Shawn Steel | Republican National Committeeman

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Shawn Steel - Republican National Committeeman

October 15, 2012

Shawn Steel – Political Biography

RNC California National Committeeman 2008- Present
Co-Founder Gray Davis Recall, 2003
Immediate Past Chairman, California Republican Party, 2001

Shawn Steel’s Republican activism dates back to his teenage days, he served as High School State Chairman for Ronald Reagan when he first ran for Governor. Thereafter he was elected as Chairman of California Young Americans for Freedom [YAF].

Since then, Shawn Steel has served in countless positions within the Republican Party- from grassroots volunteer to Party Treasurer to Secretary of the Lincoln Clubs to CRP Chairman.

In February of 2001, Shawn Steel was elected Chairman of the California Republican Party and served until 2003. Near the end of his term, Shawn co-chaired, along with Ted Costa, the successful Recall Davis Movement. In February 2008, Shawn defeated the incumbent by 22 points to become new National Committeeman, for the California Republican Party.

Born and raised in California, Shawn Steel attended Los Angeles area public schools and earned his BA at CSU-N, a Masters in History from the University of Southern California. Shawn later earned his Juris Doctorate.

He is published in numerous professional journals, newspapers and books, including the National Review, San Francisco Chronicle, San Diego Union, Los Angeles Daily Journal, California Policy Review, the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Daily Breeze, Washington Times, and the Orange County Register. Shawn is a regular contributor for www.flashreport.org.

Shawn’s wife Michelle Park Steel was elected in 2006 as a Member of the Board of Equalization, a California constitutional office, representing over 8.5 million Californians in a district that encompasses most of Southern California.

Notable & Quotable

July 31, 2012

Shawn Steel, California's Republican National Committeeman, writing July 28 in the Washington Examiner:

If Mitt Romney wants to reach 270 electoral votes, and win the presidency, he must aggressively target Asian-American voters.

Asians—Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Filipinos, Vietnamese and Koreans—are the nation's wealthiest, most highly educated and most aspirational voting demographic. Their numbers have grown by more than 40 percent in the last decade, and they are concentrated in key electoral battleground states like Nevada, Michigan, Colorado, Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

Despite surveys showing Asian-Americans as more favorable toward Obama and government than the general public, their actual voting behavior in recent elections offers Romney an opportunity. Look to 2009, the year Republicans recovered from the Obama blowout and stormed back to retake the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey.

Republican Bob McDonnell targeted Asian-Americans energetically, even though they constitute just 5.9 percent of Virginians. He employed multiple strategies, such as asking Asian business owners to publicly communicate their support by putting McDonnell signs in their storefronts. His campaign communicated with Asian-American voters in their native languages in everything from mailers to radio ads to yard signs. A postelection survey of Asian-American voters in Northern Virginia found that nearly 60 percent voted for McDonnell.

Middlesex, New Jersey's second most populous county, is a perennial Democratic bastion, but in 2009, it went for Chris Christie by 48 percent to 44 percent—almost precisely his statewide margin. Not coincidentally, Middlesex now has among the highest percentages of Asian-Americans outside of Hawaii and the San Francisco Bay area.

Republicans should target Asian voters

July 29, 2012

Republican strategists should pay close attention to the column on Asian voters in the Sunday Examiner by Shawn Steel, Republican National Committeeman from California and former Republican state chairman. Steel points out that Asian voters are now a significant part of the electorate in several target states and that their votes are gettable by Republicans. He cites a survey that Asians voted 60% for Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell in 2009—one reason McDonnell carried Fairfax County where Barack Obama whipped John McCain by a 59%-41% margin. And in 2009 New Jersey Governor Chris Christie carried Middlesex County, which has the nation’s highest Asian percentage outside California and Hawaii. This will not come as a complete surprise to faithful Examiner readers, since two weeks after the November 2009 I wrote a blogpost pointing to just these results, and noting that Christie carried the two largest and ordinarily Democratic jurisdictions in Middlesex County, Edison Township and Woodbridge Township, which have the largest percentage of Indian-origin residents of any cities or towns in the nation outside the San Francisco Bay area.

