Pak leaves void
As Chinatown reels over loss of longtime civic leader, community wonders who can carry her political torch
A day after Rose Pak’s death, as Chinatown residents mourned the unlikely power broker known as Auntie Rose, the question in San Francisco political circles became: What now?
“It’s a tremendous loss of civic leadership both for Chinatown and San Francisco,” said Gordon Chin, former executive director of the Chinatown Community Development Center. “It would be a mistake for folks to look for who is going to be the next Rose Pak. You cannot replace Rose, but other leadership can rise up.”
Pak was a political leader who never held elected office yet made key alliances with community and business organizations, fostered young politicians and community leaders, and helped make many a career for those currently in power. She was neither a moderate nor a progressive;
she was a practical deal maker whose primary interest lay in helping the Chinese community.
When she returned from China in May after undergoing a kidney transplant, she was greeted by a 300-person welcoming committee that included Mayor Ed Lee and former Mayors Willie Brown and Gavin Newsom, Supervisors David Campos and Jane Kim, Public Defender Jeff Adachi, and City Attorney Dennis Herrera.
And they were among the many who knew that if they crossed her they could expect a fight.
“Rose Pak was playing 10 games of three-dimensional chess simultaneously,” said Supervisor Aaron Peskin, sometimes an opponent and sometimes an ally of Pak’s for two decades.
In the short term, Pak was concerned about getting Kim elected to the state Senate, helping Supervisor Norman Yee get re-elected and supporting school board member Sandra Lee Fewer’s campaign for District One supervisor, Chin said. Kim’s race against fellow Supervisor Scott Wiener was at the top of that list.
Chin dismissed the idea that Pak’s death would hurt their chances in the election.
“Quite the contrary,” he said. Their supporters “are going to have additional resolve emboldened by the spirit of Rose Pak.”
But Pak’s death may delay two of her priorities: stopping Union Square merchants’ efforts to turn lower Stockton Street into a pedestrian walkway and getting the Ping Yuen public housing complex in Chinatown rebuilt. She had also let it be known that she wanted Deputy Chief Garret Tom to become the next police chief.
Such causes might have been fanciful had anyone else championed them. But Pak had the proven capacity to mobilize merchants and residents to her side. She also had the relationships at City Hall to make her voice heard.
“I have not really seen someone who can go into room 200, whoever the mayor was, and work with the mayor to make sure resources are adequately distributed — not just to our community, but all the communities,” said Anni Chung — president of Self-Help for the Elderly and co-chair of API Council, which advocates for Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
The full political impact of Pak’s death will take time to sort out.
For politicians in City Hall, Pak was the gauge of the community, the person you called to make sure your plan wasn’t going to encounter resistance.
“She is someone you always want to check in with,” said Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru, who said he spoke with Pak almost weekly. “And she had her way of sending messages to the friends or the family. So even though you checked in with people, everybody always wanted to know what she thought.”
Nuru said he didn’t know who would fill that void.
“Is there going to be a vacuum? In the immediate (future), sure,” said Malcolm Yeung, deputy director of Chinatown Community Development Center.
Yeung said he believes “plenty of folks” will step up to take Pak’s place. But, he said, no one else will be able to cultivate leaders like she did.
Yeung and Kim are two such young mentees. So is Cindy Wu, also a deputy director of the Chinatown Community Development Center. In July, Wu was elected chairwoman of San Francisco’s Democratic County Central Committee.
Pak’s power didn’t depend solely on her ability to help people win elections. She also had the ability to make allies out of enemies — and vice versa. She helped put people in power but was a fierce opponent when they frustrated her — including Lee, a man she helped get elected, later called her “biggest disappointment,” and then defended again when there was talk of recalling him.
“Rose was able to check the political power of folks she didn’t feel were doing the right thing for the community because of her boldness and willingness to put herself forward and, frankly, take the hits that came on the back end,” Yeung said. “It’s time now for other folks to play that role. But it’s a hard role to play, not only on a professional level but on a personal level.”
Pak, a onetime reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle, also knew how to use the media.
Her fallout with Lee stemmed from his decision not to appoint Wu to fill a vacancy on the Board of Supervisors. Instead, Lee appointed North Beach community activist Julie Christensen. Pak said Lee had turned his back on the Chinese community.
Pak went to work immediately to undermine Christensen. When the novice politician made an impolitic reference in her inaugural speech to helping “lower class” families stay in their homes, Pak exploited the comment in the Chinese press. She said it showed Christensen believed Chinese people were low class — although the supervisor was referring to San Francisco families in general.
Pak then lambasted Christensen for referring to the Stockton Tunnel as a “wormhole” that connects Union Square and Chinatown. Pak said that showed Christensen believed Chinese people were no better than worms. In both instances, the two main Chinese newspapers picked up on Pak’s claims and repeated them multiple times.
That negative press created an opportunity for Peskin to pick up much-needed votes in the Chinese community when he ran against Christensen. Peskin won that 2015 election, handing the progressives a majority on the Board of Supervisors and putting the mayor on the defensive.
“She was a fearless person and refused to take no for an answer,” said political consultant Eric Jaye, who was sometimes on the same side as Pak and sometimes not. “She succeeded again and again because she refused to accept defeat. Even when she was defeated, she was not deterred and continued to organize and agitate.”
On Monday, a day after her death, Lee said: “Anybody that suggests that she can be replaced doesn’t even know who Rose is.”
“I'm sure the administration is both sad and breathing a sigh of relief,” Peskin said.