In a historically progressive city, San Francisco’s Asian American community showed up and showed out in support of right-wing candidates and policies down the ballot in the 2024 election. While Trump’s share of Black and Latino voters hardly shifted, Trump captured Asian Americans in tension with the Democratic Party. After President Donald Trump’s onslaught of xenophobic rhetoric attacking Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, his influx of Asian American supporters is counter-intuitive: why are Asian American voters flocking in adoration to President Trump when the President has done nothing but berate and attack their community?
Simply put, the Democratic Party in San Francisco has failed to retain Asian American voters by ignoring their demands and concerns on key issues of public safety, outcry against liberal propositions, and economic problems. Despite the Democratic Party’s support for legislation favoring social welfare, Democrats fail to show Asian Americans that progressive policies support their communities, political messaging President Trump never fails to flaunt.
Predominantly Asian American Neighborhoods like the Sunset, Richmond, Chinatown, Visitacion Valley, and the Excelsior migrated in droves toward the right, culminating in the largest percentage of right-wing votes by racial demographics in San Francisco. Spewing fantasies about economic wealth, anti-affirmative action, and traditional family rhetoric, President Donald Trump successfully lured Asian Americans to his dedication to conservatism.
Support among Asian American communities for President Trump is not just exclusive to San Francisco. Asian American neighborhoods in Los Angeles and New York City also projected a wide margin of support for President Trump, presenting a steeper increase in right-wing vote shares compared to other communities of color.
While the 2024 election saw a dramatic influx of right-wing support from Asian Americans, the Democratic Party planted their seed of Asian American apathy long before the 2024 election, especially in San Francisco voters. Since the 2020 election, San Francisco Democrats have done nothing but fail Asian Americans time and time again. Spearheading the 2022 San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) recall and protesting Proposition K, Asian Americans showed out in protest of democratic policies in a rare act of Asian American political demonstration.
At the heel of the COVID-19 Pandemic, SFUSD prioritized renaming schools and changing long standing admissions requirements to San Francisco’s prestigious Lowell High School. Despite parents’ demand to reopen schools, SFUSD school board proposed the renaming of 44 San Francisco public schools instead of prioritizing getting students back into the classrooms. Compared to other school districts in California, San Francisco had the lowest rate of students in-person by April of 2021, with only 7% of students attending school in classrooms while Santa Barbara and San Diego had more than half of their student population back in-person.
The pandemic also siphoned questions about Lowell High School’s historic merit-based admissions system, requirements that characterized the school as San Francisco’s most prestigious public institution and the United States’ top 100 high schools. Chinese American voters were inflamed at the school board’s annihilation of the selection admissions system, appalled by the school board’s introduction to a lottery-based system in hopes of increasing diversity. With Asian Americans comprising 50% of Lowell High School’s population, Asian Americans feared that the slated benefits of diversity would come at the cost of admissions for their own community. In response to the proposed admissions reform, the Chinese American Democratic Club (CADC) sent a letter to the school board reminding them of the city’s history of Chinese discrimination and Lowell High School’s historic exclusion of Asian Americans: up until 15 years ago, Asian Americans had to earn near-perfect grades to gain admission to the prestigious institution, a requirement not expected of their non-Asian peers.
In my conversation with Janelle Wong, Professor of American Studies at UC Berkeley, we discussed how Asian American conservatism follows a history of opposition to affirmative action and the revocation of merit-based admissions systems. Traditional Asian culture prizes hard work as the solution to academic excellence, leading to disproportionate reparation of Asian Americans in prestigious institutions. Similar to San Francisco, Asian Americans in New York City opposed an admissions reform at a prestigious high school on the same merit-based grounds. With affirmative action, in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court case that ended affirmative action in higher education, plaintiffs cited Asian Americans’ concern at length regarding race-conscious admissions. Conservative legal strategist Edward Blum led Asian Americans in the fight against Affirmative Action, feeding the misconception that increasing diversity for Black, Latino, and Indigenous students comes at the expense of Asian Americans.
