Population gains slowly taking hold

By Cindy Chang
©2005 San Gabriel Valley Tribune
May 14, 2005

It has been more than two decades since immigrants from Taiwan and Hong Kong began their massive influx into the San Gabriel Valley. Yet Asians have not achieved political power anywhere close to their numerical dominance.

A smattering of Asians sit on local school boards and city councils. Two of the area's representatives in the state assembly are Chinese American.

But of the eight area cities with majority or near-majority Asian populations, only Monterey Park and Walnut have more than one Asian city council member.

Rosemead, a city with an Asian population of just under 50 percent, elected its first Asian-American council member in March. Matthew Lin of San Marino and Chi Mui of San Gabriel are the first Asians to occupy the city council dais in those near-majority Asian communities.

"So many Asians I spoke to when I was campaigning were so happy that they might get representation," said Gary Yamauchi, the third-generation Japanese American who became Alhambra's first Asian council member in November. "I had a lot of Japanese saying, ‘We're so happy a Japanese American is getting in there, starting to get involved in politics.' "

The reasons for the lag in political representation are many, experts and Asians say. Some would-be candidates are too busy trying to establish themselves in a new country, or are not confident enough in their English skills, to run for office. Those who do run may find it difficult to break into old-boy networks that still operate in some cities. Racism is not as prevalent as it once was, but some Asian politicians say they still encounter subtle forms of discrimination.

At the same time, Asian candidates are unable to fully tap into their natural base: Asian voter turnout is substantially lower than the group's share of the general population.

But politicians and academic experts say the seeds for change are in place, and it is only a matter of time before there are as many Asian faces on local diases as there are in local classrooms. Much progress has been made in the last decade, with the number of Asian officeholders creeping upward and new faces like Yamauchi, Lin and Mui winning breakthrough elections in their cities.

"(Chinese residents) feel more comfortable with me -- they feel we have a connection," Mui said. "I speak Cantonese and some Mandarin, I can read and write. They feel more comfortable getting involved."

The vital structures of minority politics -- Asian networking groups and fund-raising arms, nonprofits specializing in registering Asian immigrant voters -- are already functional, if not fully developed. As more Asians rise to positions of power, they will evolve their own systems of patronage, just as their African-American and Latino predecessors have, political analysts say.

And as the Asian population continues to grow in both influence and numbers, politicians running for statewide and national office will begin to pay attention to the needs of a group that has been labeled a "model minority" but still has many members who are limited by poor English skills and are struggling to obtain citizenship and establish themselves financially.

"For sure, you're going to see a lot more Asian-American elected officials at all levels -- the city council, the school board, the assembly, the state senate for sure. The only question is how fast the pace will be," said Paul Zee, an immigrant from Hong Kong who in the 1990s became the first Asian to serve on the South Pasadena City Council.

Blueprint for victory

From the outset of his Alhambra City Council campaign, Yamauchi enlisted a cadre of Chinese-American volunteers who were plugged into both the city's business establishment and its Chinese-speaking immigrant circles.

In what was shaping up to be a tooth-and-nail battle between two factions for control of the city, Yamauchi was backed by Alhambra's political establishment. But he still needed every vote he could get.

He was not sure how his Japanese ancestry would play. Unlike most of Alhambra's Asian residents, he was not a Chinese or Vietnamese immigrant and could communicate with non-English speakers no better than any other candidate. His main opponent, a young Latina attorney, had the backing of a powerful, regionwide Latino political machine.

Yamauchi's strategists mapped out a campaign schedule that included stops at nearly every restaurant opening and awards ceremony where the Chinese-language media would be in attendance. He won endorsements from Asian groups like the Chinese American Business Association, emphasizing the need for an Asian representative who would have a natural sympathy with immigrant constituents.

"Gary's got a very good opportunity, because at least he's Asian and he'll get a little bit more coverage in the Asian papers," said Stephen Sham, a Yamauchi campaign aide who is contemplating his own City Council run in two years.

