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POLITICS
Asians Flex Muscles in California
Politics
Feb 24, 2997 NEW
YORK TIMES - When Leland Yee ran for the
San Francisco school board in 1986, Asian-American elected officials in
California were rare and misconceptions about them rampant. Mr. Yee, who
immigrated from China at age 3 and has a doctorate in child psychology,
recalled that some people at the time wondered if he knew how to speak
English properly.
Mr. Yee won that election and went on to serve
four years in the State Assembly before being elected in November to the
State Senate. He is California’s first Asian-American senator in more than
30 years, and its first of Chinese descent.
California’s 4.4 million Asians constitute the
state’s second-largest ethnic minority group (after Latinos) and the
largest Asian population in the country, but they have been underrepresented
in elected office. Now they are moving beyond fund-raising, where they have
long been a force, to elect representatives of their own.
Last year for the first time, Asian candidates
across the state were supported by a major political action committee, the
Asian American Small Business P.A.C. In addition, the California Asian
Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus, a coalition of Democratic legislators
of Asian ancestry, helped organize crews of bilingual volunteers to knock on
doors and make sure Asian voters made it to the polls.
There are now nine Asian-Americans in the State
Legislature, compared with one 10 years ago. In November, a
Chinese-American, John Chiang, was elected state controller. Four of the
five members of the Board of Equalization, which administers the state’s
tax policies, are Asian-American, including Mr. Chiang.
“If you look back a decade or two ago, there was
a considerable amount of talk about Latinos being the sleeping giant in
politics, that they’d reached a certain level of potentially having
impact,” said Paul Ong, a professor at the University of California, Los
Angeles, who has written about Asians’ growing influence in the state.
“Asians are at that point."
If Asians can continue to build on their recent
successes and muster voter turnout close to their share of the population,
“they will literally be the balance of power in most elections,” said
Garry South, a Democratic political consultant who informally advised
several Asian-American candidates last fall.
The Census Bureau projects
that the number of Asians statewide will nearly double in the next two
decades. Of the state’s 2005 estimated population of 35 million,
Latinos accounted for 36 percent, or about 12.5 million; Asians 12 percent,
or 4.4 million; and blacks 6 percent, or 2.2 million.
Should the number of Asian-American elected
officials continue to grow, the issues many of them have pursued —
bilingual language assistance, equitable admissions standards at state
universities and affordable health care — will become increasingly
visible.
Despite efforts by political candidates and
nonprofit groups, though, Asian immigrants are registered to vote at rates
much lower than the general population. Only recently have Asian-Americans
begun to develop the fund-raising and campaign operations that have helped
blacks and Latinos solidify their bases.
According to a study by S. Karthick Ramakrishnan,
an assistant professor of political science at the University of California,
Riverside, only 37 percent of Asian-Americans in California voted in the
2004 elections, compared with 68 percent of blacks and 73 percent of whites.
Latino turnout, at 32 percent, was even lower.
The disparity can partly be explained by lower
rates of citizenship: only 67 percent of Asians and 59 percent of Latinos
living in California at the time were citizens. But even those who were
citizens had much lower rates of voter registration than other ethnic
groups.
don’t doubt that they’re doing better than
they were before, but I don’t think that they’ve reached any sort of
critical mass or threshold,” said Antonio Gonzalez, president of the
Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, a nonprofit that promotes
civic participation among Latinos. “I don’t think they conceive of
themselves yet as coherent and cohesive as one needs to.”
Still, progress on turnout and an increased
willingness on the part of non-Asians to vote for Asian candidates helped
spur the gains of the past decade, analysts say.
It took years, but the Asian-American political
community has recovered from a series of demoralizing fund-raising scandals
in the 1990s, including a controversial 1996 appearance at a Buddhist temple
in the Los Angeles area by Vice President Al Gore.
Already, some non-Asian politicians are paying
attention. The Democratic campaigns for governor of Gray Davis in 2002 and
Steve Westly last year — both of which Mr. South helped to run —
featured advertisements on Asian-language television stations and news
conferences geared toward Asian media.
But there is still a long way to go, Asian
politicians and political analysts agree, with much depending on the
progress Asian-Americans make in strengthening the nascent organizations
they have built to support candidates and get out the vote.
Though the number of Asian-American local and
state officials is growing, there are only two Asian representatives from
California in Congress, of seven Asian-American members in all.
“We’re still two to four election cycles from
fulfilling expectations,” said Assemblyman Alberto Torrico, chairman of
the California Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus.
Correction on 1 March 2007: An
article on Tuesday about the increase in the number of
California
office holders who are Asian-Americans misstated the number of
Asian-Americans on the five-member Board of Equalization. There are four,
not three. - by Cindy Chang NEW
YORK TIMES Feb 27, 2007
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