This week, Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House and current Republican presidential candidate was in California campaigning to reach out to the Asian American community:
Newt Gingrich has determined that the Asian vote will help win him the Republican primaries, so he headed to California to lock it up. He’ll host a series of meetings with Thai, Korean and Chinese community leaders in the Los Angeles area on Thursday, put together with the help of Michelle Steel, a Korean-American who’s vice chair of the California State Board of Equalization. … This new appeal to Asian voters arrives in the middle of a West Coast campaign swing that will take him to Hollywood and the Richard Nixon Presidential Library for screenings of his documentaries, then to Hawaii. But it’s also part of the campaign’s larger effort to broaden its appeal to new demographics.
Currently, the California Republican primary next year is scheduled for June. I’ll be shocked if Gingrich can even last until the end of *this* year financially, let alone until next June. His campaign debt stands at about $1 million dollars; he barely has a campaign staff (which mostly defected a few months ago), and did terribly in the Iowa straw poll.
But I do appreciate the effort that Gingrich is making. I feel sorry for Michelle Steel though – if she thinks that Gingrich actually has a chance to win the Republican nomination, let alone survive until June 2012 – she is delusional. Even if California unemployment remains at 12%, I don’t think any Republican will defeat Obama unless Governor Huntsman wins the Republican nomination (since he’s the most moderate). Most Asian Americans in California are either not politically affiliated or are registered as Democrats.