Asian voters are of course a varied group, with different traditions and different political inclinations, which need to be addressed differently. But as a general proposition they tend to live in affluent suburbs; residents of the United States born in India have higher median household incomes than Americans born in the United States. Like Jewish voters, they tend to be a subset of affluent suburbanites. Are the Romney campaign and Republican activists targeting them? One online comment to Steel’s column suggests the answer may be yes. As commenter Ronny Norman reports, “when I went with my friends to the Asian festival in Fairfax last week, the Asian Romney outreach team was impressive. My friends told me that maintaining personal wealth has historically and culturally been a priority for asians, so he believes they will be voting with their pocket in this November. Here are some pictures they posted on the web:https://picasaweb.google.com/a…” One picture shows former Congressman Tom Davis, a Republican who was elected in the 11th congressional district, which includes parts of Fairfax County with large Asian populations, from 1994 to 2006.

Romney must win over Asian voters

July 27, 2012

If Mitt Romney wants to reach 270 electoral votes, and win the presidency, he must aggressively target Asian-American voters.

Asians -- Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Filipinos, Vietnamese and Koreans -- are the nation's wealthiest, most highly educated and most aspirational voting demographic. Their numbers have grown by more than 40 percent in the last decade, and they are concentrated in key electoral battleground states like Nevada, Michigan, Colorado, Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

Despite surveys showing Asian-Americans as more favorable toward Obama and government than the general public, their actual voting behavior in recent elections offers Romney an opportunity. Look to 2009, the year Republicans recovered from the Obama blowout and stormed back to retake the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey.

Republican Bob McDonnell targeted Asian-Americans energetically, even though they constitute just 5.9 percent of Virginians. He employed multiple strategies, such as asking Asian business owners to publicly communicate their support by putting McDonnell signs in their storefronts. His campaign communicated with Asian-American voters in their native languages in everything from mailers to radio ads to yard signs. A postelection survey of Asian-American voters in Northern Virginia found that nearly 60 percent voted for McDonnell.

Middlesex, New Jersey's second most populous county, is a perennial Democratic bastion, but in 2009, it went for Chris Christie by 48 percent to 44 percent -- almost precisely his statewide margin. Not coincidentally, Middlesex now has among the highest percentages of Asian-Americans outside of Hawaii and the San Francisco Bay area.

Asian-American voters are not immune to the national backlash against Obama's big government blowout. Their values and attitudes, by and large, hew more closely to the GOP economic policies, emphasizing hard work, parental involvement in education, the permanence of marriage and family unity. They link success to individual achievement rather than government beneficence.

Romney doesn't need to win the Asian-American vote outright. It would be enough to improve substantially on the 35 percent that John McCain won. Given the clusters of Asian-American voters who now reside in battleground states, a serious outreach strategy along the lines of McDonnell's successful gubernatorial campaign illuminates a pathway to victory.

There are hundreds of media outlets in battleground states through which Romney can reach Asian-American voters cheaply in their native languages -- especially to Korean, Vietnamese and Filipino audiences, where pro-Republican sentiment is strongest. The Korean Times, for example, has 13 bureaus in the U.S. and a daily edition circulation larger than the Los Angeles Times.

Nevada, Michigan, Colorado, Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Pennsylvania between them hold 111 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Obama carried them all in 2008. Romney needs to flip them. Asian-Americans comprise, on average, 3.8 percent of the population of those states, which could exceed the margin in a close election. A relatively modest investment by Team Romney in Asian outreach, out of the tens of millions it will pour into these states, could put him in the White House. And if, as Democratic strategists fear, turnout by Asian-Americans and other minorities falls below 2008 levels, the decline would occur chiefly among Obama supporters, amplifying any inroads that Romney makes.

The stakes for the future of liberty and limited government are simply too high for the Romney campaign to leave any stone unturned in the search for voters. By dedicating real resources to a sustained, strategic campaign of messaging and get-out-the-vote aimed at Asian-American voters, Romney will not only win the White House, but also lay the foundation for a new Republican majority with the fast-growing Asian voting population as a key pillar.