Outrageously betrayed, Asian American parents—a typically less politically engaged demographic—spearheaded the school board recall that voted out three of the seven school board members, Alison Collins, Gabriela López, and Faauuga Moliga, lighting the fuse that ignited the Asian American migration to the right.
Two years after the 2022 school board recall, Proposition K taunted Asian American communities on the 2024 San Francisco ballot by proposing the closure of the Great Highway. The Great Highway, running along Ocean Beach and through the Sunset, was a major thoroughfare connecting major Asian American communities in the Richmond, Sunset, and Daly City. Closing the highway meant increased traffic in Asian American residential neighborhoods, lagging transportation times, and difficulty accessing key Asian American hubs. To those living by the highway, the Great Highway was an important roadway that made transportation more accessible. Despite protests from Asian American communities, especially in the Sunset and Richmond, Proposition K passed with support from those farthest away from the beach-side highway, furthering Asian Americans’ feeling of betrayal toward the Democratic Party.
The Great Highway closed down during the COVID-19 Pandemic, turning the busy highway into a leisurely spot for biking, running, and walks along the beach. As COVID-19 restrictions eased, the Great Highway limited closures to the weekend, limiting car usage to the business days. City leaders decided that because the highway no longer ran full-time, replacing the highway for an ocean-side park would both better the environment and provide a waterfront space for leisurely activities. Prominent Democratic leaders backed Proposition K with tremendous support, including Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardido, who represents the Sunset Supporters saw the highway’s closure as a great opportunity for a new neighborhood hangout that furthered climate action. With District 4 vehemently protesting the proposition, Asian American constituents felt Supervisor Engardido had turned on his district and pushed a proposition funded by billionaires and developers. District 4 residents now call for Engardido’s recall, blaming the heavy traffic congestion, lack of public safety concern, and closure of the Great Highway on Engardido’s inability to listen to voters. The recall effort, of course, is spearheaded by Asian Americans.
For San Francisco’s Asian Americans, the Great Highway closure evokes another sore loss–the closure of the Embarcadero Freeway. Once connecting Highways 1, 101, 80, and 280, the elevated roadway along the eastern waterfront served as a vital commercial link between Chinatown and neighborhoods in Oakland, the Excelsior, and the Sunset—home to many Asian American residents. However, the freeway also presented as a concrete structure that overshadowed the iconic Ferry Building on the San Francisco waterfront and posed an environmental threat to climate activists. Rose Pak, a notable advocate for San Francisco’s Chinese American community, protested the many attempts by environmental activists and land developers to tear down the Embarcadero Freeway and successfully delayed the freeway’s closure. But when the Loma Prieta Earthquake damaged the freeway in 1989, the freeway closed for good. After the earthquake, commerce in Chinatown dropped 20-30% because the ruined freeway discouraged Asian Americans from commuting to Chinatown for groceries. In place of the former freeway now exists the Embarcadero Waterfront, a hugely popular public plaza. Advocates for Proposition K have consistently emphasized how the Great Highway will be forgotten just as the closure of the Embarcadero Freeway was forgotten. However, older Asian Americans have not forgotten, frustrated with Democrats’ continued ignorance of their concerns.
Fears surrounding the implications of the Great Highway closure continue to loom as the roadway officially shut down on March 14, 2025. Concerns about increased traffic in residential streets and commute times permeate Asian American communities as they once again feel ignored by Democrats. Where Asian Americans once used the highway to commute to work and access educational institutions, and seek medical care, they now must rely on alternative routes through residential streets. While Selby, an Asian American resident of the Sunset district, voted yes on Proposition K, he understood why his neighbors were so against it. “The Great Highway [was] a main thoroughfare,” he stressed, emphasizing the city’s lack of plans to accommodate traffic flow and provide compensation for impacted neighborhoods.