Sure enough, Yamauchi's candidacy was featured in publications like Sing Tao and the Chinese Daily News, primary sources of information for Alhambra voters whose poor English keeps them from accessing the mainstream media.

But any advantage conferred on Yamauchi by his Asian ancestry was diminished by a simple calculus: Many of the city's immigrant voters are not U.S. citizens, and many of those who have made it through the lengthy naturalization process are not registered to vote.

In the November 2000 elections, which like 2004 included a presidential contest and city council and school board contests, Alhambra's Asian voters cast 38 percent of the city's ballots, according to a study of U.S. Census and county voting data by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center.

That constitutes a sizable voting bloc but one that is still much smaller than Asian residents' 48.6-percent share of the population.

Getting immigrants to the polls

The voting gap begins with citizenship. Only 49 percent of voting-age Asians in Los Angeles County are U.S. citizens, according to the APALC study.

Those who are citizens are registered to vote at rates much lower than the population at large. Between 55 and 60 percent of the county's eligible Asians are registered to vote, compared with 82 percent of the general population.

In Alhambra, only about 45 percent of eligible Chinese were registered. In Rosemead and El Monte, the figure was about 38 percent for Chinese voters. Those Asians who are registered to vote generally turn out at lower rates than the rest of the population, though there are exceptions.

Race-specific data for the 2004 elections is not yet available.

"They say they're too busy. They're afraid it'll mean jury duty. They say they don't speak English or they can't take off from work,"said Sandra Chen, former executive director of the Center for Asian Americans United for Self Empowerment, or CAUSE, a Pasadena-based group that registers Asian-American voters.

Experts cite a variety of reasons for low voting rates among Asians, most centered on the immigrant population's continuing adjustment to life in the U.S., whether it is poor English, burdensome work schedules or unfamiliarity with democratic institutions. The same factors, the experts say, have likely limited the pool of qualified Asians running for office.

Local observers credit CAUSE with registering many new Asian voters and guiding them through the voting process. But CAUSE, the only group in the San Gabriel Valley that focuses on Asian voters, operates with four full-time employees and can only do so much to reach the tens of thousands of Asian citizens who remain unregistered.

Some of the slack is taken up by Asian candidates looking to give themselves an edge by narrowing the gap between the population figures and turnout figures. Those candidates describe running into the same obstacles as their counterparts at CAUSE.

"It's so labor-intensive, my God. You have to take them by the hand," said Joaquin Lim, a Hong Kong immigrant who is in his second term on the Walnut City Council. "If they're newly registered, that doesn't mean they'll vote. You have to call them, remind them there's an election coming up."

While African Americans and Latinos lean heavily Democratic, Asians split about evenly between the two major political parties and register Independent at a rate twice that of other ethnic groups, according to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California.

In part because of the difficulty of crafting a message for such a diverse audience, most candidates for statewide office have done little to reach out to Asian voters, even though they constitute 12 percent of the population and 8 percent of registered voters statewide.

A community that is already culturally and linguistically diverse is becoming even more fragmented as it grows in numerical and political strength, some observers say, making it harder for Asian politicians to establish a base.

"Community leaders often struggle to find common ground between different Asian-American groups. That can mean divisions along ethnic lines, religious lines, gender lines or generational lines," said Janelle Wong, a professor of political science at USC. "I don't think people realize how difficult it is to bring the Asian-American community together to vote as a bloc."

Becoming ‘one of them'

With the influence of a core constituency diminished, Asian politicians cannot rely exclusively on the Asian vote, even in majority or near-majority Asian cities. The need to capture mainstream votes may be one reason why Asian political representation has lagged.

"With any minority group growing through immigration, you always have a lag. There's a chunk not eligible to vote, and the population is a little higher than the voting power. Gradually they'll gain power and do it in their own way," said Fred Register, a Pasadena-based political consultant who worked on the re-election campaign of Assemblywoman Carol Liu, D-Pasadena.

