Suwanee, November 4, 2026 – Georgia’s AAPI candidates had the kind of night their supporters have been organizing toward for years.
Of the 16 AAPI candidates we tracked in state legislative races, 14 won on Tuesday, according to unofficial results from the Georgia Secretary of State. By our count, that would put at least 14 AAPI lawmakers under the Gold Dome in January, up from 10 today.
Not every name on the list had a good night. Republican Azure Duan lost her first race in Johns Creek, and Republican Rep. Soo Hong woke up Wednesday behind by 27 votes out of nearly 24,000 cast.
The wins also came with a strong Democratic tide behind them. Sen. Jon Ossoff won re-election by 18 points and Keisha Lance Bottoms took the governor’s race by nearly nine, so it would be a stretch to credit every margin to AAPI voters alone.
Senate District-7: Romman Moves Up
A race that looked competitive in June never got close in November. Democratic Rep. Ruwa Romman beat Republican Aizaz Shaikh by 22,153 votes in the Gwinnett district, and she will be the first Palestinian American to serve in the Georgia Senate.
The gap is what stands out. In June’s special election to finish Nabilah Parkes’s term, Shaikh came within about two points of Democrat Adrienne White, and he said afterward that the race was far from over. Harris had carried the district by 14 in 2024. Romman’s margin came in at about 32.
It has been a long year for her. She started it running for governor, dropped out in February, and then won a runoff against better-funded civil rights attorney Rahul Garabadu. Advance voting did much of the work on Tuesday: she took those ballots 31,589 to 14,087.
Romman has been part of the AAPI caucus since it began, noting that her homeland is part of Asia too.
Two Rematches, Two Flips
Two years ago, Michelle Kang and Farooq Mughal lost by a combined 701 votes. This time neither race was close.
Kang, who came to Georgia from South Korea in 1992, beat Republican Rep. Matt Reeves in House District-99 by 3,961 votes. She had fallen 621 votes short in 2024. The Korea Daily estimated that about 4,000 of the district’s voters are Korean American, a number that had people watching this race closely long before Tuesday.
Mughal, a Pakistani American who held House District-105 from 2023 to 2025, took his seat back from Republican Rep. Sandy Donatucci. He lost to her by 80 votes in 2024. On Tuesday he won by 5,397.
House District-103: 27 Votes
The closest race on our list is also the hardest to read. Rep. Soo Hong, the first woman of Korean descent to serve in the Georgia House, trails Democrat Chris Luchey 12,004 to 11,977 with all precincts in.
Hong beat Luchey with 60.6% just two years ago. This year the district split almost evenly along the county line. Luchey won the Gwinnett side by 1,747 votes, and Hong won Hall by 1,720.
The count isn’t final. The state’s results show no provisional ballots counted yet, and counties still have to certify. Georgia law generally lets a trailing candidate request a recount when the margin is within half a point, and this one is about a tenth of a point. We found no word from either campaign as of Wednesday morning.
New Faces and Familiar Ones
Three newcomers won comfortably. Jyot Singh, a Gwinnett native and the son of Punjabi immigrants, took the open House District-97 seat Romman left behind. His win was billed as a first for both Sikh and Indian American representation in the legislature.
Bentley Hudgins won in DeKalb’s House District-90 and will be the first Japanese American and the first transgender and nonbinary member of the General Assembly. Rahim Asani, who is originally from Karachi and was making his first run for office, won House District-108.
In Johns Creek, one of the rare races with two Chinese American women at the top of the ticket, Rep. Michelle Au beat first-time candidate Azure Duan by 6,580 votes. Au won with about 55% in 2024, so this was her strongest showing in that seat yet.
The rest of the incumbents held on without much trouble. Sam Park, Long Tran and Charlice Byrd all won contested races. Saira Draper moved up to the Senate in a lopsided District-44 race. Sheikh Rahman, Marvin Lim and Akbar Ali had no opponents, a long way from Ali’s 153-vote win last December.
Down the Ballot: Gwinnett Yes, Forsyth Not Yet
County results told a more mixed story. In Gwinnett, Commissioner Ben Ku, the first Asian American on that board when he won in 2018, cruised past Republican Rodolfo Ochoa 52,387 to 17,079.
Forsyth was harder going. Shuchita Patel, the first South Asian woman to run for the county commission there, lost to Republican incumbent Todd Levent 11,735 to 8,369. It was a real showing in a county where Republicans still hold the upper hand, but the seat did not move.
What Comes Next
All eyes now turn to District-103. If Hong loses, Byrd would be the only Republican left among the AAPI lawmakers we tracked, a real change for a caucus that was founded as bipartisan.
The bigger question is whether this holds in a less friendly year. Several of these seats swung hard in a Democratic wave, and two years from now the climate may look different. Still, Kang and Mughal came back from painful losses, and the 2027 session is set to open with more AAPI lawmakers than Georgia had before.
With the midterm results, Georgia unofficially has the largest AAPI Legislative Caucus in the nation.
All results are unofficial until certified. Sources: Georgia Secretary of State and county election results.
