What's behind these election mailers?: Today So Far

A deeper look at mailers and ads targeting the Seattle area.

This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for November 8, 2022.

All I wanted to do was play Words With Friends, but after every move I was reminded that we live in a world that pits white people and Asians against everybody else.

At least, that's the world we live in if you go by the narrative America First Legal is promoting. AFL has been targeting Western Washington with advertisements delivered via smartphone games (like the one I was playing), and through physical fliers sent to Seattle-area mail boxes. The ads essentially state: left-wing politicians are against white people and Asians; affirmative action is a tool used to keep Asians from succeeding; Asian families will not succeed because of racists policies coming from Democrats and President Biden.

The advertisements have come in the lead up to the midterm election. Oddly, they don't promote a candidate or issue on a ballot. Instead, they simply hype a political, race-based narrative fit for the culture war: target Asians with messaging that sours perceptions of Democrats. Just as with most "news," information, or headline that spreads fast while provoking strong, divisive emotions, a calculated effort is behind it all.

The mailers sent to Western Washington have also caught the attention of University of Washington Researcher Sarah Nguyen, who studies misinformation in the Vietnamese community.

"There are pictures of Biden and also ... news clippings coming from various sources, Fox News, saying how, very vaguely, Biden and the left have made it difficult for Asian-Americans to get job opportunities, to get into school opportunities, and basically get access to rights people have been fighting for ... when in fact, that is not the case," Nguyen told Seattle Now, noting that she saw this messaging echo through Vietnamese channels.

"Within the community, there is a polarized view of many people thinking, 'Well I don't want to support affirmative action if it is going to only support Black and brown people, and Asians are seen outside of that.' Then there are others who see that is not the case, and kind of the fuller story that it's not just about race, but it's about the personal statement, it's a holistic idea that includes affirmative action."

That level of nuance is not readily available through AFL's ads.

America First Legal is an activist organization that considers itself as the other side of the ACLU coin. It uses legal action for Conservative causes. It formed in 2021 and quickly began filing lawsuits and public information requests, targeting the Biden administration and other government agencies, generally pushing hot button issues and divisive narratives. The group was founded by Stephen Miller, advisor to former President Trump. It's worth noting that Miller has been known to use news media to push narratives, and has also been known to favor white nationalist literature. Looking at AFL's website, it presents a professional facade, but as an online content producer, I can tell you that most of it is lifted from open-source photo libraries. I've used many of the same free, generic photos from Unsplash; anybody can. I suspect that similar stock footage was used for the video advertisements that were fed to my smartphone game.

Let's take a closer look at some of the "news" stories that AFL puts in front of its audience.

• "Affirmative action hurts Asian-Americans—but the left just shrugs" is from the New York Post and is not "news." It's an opinion piece. Its author, Vivek Ramaswamy, partially makes a living off his brand of divisive "woke" topics.
• "Lawsuit accuses Amazon of treating minority staff better than Whites, Asians," is not the actual headline of the original report from The Washington Times (a Conservative newspaper known for controversial coverage). The real headline is "Pro-Trump legal group accuses Amazon of racial discrimination." AFL filed a lawsuit and followed up by creating its own publicity. The Washington Times' story appears to be written up largely based on a press release from AFL, including canned statements from Stephen Miller.
• "Texas A&M discriminated against white and Asian faculty job applicants: Lawsuit." Another piece of publicity, published in the Washington Examiner, that America First Legal spurred through its own lawsuit. Miller has previously fed stories to the Washington Examiner to further political narratives while he was an advisor to Trump.
• "My boss said ‘we didn’t need another White guy.’ Say what?" AFL didn't use this headline, rather, it published a quote from the article that states a hiring manager didn't hire someone because, "we didn't need another white guy." This is not a news article. It was an advice column in The Washington Post. The quote is from someone who wrote into the newspaper, so it is unclear how verifiable and genuine the source is. Beyond that, the advice that the columnist provides counters the narrative AFL is promoting.

Presented only as simple headlines and pulled quotes, these articles could appear as if they were original, vetted news stories that went through a more journalistic editorial process.

Let's add this up. America First Legal takes legal action that often leads to media coverage through friendly, Conservative news outlets, and is sometimes spurred through its own press releases with ready-to-go statements. It then transforms that media coverage to push messaging using race and hot button issues as divisive tools. It also uses incomplete, misleading representations of opinion pieces. When presented as "news" clippings on advertisements and mailers, readers cannot easily follow up to uncover the nuance around these articles, or follow them all the way back to the source. AFL appears to be using the election season as a culture war battlefield, using race and hot button issues as divisive weapons. Through that lens, some could call this a propaganda campaign.

Our region is not the only place that America First Legal has struck using racial demographics and tense issues. NPR reports that it has flooded Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas with radio ads targeting Black and Spanish-language communities. In those areas, however, AFL is pushing anti-transgender messaging alongside the same "Democrats are bad" vibe.

Such messaging appears to work on some levels, likely because it hits upon real concerns among targeted communities.

"This comes into play (with) who are they going to vote for, who do they actually want to support looking at the midterms into the next primaries," Nguyen told Seattle Now, adding that in Seattle, there is focus among the Vietnamese community on economic opportunity and building economic stability across generations.

"Particularly, if you look at Chinatown-International District where Little Saigon is placed, there is a lot of displacement happening right now," Nguyen said. "There is a lot of lack of social civic services coming from city and state, and they are really nervous about small businesses having to move because they are not able to afford the space, because they are pushed out, because of new high rises. There is a lot of concern about: 'How do we actually keep an economically stable community and keep our culture in tact without having that gentrification push us out?'"

Check out Nguyen's full conversation with Seattle Now here.

Fingers crossed that after the midterm election is over, I can safely play Words With Friends again and things will return to normal — which is being pelted with other ads, for other smartphone games, that will further make me feel guilty for how much screen time I'm using each week.

AS SEEN ON KUOW

Herbert Hightower was killed by police in north Seattle on September 8, 2004. Police said he was holding a knife and that he was coming toward them. Police are trained to see knives as lethal force, on par with guns. Herbert Hightower is one of at least 13 people since 2004 who have been killed by Seattle Police because they were holding a knife. (Courtesy of Castill Hightower)

DID YOU KNOW?

The Port of Olympia turned 100 this week. It was initially formed, via public vote, on Nov. 7, 1922. Trade using the waterways of the Salish Sea goes back long before settlers came to the region.

As HistoryLink points out, what we call the Budd Inlet today was used by Native tribes before Olympia sprouted up in the mid-1800s. Its location makes it pretty valuable. It's one of the furthest south points you can reach in Puget Sound. Also, it has deep waters that can accommodate large ships. Through the early 1900s, lumber was the major player out of the port. In recent decades, however, the addition of the Olympia Airport in Tumwater has expanded its role in the region.

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