Some Asian candidates run "outsider" campaigns or live in one of the few cities where they can afford to draw support mainly from Asian constituents. Others, like Yamauchi and Zee of South Pasadena, were supported by mostly white establishments -- still the most feasible route to power in many jurisdictions.

Barriers at community service organizations like the Rotary Club and the YMCA, where local politicians traditionally cut their teeth, have fallen, with many Asians now serving as board members.

"In Alhambra you haven't been able to elect an Asian because of the old boys -- a small group of old-timers that controls the city. Not one of them is Asian," said David Lang, who has worked as a campaign consultant to Chu and former Los Angeles City Councilman Michael Woo and heads the Indochinese American Political Action Committee. "To overcome that, there are no shortcuts. You have to develop relationships with these people, become one of them."

That is just what Yamauchi did, serving as Rotary Club and Chamber of Commerce president before running for City Council with the support of the Alhambra business establishment -- a path that would have been unlikely for an Asian American a generation ago.

Sham, the Hong Kong immigrant who helped Yamauchi with his campaign, has followed in Yamauchi's footsteps, holding many of the same offices and cultivating relationships with both mainstream power brokers and the Chinese community as he eyes a City Council run in two years.

"I'm 60. Guys 50, 60, 70 are truly lucky to be where we're at because of our parents opening doors. They went through the bigotry and the discrimination, not us," said Yamauchi, who was born in 1944 shortly after his parents were released from an internment camp for Japanese Americans in Arkansas.

‘We've come eons'

Even as some old barriers remain and the numbers show that there is still a long way to go, the progress made by Asian-American politicians in the last decade is tangible.

While Asians in Alhambra are just getting started, Monterey Park in 2003 elected a majority Asian City Council for the first time. In a city with an Asian population of over 60 percent, residents typically have a long list of Asian-surnamed candidates to choose from.

A group called Chinese Elected Officials has about 25 members who currently hold office in Southern California and another 10 or so who are former officeholders. That's a long way from its beginnings in the 1980s when Monterey Park Councilman David Lau and just a handful of others, including Judy Chu -- then a Monterey Park councilwoman and now a state assemblywoman -- held meetings at a local restaurant.

Chu, D-Monterey Park, who started her political career during a time when white residents were pushing for "English only" signage and an us-versus-them mentality prevailed, is finishing her third and final term in the State Assembly, a beneficiary of a redistricting map that was expressly drawn to favor an Asian candidate. There are eight Asian-American assemblymembers, up from zero a little over a decade ago.

The overtly racial issues that marked Chu's days on the Monterey Park City Council have been replaced by more pedestrian concerns like balanced budgets and traffic.

"We've come eons, I think. It's almost like a whole new world today," Chu said. "In those days, people said the most insensitive things and did not expect the Asian-American community to push back. But today, people are more careful to say such things. Today, we also have people in the Asian community who are more involved in the political process, so they are there to catch things before they get to such a polarized point."

Just a matter of time?

All indications point to a continued influx of Asian immigrants into the San Gabriel Valley the coming decades. Asians, like Latinos, will have to contend with the eternal uphill battle of registering new immigrants to vote. While undertaken to some extent by political candidates themselves, the task is left mostly to under-funded nonprofit groups like CAUSE.

But as immigrants who arrived in prior decades put down roots in the San Gabriel Valley and a native-born second generation comes of age, the Asian political presence is almost certain to grow, local politicians and analysts predict. The Asian Pacific American Legal Center and research institutions like the UCLA Asian American Studies Center are churning out policy papers, and networking groups like Chinese Elected Officials are showing neophyte politicians the ropes.

Lawmakers like Chu are moving beyond the local level and will use both their name recognition and their backroom credentials to lay the groundwork for successors to be elected.

"I think that as Asian Americans recognize how important politics is, they'll recognize that they have to get involved, that if they want their interests to be reflected in politics, that Asian Americans have to be there," said Leland Saito, a USC professor and the author of a 1998 book on racial politics in Monterey Park.