EDITOR’S NOTE: Despite a population that is 40 percent Asian, San Francisco actually reduced the number of Asians holding city office. At least part of the shortfall can be attributed to a reform that was supposed to enhance the chances of minority groups. PNS commentator Benny Meshoulam is a Coro Public Affairs Fellow and served as a campaign organizer for Tom Hsieh, Jr. who made and unsuccessful bid for local office.

BY BENNY MESHOULAM, PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE

SAN FRANCISCO-By many accounts, last fall’s elections should have increased the number of Asian-Americans on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, the city’s chief governing body.

With Asians-the majority of them Chinese-comprising nearly 40 percent of the city’s population, an increased Asian presence on the 11 member Board seemed likely.

Instead, after December’s runoff election, two of the three Asians on the board, Mabel Teng and Michael Yaki, lost their seats, leaving District 4 incumbent Leland Yee the sole Asian on the board.

"The thinking across the board was that there were going to be more Asians," says David Lee, executive director of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee (CAVEC), a non-partisan voter outreach organization. "But now, we’re back to 1990 numbers [of Asian-Americans on the board."

Lee’s expectations were based not only on population, but on the introduction of a new law calling for supervisors to be elected by district rather than a citywide vote-instituted in part to increase the political influence of marginalized communities.

Despite the losses, Lee’s efforts have not diminished. He hopes to apply this past fall’s lessons to upcoming campaigns.

The next test, he says, is the March, 2002, race for State Assembly in the 12th District. One Asian, Superior Court Judge Lillian Sing, has officially declared her candidacy and Supervisor Yee may enter the contest.

Before that race begins, Lee believes, the Asian community must set clear goals. Last fall, there was a "failure of the Asian-American community leadership to come to agreement on who should be running," Lee laments."Instead, you had multiple Asians running against each other. Clearly, that divided the vote."

Judge Sing, on a one-year leave of absence to prepare for next March’s election, agrees. "It’s simple," she says. "When you dilute your support, you’re weakened."

However, Lee sees other reasons for the loss, involving citywide politics issues, primarily negative sentiment toward Mayor Willie Brown and his supporters.

"Candidates misread district elections" by not recognizing these sentiments early on, says Lee. He feels that Tom Hsieh Jr., who ran against Yee in District 4, hurt his candidacy by emphasizing his ties to Mayor Brown. "Had Hsieh known there was going to be such a backlash against Willie Brown, he would have emphasized his independence instead of his ties to him."

Hsieh, a Chinese-American who runs his own public relations and political consulting firm, acknowledges that anti-Brown feeling played a part in his defeat, but stands by his decision to emphasize his ties with the Mayor.

Hsieh blames district elections in large part for the loss of Asian seats. They led to an emphasis on the concerns of neighborhoods over those of specific demographic groups. "Because the Asian community was divided up across districts, we had less power," says Hsieh.

Lee agrees. "Neighborhood, community concerns trumped identity politics," says Lee. "That’s something the Asian community was weak in: parks, graffiti abatement, pedestrian safety issues."

What happens next? Judge Sing has yet to garner the support of either Teng or Supervisor Yee-two of the Asian community’s more visible leaders. And if Yee does decide to run, there are fears that the presence of more than one Asian on the ballot will once again dilute support.

Some in the Asian community disagree fundamentally with this analysis, and argue that backing Asian candidates is not necessarily advantageous to the Asian community. Among them is Supervisor Yee, who credits his victory to a strategy that rejected identity politics.

Yee believes that such strategies are too narrow, and that the Asian community would have maintained or increased its representation on the Board if it had worked outside the framework of identity politics.

The people who predicted greater Asian representation "are out of touch with the body politic in the city of San Francisco," he says, and their thinking is a "throwback to years gone by."

(Yee’s own practice is not without contradictions. Despite his staunch opposition to political tactics focused on racial and cultural identity, he maintains a liaison in Chinatown, although his Sunset district lies miles away.)

Hayden Lee, former president of the Chinese American Democratic Club, notes that non-Asian officials have the potential to do just as much for his community as Asians.

Supervisors Sophie Maxwell and Aaron Peskin, he believes, are already showing signs of doing a tremendous amount for the Asian community. "We’ve got to go beyond supporting Chinese or Asians just because they’re Chinese or Asian," says Hayden Lee.