From: hassan@cup.portal.com (hassan monu alam)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american,soc.culture.bangladesh
Subject: More Money than Votes
Date: Sun,  8 Nov 92 22:32:23 PST
Organization: The Portal System (TM)

Far Eastern Economic Review 
---------------------------------------------

More money than votes Appointive, not elective, posts prove easier to get

By Susumu Awanohara in New York and Houston, Jonathan Burton in Los 
Angeles

California Congressman Norman Mineta was furious when he learned that a 
top aide to Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton was sending a 
junior substitute for the opening of a gathering of Asian Americans during 
the Democratic Party convention in July. The Asian Americans were in 
New York to endorse Clinton's nomination and to discuss their role in the 
presidential and local elections in November. "This shows what they really 
think of us," Mineta said.

Another California congressman, Robert Matsui, was also upset but took a 
selfcritical view. He recalled that in the primary election in June, Asian 
Americans accounted for only 2% of the votes cast in the state--compared 
with 83% for whites, 8% for blacks and 7% for Hispanics. Asian Americans 
account for 10% of California's 30 million people, and nearly 40% of the 7.3 
million Asian Americans in the country. "If I were Bill Clinton, I would not 
have sent anyone to this meeting," Matsui said. "Asians don't exist yet as a 
political force."

It is still a long way to Asian American "empowerment." The community's 
basic goals to have its members naturalise, register and vote and to find 
candidates of its own who can win elections have not been easy to fulfil. 
The rise in anti-immigration sentiment in a recession-plagued US economy 
and the traumatic Los Angeles riots of late April--in which Korean American 
businesses were the principal targets of black rage, neglected by law 
enforcement and relief authorities--bred defeatism and cynicism among 
some Asian Americans.

But to others, the riots were all the more reason to press for political power. 
After all, the Asian American community is the fastest growing "ethnic 
group" in the US (though it is in fact a collection of diverse subgroups) and 
are relatively rich in financial and human resources. The two parties know 
this and are trying to tap these resources, the Republicans perhaps more 
effectively than the Democrats these days.

Against this background, Asian Americans have emerged as important 
players in fund raising. Part of the reward for Asian American activism are 
political appointments, a shortcut to power. Under the Republican White 
House, a record number of Asian Americans have been appointed to public 
offices, some carrying prestige and considerable power. These appointees 
are feeling a little insecure as President George Bush continues to trail 
Clinton in the public opinion polls.

 American disaffection with politics-as-usual in the group's substantial 
support for Ross Perot. In a poll taken at the height of Perot's popularity, 
Asian Americans in California split their votes among candidates Bush, 
Clinton and Perot-40%,19% and 35%. They thus gave their strongest 
support to Bush, unlike whites who preferred Perot, and blacks and 
Hispanics who favoured Clinton (see table).

But 35% for Perot struck experts as high, indicating an Asian American 
"protest at the lack of attention paid to them by the political parties," 
according to Paul Shie, director of Chinese American Society. Many say 
that the LA riots and their aftermath made Asian Americans feel betrayed by 
the parties they had supported generously. Another factor was that Perot, 
as a critic of Hanoi, had a following among the state's 300,000-400,000 
Vietnamese Americans. Clinton, an unknown governor from Arkansas with 
little Asian contact, did not enjoy much support in June but bounced back in 
July, with help from the Asian American machine within the Democratic 
Party.

Republicans among Asian American activists stress that their community is 
generally turning more conservative. Support for the community by Vice-
President Dan Quayle has helped, according to the Republican Party's 
Director of Asian Affairs, Tony Chen. Quayle has attended fundraisers for 
Asian American candidates for public office and made speeches criticising 
mainstream Americans who express anti-Asian American and/or anti-Asian 
feelings.

More fundamentally, Asian Americans are realising that they share basic 
values more with the Republicans than with the Democrats, Deputy 
Assistant to the President Clayton Fong told the REVIEW at the Republican 
party convention in Houston in August. The early comers from Asia, 
Japanese and Filipino Americans, like blacks and Hispanics, have been 
close to the "party of minorities," the Democrats, while the more recently 
arrived Korean and Indochinese Americans, for political reasons, have 
tended to favour the Republican Party. Chinese and Indian Americans, 
both comprising subgroups with vastly varying backgrounds, fell 
somewhere in between. (In presidential elections, though, Asian Americans 
have voted heavily for the winning ticket--70% in 1984 and 61% in 1988).

