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In Polarized 2022 Midterms, US Candidates Find Common Ground Opposing China

As American voters get ready for the midterm elections next month, candidates from both parties are pledging tough policies on China in hopes of wooing voters.

American attitudes toward China have worsened in recent years, especially since the 2020 coronavirus outbreak. New data from Pew Research Center said that this year, 82% of Americans have an unfavorable view of China, a historical high. Five years ago, that number was about half, standing at 47%.

Polls indicate those negative views are shared by Republicans and Democrats, which is why candidates from both parties are talking about China and Beijing’s formidable economic power.

“We have to stop being weak on China. We have to stop sending American jobs to people who hate us,” said J.D. Vance, the Republican Senate candidate in Ohio who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump.

His Democratic opponent, incumbent Representative Tim Ryan, is equally critical.

“It’s us versus China. China is out-manufacturing us left and right, and it’s time we fight back,” he tweeted. Both candidates support keeping steep U.S. tariffs on Chinese products.

In Pennsylvania, Democratic Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman said he will “work to guarantee that we don’t allow China to out-innovate us.” His Republican opponent for the U.S. Senate, Dr. Mehmet Oz, has made “get tough on China” one of his key campaign messages.

In Missouri, State Attorney General Eric Schmitt calls China a growing military, economic and public health threat.

His opponent for the U.S. Senate, Democrat Trudy Busch Valentine, criticizes Schmitt for supporting legislation that allows foreign ownership of farmland that her campaign claims has allowed more than 100,000 acres of Missouri land to be purchased by Chinese-controlled companies.

In Arizona, Republican challenger Blake Masters insists that Chinese students in America are a threat to U.S. national security.

Incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Kelly was a key supporter of the CHIPS and Science Act, a measure that aims at winning the tech war with China.

“China is pretty much front and center in this election,” Dean Chen, an associate professor of political science at the Ramapo College of New Jersey, told VOA Mandarin.

“When campaigns become highly polarized and highly competitive, there’s got to be an issue that is prominent enough that can raise the attention. It is always easier to find an external common enemy and adversary in order to unite local constituents behind themselves,” he said in a phone interview.

Frank Sesno, a communications professor and director of strategic initiatives at The George Washington University, said China is being framed increasingly in the context of national security and less visibly in terms of economic opportunity.

“China is being positioned increasingly as a national threat. Not merely a competitor but an adversary. I would say portrayal has intensified, and it appears to be a theme increasingly of both parties,” he told VOA Mandarin.

‘Rare bipartisan unity’

According to research by the U.S. China Business Council, an industry group helping American companies do business in China, the number of China-related bills considered by U.S. lawmakers has increased dramatically in the last five years.

From 2001 to 2017, the number of China-related bills considered by each Congress hovered around 200 to 250. Since 2017, that number has skyrocketed to some 639 bills in the last Congress and already more than 700 in this Congress.

The Biden administration has passed several important China-related bills since coming into office. The CHIPS Act will provide $52.7 billion in investment in U.S. domestic semiconductor manufacturing and research and development to counter China’s massive subsidies to its chip industry.

The National Critical Capabilities Defense Act seeks to establish a review process for U.S. companies to invest abroad, aiming to prevent U.S. capital from flowing to Chinese technology companies.

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act prohibits forced labor products from Xinjiang from entering the United States.

All three bills have enjoyed wide support from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

“What’s most interesting about sentiment on China in this country’s politics is it is such a rare point of bipartisan unity,” said Dan Schnur, a political science professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He has worked on four presidential and three gubernatorial campaigns as one of California’s leading political strategists.

“I cannot think of any other issue on which the two parties set aside their differences, especially in an election year,” he told VOA.

Schnur said the “get tough on China” card is being received particularly well in America’s heartland, because the upper Midwest has been a base of manufacturing capacity. But over the last few decades, many of those manufacturing jobs have left the U.S. and gone to other parts of the world.

“When you have a working-class electorate that doesn’t feel this globalization is working to their benefit, then it’s fairly easy for a candidate of either party to try to capitalize on the sentiments,” he explained.

Anna Tucker Ashton, director of China corporate affairs at the Eurasia Group, agrees.

“That is where there is the most acute sense that U.S. jobs were outsourced to China, that China stole American jobs, and that a decrease in overall quality of life in these communities is directly linked to not being tough on China,” she told VOA Mandarin.

Pew said the negative views of China are tied to China’s human rights record and concerns about its growing military power.

Sesno said Beijing changing its hard-line policies will improve relations.

“The Chinese are fueling this. Things that are driving those numbers up are China’s policy toward Uyghurs, China’s threats toward Taiwan, China’s nationalist rhetoric, [the] Xi Jinping presidency and a third term, and the increasingly nationalist tenure and tone of the Beijing government,” he told VOA. “So, this is not happening in a vacuum, and it’s not happening merely because of American politics.”
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US Supreme Court’s Thomas Temporarily Blocks Graham Election Case Testimony

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday temporarily blocked a judge’s order requiring Senator Lindsey Graham to testify to a grand jury in Georgia in a criminal investigation into whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies unlawfully tried to overturn 2020 election results in the state. 

