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Pinoy Abroad

Win some, lose some: 21 Fil-Am candidates win in US elections


(UPDATED 5:30 p.m.) - The win-loss record of Filipino-American candidates during Wednesday’s (Philippine time) US elections was spotty, with 21 candidates for major political positions winning their runs.  On the national front, Rep. Robert Scott was re-elected to an 11th term as Virginia’s 3rd District representative in the US Congress in Washington, D.C. He first became Virginia's congressman in November 1992. "Having a maternal grandfather of Filipino ancestry also gives Rep. Scott the distinction of being the first American with Filipino ancestry to serve as a voting member of Congress," according to his official biography on the website of the US House of Representatives. However,  Dr. Marisha Agana, the Republican party’s candidate for Ohio’s 13th District US Congressional seat lost her race. On her Twitter account, Agana thanked her followers for their prayers and support. She also vowed to be a "pain in the behind" of her more successful opponent, Tim Ryan. Agana also made it clear what she thought of the newly reelected President Barack Obama. “It took 21 years for the  Filipino people to wake up from Marcos' charms & topple his dictatorship! It may take 4 more years to end Obama's reign,” tweeted Agana.
Based on a list compiled by GMA News TV, the following are the confirmed Fil-Am winners:
List of winners confirmed on November 8, 2012:
1. Robert C. /Bobby/ Scott - 10th term as Virginia congressman (3rd district)
2. Rob Bonta - California state legislature assemblyman
3. Henry Aquino ( Hawaii House of Rep 38th district) - unopposed
4. Romy Cachola (Hawaii  House of Rep 30th district) - unopposed
5. Gilbert S. Keith-Agaran (Hawaii House of Rep 9th district) - unopposed
6. Will Espero (Hawaii Senate 19th district) - unopposed
7. Donna Mercado Kim (Hawaii Senate 14th district) - unopposed
8. Della Au Belatti (Hawaii House of Rep 24th district),  won  
9. Rida Cabanilla-Arakawa (Hawaii House of Rep 41st), won
10. Ty Cullen (Hawaii House of Rep 39th district) won
11. Donovan Dela Cruz (Hawaii Senate 22nd district) won
12. Jim Navarro (Union City Council) won
13. Wendy Ho (Evergreen Valley Community College Board, District 5) won
 
List of winners confirmed on November 8, 2012:
14. Dennis Rodriguez Jr. (Guam Senate) won
15. Jonas Dino, New Haven (New Haven USD Governing Board Member, Union City) - won 2nd place (three seats)
16. Rudy Nasol (San Jose Evergreen Community College School District) - won
17. Jose Esteves, Mayor of Milpitas, re-elected - won by 72%;
18. Tony Daysog - ALAMEDA City Council -  won; 2nd place
19. Stewart Chen - ALAMEDA City Council - won 3rd place, will take over Rob Bonta's city council seat when Rob Bonta becomes a CA Assemblymember
20. Dennis Rodriguez - Guam Senate, re-electionist - won
21. Vince Songcayawon - Evergreen School District Board of Trustee - won
Hawaii A good number of Fil-Am candidates ran for public office in the state of Hawaii. Former Hawaii Governor Ben Cayetano, perhaps the best known Fil-Am politician being the first such governor of a state, lost his bid as the mayor of Honolulu. According to a report from Honolulu TV station KHON2, Cayetano received only 46 percent of the vote. As he conceded to his opponent, Kirk Caldwell, Cayetano said this was his ninth and last political race. More fortunate were Henry Aquino, Romy Cachola and Gilbert S. Kieth-Agaran, as all three ran unopposed for a Hawaii state congressional seat. The result for the Hawaii state House of Representatives show that:
  • Della Au Belatti won the 24th District’s seat with 62% of the vote;
  • Rida Cabanilla-Arakawa (41st District) won with 4,277 or 57.6 percent of the votes, and
  • Ty Cullen (39th District) also won with 70.3 percent.
Unfortunately, Marissa Capelouto (42nd District) and Chris Manabat (40th District) failed to win seats in Hawaii’s state legislature. In the Hawaii state Senate, two Fil-Ams ran unopposed:
  • Will Espero (19th District), and
  • Donna Mercado Kim (14th District).
Meanwhile, Donovan de la Cruz (22nd District) successfully ran for his state Senate post with an impressive 69.3 percent of the electorate backing him. Kymberly Marcos Pine won a Honolulu’s City Council seat with 59.5 percent of the vote. Greggor Ilagan (4th District) has his seat in the Hawaii’s County Council at 59.2 percent and Don Guzman had a majority of the votes for a Maui County Council seat. Chelsea Yagong (1st District) failed in her run for Honolulu City Council post. She lost to Valerie Poindexter. West Coast In the Golden State of California, another hotbed of Fil-Am political ambitions, Rob Bonta squeaked by with 50.8 percent of the vote, but still winning the 18th District’s State Assembly seat. Meanwhile, Chris Mateo and Jennifer Ong both lost in their bids to be members of the State Assembly. In more local races, Jose “Joe” Esteves is now the mayor-elect of Milpitas City with a whopping 72.03 percent of the electorate voting for him. Garry Barbadillo was not as fortunate as he failed to win a Milpitas City Council position. In Union City, California, Jim Navarro won his seat with 66.88 of the local electorate voting for him. On the other hand, Hermy Almonte lost in his San Leandro City City Council run as did Stewart Chen in the Alameda City Council elections race. US East Coast Meanwhile, on the East Coast of the U.S., Fil-Ams were also unlucky. Will Sylianteng conceded Pennsylvania’s 151st district state legislative seat contest to Todd Stephens.
Elections over but not in Florida
Tuesday's decisive win by Barack Obama in the US presidential election highlighted how population shifts - ethnic and generational - have buoyed Democrats while forcing Republicans to rethink their message.
 