But after the success of the Civil Rights Movement--for which the 
Democrats rightly claim much of the credit--minority rights and equal 
opportunity have been universally accepted, a Republican analyst says. 
The Democrats have since become too beholden to the lowest social strata-
which do not include Asian Americans-while the Republicans, through their 
disdain for welfarism and championinK of self-help, education and family 
values, won Asian American adherents, the theory goes. Democratic Asian 
Americans have advocated forming coalitions with other minorities but some 
Republican counterparts argue that there is fundamental conflict in values 
and interests between Asian and African Americans--on educational quotas, 
for example. And Asian Americans are not interested in bilingual education, 
which many Hispanic Americans insist on.

Another reason the Republicans are getting stronger among Asian 
Americans may be that they have more resources, financial and manpower, 
at the national committee level than the Democrats do to assist Asian 
American activists. While the Republican Party tends to be richer, Chen is 
trying to make the party's support for Asian Americans self sustaining. His 
idea is to channel the money raised from the community back to the 
community. Thus in mid-August the Republicans held a major fund-raising 
dinner in Los Angeles featuring Quayle as a keynote speaker and raised 
more than US$100,000, which will be devoted to Asian American voter 
registration drives and candidate support.

A few days later in Monterey Park, outside Los Angeles, Clinton raised 
US$250,000 in a single Asian American fund-raising dinner. But this money 
goes directly to support the Clinton/Albert Gore ticket. The Democratic 
Party's director of Asian Pacific American affairs, Melinda Yee, says the 
Democrats, including the Asian Americans, are now concentrating scarce 
resources on chasing Bush out of office.

As Congressman Matsui lamented, Asian Americans have been slow to 
exploit their considerable swing votes and force the political parties to earn 
them. The authoritative census figures for Asian Americans (7.3 million in 
1990) include Asians who are temporarily living in the US with no intention 
of seeking permanent residency as well as the large number of recent 
immigrants (accounting for most of the increase in the Asian American 
population in the past decade) who are not yet eligible to apply for US 
citizenship

But Asian Americans have emerged as major contributors of campaign 
funds. Chen says their contributions are coveted by politicians because the 
Asian Americans do not make steep demands for quid pro quos but are 
willing to "pay now, talk later." After working for "redress" for Japanese 
Americans interned during World War II (other Asian Americans 
supported the cause thinking that they are similarly vulnerable) and more 
recently for the maintenance of a liberal immigration law, Asian American 
activists have not had compelling issues to unite them, though some say hate 
crimes against the community may become one.

The Bush/Quayle campaign has raised something like US$35 million by 
mid-September, an unprecedented US$1.5-2 million of which came from 
Asian Americans, a Chen estimates. Indian Americans, noted for their high 
educational and professional, profile as well as for high income, are the 
biggest donors to the Republican Party among Asian Americans, followed 
by Chinese Americans and Korean Americans. Star fundraiser Zachariah 
Zachariah of Florida, a physician, wants the Republicans to eliminate 
restrictions on foreign-trained doctors.

Appointment of Asian Americans to management and advisory positions, 
both at federal and state levels, have boosted the profile of the community 
though its political strength, in terms of elected officeholders, does not 
reflect its numbers. Apart from Fong in the White House, Elaine Chao, 
Patricia Saiki and Wendy Gramm are prominent as heads of the Peace 
Corps, the Small Business Administration and Commodity Futures Trading 
Commission respectively. Outside Washington, many governors have 
appointed Asian Americans to senior staff positions.

Understandably, Bush's appointees are worried that if the president loses in 
November, they, too will lose their jobs. But the Democratic Party's Yee 
says that if Clinton is elected, he would make more and higher-level Asian 
American appointments. The Republican Party's Chen acknowledges that 
many Asian American appointees under the current administration are not 
Republicans but independents and so have a chance of serving under a 
Democratic regime as well.

It is not that Asian Americans have abandoned electoral politics in favour of 
appointments. The Democrats are hoping that at least two new Asian 
Americans would win seats in the US House of Representatives and 
another in the California state assembly. The Republicans are hoping that 
Jay Kim, now mayor of Diamond Bar in California, will become the first-
ever Korean American House member. Kim would also be the first 
Republican Asian American in Congress in some years. Currently, the 
three members of the House and two of the Senate are all Democrats.