No Political Clout in S.F.

Harry Mok
April 24, 2005

The San Francisco Chronicle tries to explain why in a story today. Earlier stories by the Chronicle publicized accusations of cronyism by Teng, which contributed to her resignation. She's going through a divorce and says she's quitting for personal reasons.

Politics in San Francisco is crazy, and Asian Americans haven't put together the coalitions needed to be a real player in the city, and are often pitted against each other.

There's a huge population of Chinese Americans in San Francisco, many of whom are home owners and tend to be more conservative (which in San Francisco is a moderate Democrat). There are newer immigrants who don't take part in the process and various other factions from the left to the right. I think that's the misnomer, that there is a "Asian American" group that thinks of one mind. I suppose that's good thing for many reasons, but it doesn't help get people elected.

Contributor: 

Harry Mok

Editor in chief

Editor in Chief Harry Mok wrote about growing up on a Chinese vegetable farm for the second issue of Hyphen and has been a volunteer editor since 2004. As a board member of the San Francisco and New York chapters of the Asian American Journalists Association, Harry has recruited and organized events for student members. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was also a graduate student instructor in the Asian American Studies Department.

Comments

Comments

claire wrote on Mon, 04/25/2005 - 10:34am
funny, i've never seen the lack of a pan APA voting bloc in SF as a problem. for me it's always been a sign that the APA community here is so big, so diverse, and so complex -- and that this fact is so well recognized by the political establishment -- that it would be impossible to treat us as an undifferentiated racial bloc.it would be nice to have a ,lefty AA racial voting bloc in san francisco to counteract all those conservatives out in the richmond ...
a questioner... wrote on Tue, 04/26/2005 - 9:50am
wouldn't it be more effective to have a lefty\progressive and cohesive voting block (of whatever make-up) to counteract the conservatives of richmond who would appear to be bonded by ideology rather than ancestry? there are many AA conservatives - beware the wolf in sheep's clothing.