in June, hence why the saying goes that state legislators are “Rich, Retired, or Realtors”. The pay itself is also quite poor.
There is also a path-dependency to going into politics. Especially as a young person in the early stage of my career, it would be hard to explain to any future employer why I went from ML engineer, to state legislator, and now wanted to do *insert technical job*. I wanted to preserve my optionality as I wasn’t really interested in a lifelong political career.
While I was just getting interested in politics, I was already a bit behind timeline-wise. Several other candidates ended up declaring their candidacy while I was a few months into exploring this new world.
While I think the idea of being ✨different✨ and running for state legislature seemed attractive, I really didn’t know if I would enjoy any of it. In other words, I was fairly convinced of its impact and importance, but really had no baseline for gauging whether it was something I would enjoy. There are also potentially some things intrinsic to electoral politics that I might find difficult to be willing to do.
In summary, it ended up being too far and high-risk of a leap for me and I ended up doing something that I found as impactful but provided more optionality in career trajectories.
While I myself did not run, I did end up convincing a (far braver and kinder) friend to run instead! My friend Ashwin Ramaswami is running for Georgia state senate against someone indicted for seeking to overturn the 2020 Presidential election. I cannot say enough good things about Ashwin and how we need more people like him in public office!
If you are interested in running for elected office or just curious to hear more about my experience exploring local political parties, feel free to reach out!
If you want an easy way to support more pro-climate local and state candidates, Climate Cabinet Action Fund is a great org that identifies and supports battleground local Board of Supervisor/County Commissioner, state legislature, and public utility commission races that are underreported races, where relatively small amounts of support can actually tip the scales. They also graciously offered me some of their time and advice when I was exploring running for office.
2023
Although I decided not to run for state office, I was still acutely aware of how competitive my district was and of how much leverage I had as someone who had lived in the district my whole life and consequently had a strong community in the area. In particular, Chinese Americans as a group, I would guess, are likely one of the least politically engaged and most conservative Asian ethnicities. 2
And in tight local and state elections, the margin can be on the order of votes. In 2017, a state house district in Virginia was decided by one vote (because it was so close, it actually went to a lottery). And because Virginia as a state is so competitive, that one state house race determined which party controlled the Virginia state house legislature. That one vote and that one lottery delayed Democrats from holding a trifecta3 in state legislature for an extra election cycle.
So in September 2023, I organized a town hall for Chinese Americans to meet with our local state senate and board of supervisor candidates.
Event logistics:
Invite the candidates – they were more than willing to come out, as they are looking exactly for these kinds of events, that bring out less engaged voters in a friendly environment!
Identify a venue (HOA community club) and coordinate food
I shared the event with my friends and my parents pulled some social credit and brought out a lot of their first-generation Chinese American parent peers
I also planted several questions in the crowd that I wanted to socialize with these candidates, specifically about increasing the supply of housing and ending legacy admissions in universities. The state senate candidate who attended won his election and introduced bills on both topics!45
Credit goes to my parents, who were willing to help make this event possible!
2024
Redistricting also resulted in me having a new congressman (Robb Wittman), who had previously represented more rural areas to the north and west. I realized that Congressman Wittman was on the House Select Committee on the CCP, one of the primary bodies in Congress with a specific mandate to figure out a US-China strategy. Immigration is one of the clear supply-side policies that I wanted to support and had personally affected many of my international student friends from college. I also wanted to help hedge against any discrimination against Chinese Americans by promoting dialogue between the people who represent us in Washington DC and actual Chinese American constituents. To that end, I organized a roundtable with Congressman Wittman and the local Chinese American community.
Event Logistics:
Invite the Congressman – I called his district office, and they gave me the email of his scheduler. It took 3 months to nail down a time but they were generally accommodating and followed up. If you are a constituent in an election year and you are offering to bring constituents (i.e. voters) to a representative, they will be very receptive
Identify a venue (public library) and coordinate food
Because I wanted the event to focus on immigration, I focused on getting my parents to pull in other first-generation immigrants like them to the event. I also placed a heavier selection filter, as I wanted the event to be more of a dialogue for the Congressman to have conversations with real Chinese Americans
Overall, I think people greatly underestimate:
the marginal impact of state legislatures and getting involved in local political organizing. These passion projects are run by a small set of everyday citizens and in competitive states, your marginal contribution can actually change political outcomes!
how easy it is to meet with your representative about any topic! Representatives are highly responsive to constituents - what is lacking is not willigness of responsiveness of elected officials, but community members who are willing to take a small amount of time and effort to create spaces to engage outside of the ballot box (although those are important too!)
In the next post, I’ll share about the local organizing work I did instead of running for state legislature
something something role models are important
on average, Chinese Americans are likely not as conservative as Vietnamese or Filipino Americans, but definitely to the right of Korean and Indian Americans
Trifecta: when a single party controls the executive branch and both chambers of a legislative body (e.g. house and senate)
While both the state senator and board of supervisor candidate I invited to the event ended up winning their elections, the a Republican candidate won the state house district that I was exploring running for in my neighborhood by <1000 votes.