Without recasting their core message and actively trying to expand their base beyond older mostly white Americans, conservatives could struggle even more in future elections as the nation's population incorporates more Latinos, Asians and other minorities as well as young voters, analysts said.
 
First-time voters, including many young people and immigrants, favored the president by large margins, while older voters leaned to Republican Mitt Romney, Reuters/Ipsos Election Day polling showed.
 
Obama won an estimated 66 percent of the Hispanic vote, according to Reuters/Ipsos election day polling, at a time when the Latino population is growing rapidly in states such as Florida, one of eight or so politically divided states that were crucial in the presidential race. Other estimates put Obama's share of the Hispanic vote above 70 percent.
 
"The nonwhite vote has been growing - tick, tick, tick - slowly, steadily. Every four-year cycle the electorate gets a little bit more diverse. And it's going to continue," said Paul Taylor of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.
 
"This is a very powerful demographic that's changing our politics and our destiny," Taylor said, adding that the number of white voters is expected to continue to decline a few points in each future election cycle.
 
Data has shown for years that the United States is poised to become a "majority minority" nation - with whites a minority of the country - over the next several decades. But Tuesday's results highlighted the political impact.for a graphic.)
 
About 80 percent of blacks, Latinos and other nonwhite voters cast their ballots for Obama on Tuesday compared with less than 17 percent for Romney, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. Obama also won about 63 percent of total voters age 18 to 34.
 
Overall, Romney won nearly 57 percent of the white vote compared with 41 percent for Obama, the polling data showed. The vast majority of votes cast for Romney came from white voters.
 
Demographer William Frey said that division is troubling.
 
The United States has long history of racial divide stemming from its roots in slavery and including the civil rights battles of the 1960s.
 
"We still are a country that's kind of divided, and a lot of that fissure in the population tends to be based in race and age and ethnicity," said Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. "There's kind of a dangerous result in this election when we see older whites moving in one direction and younger minorities moving in another direction."
 
Frey said he sees the gap less as racism and more as a cultural generation gap.
 
"It's a little bit of a warning sign that we need to pay attention to," he said.
 
A growing presence for minorities
 
US data released earlier this year showed the number of ethnic minority births topping 50 percent of the nation's total births for the first time.
 
It will be years before those newest Americans will be old enough to vote, but the demographic shift is clear. Most analysts project whites to be the racial US minority sometime between 2040 and 2050.
 
Latinos, the fastest-growing demographic in the United States, are a huge factor.
 
More than 70 percent voted for Obama compared with about 28 percent for Romney, according to Reuters/Ipsos data.
 
"We are a much more diverse country than we were" just a generation or two ago, said Pew's Taylor, who also oversees the center's Social and Demographic Trends project and the Pew Hispanic Center. The rising number of multiracial children are also likely to become more of a factor, he added.
 
Obama, whose historic win in 2008 made him the first ethnic minority U.S. president, had a black father and a white mother.
 
Aging baby boomers also are a key factor in the demographic transition, as older voters "leave the electorate," as Taylor delicately put it, and young voters more accepting of diversity and an active government are added to the rolls.
 
That could help drive certain civil rights ballot initiatives, like votes in Maryland and Maine on Tuesday to approve same-sex marriage. In each instance, support from younger voters helped put the measures over the top.
 
"It was an election in which the future won over the past," said Marshall Ganz, a Harvard University lecturer on public policy, said of Tuesday's various contests.
— with a report from Reuters, ELR/VVP, GMA News
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