Political Hot Potatoes

Pressure cooker heats up

By Stacy Lavilla and Julie D. Soo

YEE'S VOTE BURNS TENG: San Francisco Supervisor Leland Yee on Monday stood fast in his opposition to an emergency measure to correct absentee ballots by adding the Chinese names of Mabel Teng and others-thus delaying and possibly tanking the measure.

Supervisor Michael Yaki needed unanimous approval for his plan to add Teng's Chinese name and that of six others to the ballot. Yee said that he was uncomfortable making the Department of Elections revise and resend upward of 100,000 ballots without giving election officials a chance to address whether the mistake had in fact been theirs.

The rest of the board vehemently disagreed with Yee. Afterward, Board President Barbara Kaufman snapped, "I can't believe that someone from the Chinese community would do such a thing!"

"I'm too livid to say anything," said Supervisor Leslie Katz, who looked at Teng and complimented her for her self-control. "I'm just too stunned to say anything," said a shell-shocked Teng.

Yaki accused Yee of "playing politics with the ballot," and said Yee seemed to be inclined to do things just to be against Teng. She, Tom Ammiano and Gavin Newsom are considered the three top contenders for the board presidency, which goes to the highest vote-getter next month.

Yee said any differences of opinion he and Teng have had did not figure into his vote. "I think that people make too much of that relationship with regards to this issue," Yee said. "If this were my mother, I'd say the same thing."

Seven of the candidates on the Nov. 3 ballot-Mabel Teng, Ash Bhatt, Victor Marquez, Carlota Del Portillo, Maria Dolores Rinaldi, Julian Lagos and Anita Grier-were not given Chinese character translations beside their names on absentee ballots already sent to voters.

"It is my understanding that representatives of these campaigns notified the Department of Elections when this omission was discovered in the voter handbook and were informed that it would be corrected on absentee ballots," Yaki said. "Despite these assurances, the absentee ballot, already mailed to up to 100,000 potential absentee voters, still contains these omissions."

Yaki, an attorney who has done work in voting rights and constitutional law, continued: "Denying voters full choice and denying equal access of candidates to those voters constitutes a major breach of the covenant between government and the people."

Naomi Nishioka, acting director of the Department of Elections, told reporters last week that the omissions were because the candidates' campaigns had declined her offer to have their names printed in Chinese.

Yaki, however, said the Department of Elections had known of the problem weeks ago and had consulted the city attorney's office, which advised it to print new ballots. "They chose to ignore the city attorney," Yaki said.

City Administrator Bill Lee, who oversees the Department of Elections, said that he had been assured that election officials had made a number of attempts to contact the candidates to see if they wished their names to appear in Chinese. He himself was in Shanghai with the mayor during much of that time.

Moreover, the fight over the ballots is far from finished. Around noon, Teng campaign consultant John Whitehurst and candidate Marquez filed a suit to compel the corrections. Yaki told Yee that the suit, which could be heard this week, precluded elections officials from speaking out on the matter at Tuesday's meeting.

But Yee said his opposition was about more than allowing those attacked to have a say. "This is about the purity and honesty of our political process," Yee said. "This certain candidate said they didn't want their names in Chinese and for the city then to have to send out a special mailer seems to me to subvert that political process."

Those responsible for the oversight should pick up the cost of reprinting and resending out the thousands of ballots, he said.

"If they realized they made a mistake they should've used their own resources and communicate with the Chinese voters, and get the information out that way, but not at the expense of taxpayers," Yee said.

Yee also questioned whether emergency legislation would have been introduced for a non-incumbent, unlike Teng.

"I have to question whether favoritism has come into play because [this is an] incumbent running for the Board of Supervisors," Yee said. "If anything, I learned that the electoral process has to be fair, even-handed and an honest system," Yee said. "When we play around with that or tweak it a little bit, we're going to open up a lot of floodgates that undermine our democratic process."

Julie Lee, a San Francisco Neighbors Association director, backed her longtime ally, saying, "Leland did the right thing. The Department of Elections made an internal decision after trying to contact the candidates-[Teng's campaign manager John Whitehurst] made a decision."

Lee, who hosts the Chinese-language radio show "Voice of the Neighborhood," said listeners repeatedly referred to news reports that faulted Teng's campaign for declining the translations because it thought the department was referring to campaign statements, not the candidate's name.

"The cost to reprint shouldn't be on the taxpayer," she said.

First time supervisor candidate Rose Tsai said she guessed that most Chinese American voters, even those with limited-English speaking abilities, would probably recognize Teng's name in English.

Of the omission, she said: "My guess is that it won't make a big difference."

BOXER FIGHT, ROUND TWO: Supporters of U.S. Senate candidate Matt Fong are still fuming over what they say was "shoddy treatment" of their right to peacefully demonstrate at Sen. Barbara Boxer's Chinatown appearance last week-but Boxer's supporters say Fong's fans were the ones who got out of line.

What's not in dispute is that things got pretty heated when San Francisco Neighbors Association (SFNA) Director Julie Lee and about two dozen Fong supporters showed up at the headquarters of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, which hosted Boxer's appearance Oct. 13.

Anni Chung, executive director of Self-Help for the Elderly and a Boxer backer who spoke at the event, says Lee and other SFNA members did not stick to the sidewalk, but went up the Six Companies' stairs, prompting the group's executive secretary, Thomas Ng, to ask the group to move. For her part, Lee says: "This is a free country. We were on a public sidewalk."

Later, San Francisco Supervisor Michael Yaki stepped out and also asked the group to move. Although some observers said Lee then told Yaki that he had no right to be at the Six Companies because he was "only half-Chinese," Lee herself presented a different take, saying the supervisor "shook his finger in my face and barely missed my nose. Some of the SFNA members were afraid he was going to hit me. Elected officials should not be so mean, rude, and violent."

Fong campaign spokesman Joe Yew stepped between the two, and no violence was reported either then or throughout the event. Boxer, however, cut short a planned merchants' walk and rushed away.

The last words people saw as she took off were "Matt Fong: U.S. Senate." Someone had affixed a Fong placard to Boxer's car.

CRASHING THE KOPP-LUNGREN LOVEFEST: A couple of days later on Wednesday, Chinatown saw another clash, this time at the Republican County Central Committee campaign headquarters on Kearny Street near Clay as GOP supporters waited for gubernatorial candidate Attorney General Dan Lungren to arrive and receive the blessings of independent state Sen. Quentin Kopp.

The 25 or so Lungren supporters who chanted, "Go, Dan, go" were outshouted by a smaller number of Gray Davis supporters and pro-choice advocates, among them a megaphone-toting protester who added a Democratic spin to the Lungren contingent's cheer: "Go, Dan, go! You've just got to go! You're not wanted here!"

©1998 AsianWeek. The information you receive on-line from AsianWeek is protected by the copyright laws of the United States. The copyright laws prohibit any copying, redistributing, retransmitting, or repurposing of any copyright protected material.