An Edited Version of this
piece was printed in the January 2000 issue of Asian Week Newspaper
January 3, 2000
The 1999 SF Mayor's Race & Asian Americans: Will the Piper be Playing any Asian tunes?
By Eric Mar
San Francisco’s recent Mayoral
election highlighted the Asian American community’s continuing growth as a
rising political force in our multiethnic, heavily immigrant City. The election also showed why additional
campaign finance reforms are needed to ensure full democracy and empowerment of
all disenfranchised communities.
Both Mayor Willie Brown and Board
of Supervisors President Tom Ammiano campaigned aggressively for support within
our community and Asian Americans played a significant role in both
campaigns. Brown relied on the strong
support of the Chinese language media and active campaigning by many
established Asian American political leaders from liberal to conservative. Ammiano’s grassroots campaign also activated
large numbers of Asian Americans, mostly younger progressive activists from
groups like APIFORCE (Asians and Pacific Islanders for Community Empowerment)
but also including moderate forces such as the Chinese American Democratic
Club.
As San Franciscans approach a
change back to “district elections” of our City's Board of Supervisors in
November 2000 no politician or candidate will be able to ignore the Asian
American community which now makes up almost 40% of the City's population and
18% of the electorate. Some tasks
before us include increasing citizenship and political participation among new
immigrants in our community and building strong voter registration and
education efforts to keep our community engaged. As the Asian American community continues to mature politically,
we also will increasingly face the challenge of balancing the strength and convenience
of “identity politics” with the reality that many contradictory interests exist
within our “community” particularly along class lines.
Yet, even with the
best intentions and organizing within our community, the recent San Francisco
Mayor’s race raises serious concerns that our efforts will continue to be
subverted by big moneyed special interests.
The real story of this
past election wasn't the so-called Willie Brown “landslide” in defeating
Ammiano 59.6% to 40.3% of the vote but rather that Ammiano's campaign struck so
much fear among rich folks and the corporate interests in the City that they
poured an obscene $2 million worth of “soft” money into the Mayor's re-election
campaign in a period of 42 days on top of the $3.1 million in direct campaign
contributions to the Mayor. One SF
Examiner reporter called Brown the $5 million mayor. Despite this, Ammiano’s grassroots campaign shocked the country
by winning 25% of the vote through an historic write-in effort in
November. And, by December the campaign
had continued to make history by doubling its total votes and winning over 40%
of San Francisco’s electorate for Ammiano and his progressive platform.
Importantly, soft
money independent committees like San Franciscans for Sensible Government which
is closely allied with the corporate lobbying group the Committee on Jobs and
funded largely by downtown players like real estate magnate Walter Shorenstein,
GAP founder Don Fisher, and investment banker Warren Hellman, spent some
$815,000 for the mayor's race to counter Ammiano’s campaign. A large portion of these funds paid for an
anti-Ammiano propaganda campaign targeting Asian American voters including a
barrage of misleading direct mail pieces and Chinese language billboards placed
in several key neighborhoods.
In the next 4 years as
San Francisco’s Asian American community grows and matures we will see whether
there is any truth to the adage – ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune.’ With $5 million of special interest money
contributed towards the mayor this past election we'll see what kinds of tunes
are played by Mayor Brown.
In the Asian American
community's long struggle for a stronger voice in the political arena,
electoral reforms have always been necessary.
And, if the unprecedented dominance of big moneyed special interests in
this past mayoral race is any indication, we need urgent changes in our
electoral system to prevent campaigns from being bought by special interests.
At the local and
statewide levels we have only a short 2 months to educate our communities on 2
repressive measures on the March 2000 California ballot - the anti-youth
Proposition 21 and the anti-gay marriage Proposition 22. In addition, immigrant community activists
are closely monitoring efforts by Proposition 187 supporters to place another
anti-immigrant measure on the November 2000 ballot. Our work in building alliances with other communities will be key
in defeating these measures this year and building a stronger movement for
social justice in this new century.
-end-
[Eric Mar is a SF attorney and the
Associate Director of the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant
Rights. He teaches Asian American
Studies at SF State.]