PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia will host a presidential forum organized by an Asian and Pacific Islander American voting advocacy group.
Since 2008, APIAVote has attempted to get the community’s issues on the presidential campaign agenda by inviting candidates to speak directly to their members at forums in California, Virginia and Las Vegas. This is the first one in Philadelphia. Executive Director Christine Chen said it was a natural choice.
“Philadelphia is in a key presidential battleground state and with a growing AAPI population, and the community organizations here have been doing a lot of great work not only in Philadelphia but now there are activations in central Pennsylvania as well as western Pennsylvania,” she said.
Before 2020, Chen said only about half of Asian American citizens registered and voted. In the last four years, both voter registration and turnout have increased by the biggest margins, compared to other groups.
“In 2020, only 14% of the general public were first-time voters, but in our community, it was 21%,” she said.
APIAVote is nonpartisan, but Asian voters tend to lean Democratic. Candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton attended the first forum remotely and Joe Biden participated in the 2020 edition, which was held online because of the pandemic.
Republican candidate Donald Trump said he’ll send a surrogate to the July 13 forum at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, but Chen hopes the Biden campaign will send the president or vice president.