Will race or party affiliation guide commission voters?

Lynette Howard is not sure she considers herself a “person of color.”

But she knows who her grandmother and mother were, knows that they escaped Cuba on a dramatic plane ride when the latter was a teenager. She knows that she’s proud of them; that she loves to cook (and eat) Cuban food; and that, much to her own kids’ chagrin, she has the old-fashioned values of a Cuban parent.

Howard also knows that it doesn’t feel quite right when folks write or talk about Gwin

nett County never having had a “non-white” commissioner. The two-term Republican incumbent said as much after recent stories touching on the Chinese heritage of her November opponent — Democrat Ben Ku — were published.

“If [voters] didn’t know that I’m Cuban and it’s exciting for them

that I am, then that’s a wonderful thing,” said Howard, a chemist who grew up in Florida and has lived in Gwinnett since 1988. “To say that nobody who understands what an immigrant will go through to come to the United

States has ever been on the commission, that’s just not true.”

Howard and Ku both know that in a place like Gwinnett County, one of the most diverse communities in the Southeast, such distinctions can make a difference — every day and, perhaps, come election time. Ku, who questioned the elec

tion-season timing of Howard publicly asserting her heritage, considers himself multiracial. His paternal grandparents emigrated from China, and his mother is white. He’s also openly gay.