SF’s Democratic County Central Committee Ignores Asian American Mayoral Candidates

By John | Tuesday, August 30, 2011 | 3 Comments

Thanks for visiting 8Asians, a blog about Asian American issues. If you find this interesting, subscribe to the RSS feed, visit our Facebook Page or add us on Twitter!

8a mayor SF’s Democratic County Central Committee Ignores Asian American Mayoral Candidates

In an inexplicable move, San Francisco’s Democratic County Central Committee, which is composed of 32 committee members, did not endorse any of the major and very qualified Asian American candidates for mayor:

[The DCCC] recently endorsed Supervisor John Avalos as its first choice, City Attorney Dennis Herrera as second choice and opted to name nobody as third choice. That meant no love for interim Mayor Ed Lee, state Sen. Leland Yee, Supervisor David Chiu, Public Defender Jeff Adachi or Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting. (Of the 11 serious candidates for mayor, nine are registered Democrats and could score an endorsement. That means more than half who were eligible are Asian.)

I’m kind of shocked that there was no third choice. There must be a lot of political in-fighting going on, with eight of the Asian American DCCC members – including a few candidates like David Chiu and Leland Yee – couldn’t come to any agreement. Given interim Mayor Ed Lee’s current popularity based on polling numbers, I would have thought the DCCC would have endorsed him as at least a third choice candidate.

I’m not saying that the DCCC or San Francisco registered voters should vote for an Asian American candidate just because there is a good number of Asian Americans in San Francisco. I’m just surprised statistically that there were no Asian Americans endorsed given the number of qualified leading candidates.

One interesting fact that I learned was that even though more than a third of San Franciscans are Chinese, but only 18 percent of registered voters are. There has been a drive nationally to get more qualified Asian Americans to register to vote. I’m guessing a lot of those Asian Americans may not even realize that they have to register to vote if they’ve naturalized or may think that automatically gets you on jury duty. As I’ve often said, if you don’t vote, you have no right to complain about your government. In a democracy, you have responsibilities as well as rights.

Categories:

Current EventsDiscriminationPoliticsSan Francisco Bay Area

NOTE: 8Asians.com is a community, and we thank you for being a part of it. While we welcome and appreciate differences in opinion, if you're rude or you're promoting spam, we have a right to edit or delete your comment. Read our comment policy for more information.

If you see a comment that violates the 8Asians.com comment policy, you may flag the comment by mousing over the comment and clicking "FLAG."

Facebook Comments (Beta)

yu888

The current DCCC in San Francisco has a history of being “biased”. Back in 2010, they refused to endorse, even as a second choice candidate, Jane Kim, for district supervisor… a race she later won. The DCCC in SF exihbits some “good ole boy” attributes but with a pseudo-liberal slant. Current DCCC Chair Aaron Peskin, in an interview, certainly made it clearer his position on these biases:

>Peskin claims that Mayor Lee “is somebody who is doing the work for the real leader of San Francisco, first >and foremost, that is, Rose Pak.”

>Recalling the days when Chinese and Japanese-Americans were seen as >giving first loyalty to their home >countries (as Irish, Italian, German and other non-Asian immigrant groups >were not), Peskin implies that >Rose Pak – and Lee as her “puppet” – are implementing the political agenda >of a foreign government: >“There are … individuals, but behind those individuals are actually entities that are >more powerful than >those individuals. It is really about political influence and how political influence works — >and that even >includes working with and representing the interest of an outside government in San >Francisco. I am happy >to name those names. They include the People’s Republic of China.” And in case >anyone has not gotten >his point, Peskin elaborates: “I believe that what we are witnessing is that Ed Lee is a >puppet who is >controlled by Ms. Pak and Mr. Brown [a former, two-term mayor of San Francisco] and the >money >influences that they represent. This flies in the face of those fundamental American, democratic >values.”

Asian American voters, even in SF, tend to be less liberal that the self appointed progressive movement in San Francisco. At best, we can blame it on stereotyping, but that still points a finger at a rotten core within the DCCC.

http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=8559

http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Mayoral_Debates_and_Progressive_Racism_9451.html
Pingback: Asian American Identity Politics and the Race for Mayor of San Francisco | Bruce Reyes-Chow
CH81

SF has a lot of Asians but it also has a lot tenants, and betraying their trust leads to predictable results.

8 Asians