As the midterms loom, one key House race in California is drawing significant attention both to Asian Americans in the district, and from them. The race features a rare matchup between two Asian Americans, and the result hinges on Asian Americans, who make up about a third of the district’s voters. “I think here, we’re seeing a wake-up call,” Connie Chung Joe, chief executive of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, told NBC News. Within the electorate, almost half are of Vietnamese descent, one of the few Asian American groups that tends to lean right. It’s something, Joe said, that white candidates, for example, can “take for granted.”But Wong added that accusing another Asian American candidate of being disloyal “hurts the whole Asian American community.”As fiery as the race has been, it’s also reflective of a political maturation within the Asian American community, experts say.

---