Thomas put the case on hold pending further action either from the justice or the full Supreme Court on a request by Graham, a Republican from South Carolina and Trump ally, to halt the order for testimony. Graham filed the emergency application to the Supreme Court on Friday after a federal appeals court denied his request to block the questioning.

Thomas acted in the case because he is designated by the court to handle emergency requests from a region that includes Georgia. 

Graham has argued that his position as a senator provides him immunity under the U.S. Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause from having to answer questions related to his actions as part of the legislative process. 

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has subpoenaed Graham to answer questions about phone calls he made to a senior Georgia election official in the weeks after the November 2020 election. 

Atlanta-based U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May last month narrowed the scope of questions that Graham must answer from the grand jury, ruling that he is protected from having to discuss “investigatory fact-finding” that he was engaged in during his calls to state election officials. 

However, May said he may be questioned about alleged efforts to encourage officials to throw out ballots or alleged communication with the Trump campaign. May rejected Graham’s bid to avoid testifying altogether. 

The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday declined to block Graham’s testimony pending an appeal. 

Graham is not a target in the investigation, but his testimony could shed further light on coordination among Trump allies to reverse the election results.

The senator’s lawyers said in his application that the testimony would “undisputedly center on Senator Graham’s official acts — phone calls he made in the course of his official work, in the leadup to the critical vote under the Electoral Count Act.  

Trump continues to appear at rallies repeating his false claims that the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud. 

The investigation was launched after Trump was recorded in a January 2, 2021, phone call pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the state’s election results based on unfounded claims of voter fraud. During the phone call, Trump urged Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, to “find” enough votes to overturn his Georgia loss to Biden. 

The transcript of the call quotes Trump telling Raffensperger: “I just want to find 11,780 votes,” which is the number Trump needed to win Georgia. Trump has denied wrongdoing in the phone call. 

Legal experts have said Trump’s phone calls may have violated at least three state election laws: conspiracy to commit election fraud, criminal solicitation to commit election fraud and intentional interference with performance of election duties. 
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Republican Committee Sues Google Over Email Spam Filters

The Republican National Committee has filed a lawsuit against tech giant Google, alleging the company has been suppressing its email solicitations ahead of November’s midterm elections – an allegation Google denies.

The lawsuit, filed in the District Court for the Eastern District of California Friday evening, accuses Gmail of “discriminating” against the RNC by unfairly sending the group’s emails to users’ spam folders, impacting both fundraising and get-out-the-vote efforts in pivotal swing states.

“Enough is enough – we are suing Google for their blatant bias against Republicans,” said RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel in a statement to The Associated Press. “For 10 months in a row, Google has sent crucial end-of-month Republican GOTV and fundraising emails to spam with zero explanation. We are committed to putting an end to this clear pattern of bias.”

Google, in a statement, denied the charges. “As we have repeatedly said, we simply don’t filter emails based on political affiliation. Gmail’s spam filters reflect users’ actions,” said spokesperson Jose Castaneda, adding that the company provides training and guidelines to campaigns and works to “maximize email deliverability while minimizing unwanted spam.”

The lawsuit focuses on how Google’s Gmail, the world’s largest email service with about 1.5 billion users, screens solicitations and other material to help prevent users from being inundated by junk mail. To try to filter material that account holders may not want in their inboxes, Google and other major email providers create programs that flag communications likely to be perceived as unwelcome and move them to spam folders that typically are rarely, if ever, perused by recipients.

The suit says Google has “relegated millions of RNC emails en masse to potential donors’ and supporters’ spam folders during pivotal points in election fundraising and community building” – particularly at the end of each month, when political groups tend to send more messages. “It doesn’t matter whether the email is about donating, voting, or community outreach. And it doesn’t matter whether the emails are sent to people who requested them,” it reads.

Google contends its algorithms are designated to be neutral, but a study released in March by North Carolina State University found that Gmail was far more likely to block messages from conservative causes. The study, based on emails sent during the U.S. presidential campaign in 2020, estimated Gmail placed roughly 10% of email from “left-wing” candidates into spam folders, while marking 77% from “right-wing” candidates as spam.

Gmail rivals Yahoo and Microsoft’s Outlook were more likely to favor pitches from conservative causes than Gmail, the study found.

The RNC seized upon that study in April to call upon the Federal Election Commission to investigate Google’s “censorship” of its fundraising efforts, which it alleged amounted to an in-kind contribution to Democratic candidates and served as “a financially devastating example of Silicon Valley tech companies unfairly shaping the political playing field to benefit their preferred far-left candidates.”

