San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Asian streak ends in the Sunset
When my wife and I went from being apartment dwellers to homeowners in 2004, we ended up in the Sunset because it was one of the places in San Francisco where we could afford to buy. For us, as Chinese Americans, the move also gave us the rare chance to be represented in city government by a fellow Asian American.
A Chinese American has held the area’s seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors the entirety of our time in the neighborhood, a streak that goes back to 2001 and through six supervisors — Leland Yee, Fiona Ma, Ed Jew, Carmen Chu, Katy Tang and Gordon Mar — to when the switch was made from citywide to district elections. It’s a testament to the rise in the political power of Asian Americans, who make up about a third of the city’s population and about half of the residents in District Four, which encompasses the Sunset.
That streak will end when Joel Engardio, who defeated Mar in November, takes office in 2023. Connie Chan, representing the Richmond and District One, will soon be the only Asian American supervisor left.
Does it matter that the Sunset doesn’t have an Asian American supervisor or that there will be only one in the city? Unquestionably. According to David Lee, executive director of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee, had Mar won reelection, he’d be in line to run for the Assembly, state Senate or mayor when a seat opens. He can still run, of course, but losing re-election dims his prospects. And with Chan the last Asian American supervisor standing, the bench for Asian Americans ready to run for higher office is weakened.
“In the grand scheme of things, if Gordon Mar had won, he would be a favorite to replace (Assembly Member) Phil Ting,” Lee said. “That creates the opportunity for someone else. There would have been a ladder but now that ladder is broken.”
In recent years, Asian American office holders who’ve moved from city positions to the Assembly include Ting, who was assessor-recorder, former Supervisors Ma, who is now the state treasurer, and David Chiu,
who is now the city attorney.
Has that level of representation made a difference for Asian Americans?
“Hell, yeah,” Lee said, citing legislation passed to combat pandemic-driven anti-Asian hate that was supported by Ting and Chiu. (Full disclosure: My wife went to graduate school with Ting and Chiu and has volunteered for their election campaigns.)
Recent history aside, for the longest time, it was “look there’s an Asian person” when an Asian American ran for office. Amid this paucity, for many Asian American voters, myself included, if there was an Asian name on the ballot, it might be an automatic vote.
That seemed to be the case in the Sunset until this year. Engardio tapped into the voter angst generated by the recall of three school board members and of District Attorney Chesa Boudin and positioned himself as a moderate alternative to Mar.
It could be argued that Engardio’s
views are more in line with the Sunset’s Chinese American voters and more “Chinese” than Mar, a progressive who opposed both recalls and veered too far to the left for enough of his constituents to lose by about 500 votes.
Along with being to the left of some voters, redistricting also played a role in Mar’s loss, Lee said. Until this year, the southern edge of District Four was in District Seven, where Engardio ran unsuccessfully three times for supervisor.
“The precincts added to the district were more white and wealthy, and they voted overwhelmingly for Joel Engardio,” Lee said.
Education and public safety are top concerns for many Chinese American voters in the Sunset, particularly with monolingual Chinese-speaking voters who tend to be more conservative, according to Kit Lam, who campaigned for Engardio and is a newly hired legislative aide for the supervisor-elect.
“You don’t vote a person into
office because of his skin color,” Lam said. “We have to look at what this candidate stands for and whether he resonated with voters.”
Lam is right to a point. One criticism of Boudin was he was slow to react to the anti-Asian attacks at onset of the pandemic. Had the district attorney been Asian American, it may have been different.
Indifference to Asian Americans has a long history. For decades dating to the Gold Rush, Chinese Americans in the city (and elsewhere) faced a host of discriminatory laws and persecution.
It might be hard to believe now, but there was a time when no Chinese Americans lived in the Sunset or the Richmond. For decades, Chinese residents were segregated in Chinatown, hemmed in by racism and discriminatory housing covenants. There were Chinese-only schools, Chinese banks and the Chinese Hospital, which is still in operation.
What’s changed? Chinese
Americans gained political power.
George Chinn was the first Asian American and Chinese American to be a supervisor after being appointed in 1969. Mabel Teng, in 1994, was the first Asian American supervisor elected without first being appointed. In recent years, there have been as many as five Asian American supervisors at onetime. The high-water mark was Ed Lee becoming the first Asian American mayor; he was appointed in 2010 and re-elected in 2011.
History tends to repeat itself. Now we’re back down to one Chinese American supervisor. The anti-Asian fervor of the 1800s reared its ugly head in again the 2020s. As we’ve seen the differing reactions to the pandemic-fueled hate by elected leaders, representation does matter.