Though Proposition K passed, support came from neighborhoods furthest from the Great Highway, especially among neighborhoods lacking Asian American representation. Precincts with the densest concentration of Asian Americans—including Chinatown and Japantown located across the city from the Great Highway—voted against the proposition.
Albert Chow, long-time Sunset resident and Asian American owner of Great Wall Hardware in the Sunset district, and other San Franciscans filed a lawsuit against the City and County of San Francisco asking for a temporary injunction blocking the opening of the new Ocean Beach Park replacing the Great Highway. To the community, the situation feels clear: if the neighborhoods bordering the Great Highway truly supported Proposition K, would Chow feel compelled to bring legal action against the city?
The 2022 school board recall and the success of Proposition K compelled the Rose Pak Asian American Club (RPAAC) itself to withdraw from the Democratic Party. In a letter to the San Francisco Democratic Party, RPAAC refused to renew its charter in support of the party, decrying the party’s toxicity toward Asian Americans. Older Asian Americans also feel the Democrats have left Asian Americans behind, failing to address their concerns on public safety, economic stability, and wages—issues Donald Trump has firmly expressed his stance on.
I met and spoke with Sam Hom, a Sunset resident and Chinese American author, in Chinatown to inquire about his new-found support for President Trump. “Aside from his sly racist remarks that hurt the Asian race, he knows business more so than Kamala Harris,” Home articulated, pointing to her dedication to “Obama-style economic policies” that failed to deliver “economic recovery even though [Obama] brags he had.” Hom agreed that public safety and economic prosperity are necessary issues Donald Trump consistently fights for.
Like other older Asian Americans, Hom’s disappointment with the Democratic Party is largely attributed to their failure to respond to his economic insecurity. “Democrats are donkeys who can’t move anything,” Hom commented on the Democrats’ inability to address his economic concerns. When Hom sought a loan to refinance his house, he was denied and referred to an agent to sell his property. Now, Hom thanks Trump for recovering his supplemental security income, praising his commitment to both economic security and family values. Hom scorns the Democrats for having “poor people leading poor people into a valley of nothing.” To Hom, Trump’s wealth gives Asian Americans hope.
Stephanie, Vietnamese American and life-long Sunset Resident, Trump’s wealth is the epitome of the American dream, an aspiration her parents chased as they fled from Communist Vietnam. According to Pew, Vietnamese Americans are more likely than other Asian Americans to register with the Republican Party. As the San Francisco Republican Party reports a drastic swell in Asian American registration, Stephanie believes Trump’s allure is derived from his appeal to traditional, right-wing values that juxtapose the communist values of equality forcing many Vietnamese Americans to flee. Janelle Wong echoed Stephanie’s speculation, noting the tendency for Vietnamese Americans to gravitate toward Republicanism’s “anti-communist sentiments.”
Despite Democrats’ inability to satiate Asian American concerns, Asian Americans’ migration to the right contradicts itself: why support a party that has demonized your community?
While Asian Americans’ increase their vote share in support of the President, Trump continues to be notorious for his flaming xenophobic and anti-Asian rhetoric. As President Trump calls COVID-19 the “China Virus” and spearheads investigations against Chinese researchers, his racist sentiments fueled the 107% increase in violence against Asian Americans. Yet, the President’s effective messaging increased the salience of interests that galvanized support from Asian Americans, dismissing their concerns about his anti-Asian rhetoric.
As the Democratic Party ignores and betrays Asian Americans, they continue to flood Republican votes. Conservatism appeals to traditional Asian values, addressing Asian Americans’ concern with public safety and economic instability. In San Francisco, Democrats ignored Asian Americans school board protests and denouncing of Proposition K, fueling their migration to the right. Asian Americans have made demands Democrats consistently fail to meet; it is no surprise Asian Americans have turned away from the Democrats in search of other venues of support.
Featured Image Source: Josalyn Huynh
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