Since then, the commission has approved a pilot program that creates a way for political committees to get around spam filters, so their fundraising emails find their way into recipients’ primary inboxes. Gmail is participating in the “Verified Sender Program,” which allows senders to bypass traditional spam filters, but also gives users the option of unsubscribing from a sender. If the unsubscribe button is hit, a sender is supposed to remove that Gmail address from their distribution lists.

As of Friday evening, the RNC had not signed up to participate in the pilot program.

Republicans who have tried to cast doubt on the outcome of the 2020 election without parroting the most extreme and baseless claims about corrupted voting machines and stolen votes have often tried to blame big technology companies like Twitter and Facebook that they allege were biased against former President Donald Trump. A long list of state and local election officials, courts and members of Trump’s own administration have said there is no evidence of the mass fraud Trump alleges. 
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Somali Americans, Many Who Fled War, Now Seek Elected Office

It’s a busy Friday afternoon at a Somali restaurant on the northeast side of Columbus, home to second-largest Somali population in the United States. The smell of spices is just as robust as the loud conversation, and the East African restaurant is crowded after afternoon prayers at the nearby mosque.

The hubbub grows when a familiar face swaggers in — Ismail Mohamed, a young Somali lawyer and candidate for the Ohio Legislature. Elders and youth alike clamor to say hello. The excitement that someone from their community could represent them in the legislature is palpable.

“It’s humbling to, you know, to be in this position, but it puts a lot of pressure on you to where folks have really high expectations,” he said.

The 30-year-old Democrat is one of a small but growing number of immigrants who fled civil war and famine in Somalia, ready to add their voices to the political process in the places they now call home.

Across the country, 11 Somali Americans are running for legislative seats in Maine, Minnesota, Ohio and Washington state. Somali Americans have also been elected to city councils, school boards and, in Minnesota, legislative seats and Congress.

The growing political clout corresponds with growing numbers. There was an influx of Somalians arriving in the United States in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and their numbers now top 300,000.

“We’re just getting started. I hope there are more to come,” said Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

They are part of an age-old trend of new immigrants testing the waters of the political process once they have settled in the United States. Many Somali American candidates say they want to lend their voices, ensure their communities have a seat at the table, and offer up solutions to the problems plaguing their communities.

“Our driving force is to see betterment for everybody that lives here. Running for office is our way of showing we’re here and we’re willing to contribute,” said Mana Abdi, who is expected to win her race and make history as the first Somali American in the Maine legislature.

Abdi wears a headscarf because of her Muslim faith, like most people from Somalia, while knocking on doors and visiting with residents outside assisted living community on a recent afternoon.

The 26-year-old Democrat came to America as a child, graduated from the University of Maine at Farmington and works at Bates College, and is unopposed because her Republican opponent dropped out after sharing a social media post saying that Muslims shouldn’t hold office.

She could be joined by another Somali American, South Portland Mayor Deqa Dhalac, who’s running for another legislative district in Maine.

Dhalac, a 54-year-old social worker and a Democrat, said part of the reason she was inspired to run was Republican former President Donald Trump, who made a vulgar comment about immigrants from Haiti and Africa and banned travel from several Muslim countries, including Somalia.

“If we do not run for office, we cannot blame other people for making policy and legislation and complain about it. You have to be at the table if you want to make good decisions for your community,” she said.

The newcomers share many of the same concerns as those born in the U.S. The candidates are focused on affordable housing, public safety and increased funding for schools — issues that directly impact their communities.

“People do ask ‘are you an American?’ just because your last name is, you know, Mohamed or, you know, Abdi,” Mohamed said, noting that fellow immigrants are proving they’re just as American as others by serving in the armed forces and becoming doctors, lawyers, engineers and more.

Like Abdi, 26-year-old Munira Abdullahi is all but guaranteed to be the first Somali woman and first Muslim woman to serve in the Ohio Legislature because she, too, is unopposed. Abdullahi, who is running as a Democrat, was born in a refugee camp after her parents fled Somalia. A couple decades later, she’s youth director for the Muslim American Society and a graduate of Ohio State University.

“I know a lot of young women are looking up to me and seeing themselves in me and they’re realizing, like, they could also do this,” she said. “I really want young women and young women of color, especially, to look at me and say, like, if I really want to do this, I can.”

The immigrants are bringing diverse views and experiences and are contributing to the economy by starting businesses and bringing new energy to communities, said Molly Herman, citizenship and civic engagement manager for the Immigrant Welcome Center in Portland, Maine.

“Getting new individuals, new perspectives, new or different backgrounds, people coming from all types of places, I think is really important, in continuing a successful democracy,” she said.

The inspiration for some of the candidates is U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who grew up in a refugee camp and became the first Somali American member of Congress. She and several other young Democratic women of color were collectively nicknamed “the squad.”

She said she’s eager to see more Somali Americans joining her in Washington.

“Somali Americans are as American as anyone else, and we don’t need an invitation to show up or serve our communities. I am incredibly proud of all the Somali Americans who are entering into public service and can’t wait to see more of us in the halls of Congress,” she said.
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