‘Going For It’ in Marin
by Samson Wong

FAMILY, MARIN VALUES: Before he died, Henry Hayashino told his daughter Carole: “Life is too short...don’t let being Japanese American and don’t let being a woman hold you back, or stop you. When you want something, you go for it.”

It was unusual then for Hayashino to say something like that to his daughter. And now she’s “going for it,” seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination on March 7th for the 6th Assembly District in Marin and southern Sonoma.

“(My father) was a nisei man, a second generation man; I think it was different,” remembered Carole Hayashino, who is also the Marin County Human Rights Commissioner. “I think it was unusual for any father or a Japanese American father to say, ‘Know no limits. Don’t wait for someone to give it to you.’ And that stayed with me for life,” she said last December over breakfast in Larkspur.

Hayashino is one of eight Democrats vying to succeed Assemblywoman Kerry Mazzoni, a “termed-out” Democrat who has represented a district that includes Sausalito, Novato, southern Sonoma, Petaluma, southern Santa Rosa, San Rafael, and Larkspur.

“My father, my family, my parents...greatly influenced my politics,” said Hayashino. “He and other Japanese Americans were removed from their homes and put on trains and sent to camps. He ended up in rural Arkansas. He never had an opportunity for a college education. He never had a chance after camp, after he was released.

Hayashino seized the opportunities her father never had because of internment.

“He worked every day of his life, mornings and nights to ensure his kids would have a chance for a college education,” Hayashino remarked about her father, who ran a mom-and-pop market until he died at age 50. “He didn’t have a chance to retire.”

Building on her father’s sacrifices, Henry Hayashino’s daughter now has a chance to win the open primary and become the odds-on favorite to represent the 6th Assembly District. Any Democratic nominee would be a shoe-in to win the November 2000 general election in a district with a 52 percent Democratic to 29 percent Republican registration advantage.

Returned to office with two-thirds of the vote in 1996 and 1998, Assemblywoman Mazzoni’s strong educational commitment reflects her district’s constituents. Mazzoni was a Novato School Board member for eight years before she upset an incumbent Democrat in 1994, and now she chairs the Assembly Education Committee.

At the same time, Hayashino is one of five Democratic candidates with ties to education. Major candidates include Barbara Heller of the San Rafael City Council; Joe Nation and Jack Gibson of the Marin Water District board; and Mayor Frank Egger of Fairfax. Gibson and Nation list themselves as “educators.” Also running is Paul Nave who has also attracted attention as a boxer who once served three years in San Quentin prison for cocaine possession, as reported in the Press Democrat July 8, 1999.

San Rafael resident Hayashino became the director of the new Office of University Development and the highest Asian American administrator at San Francisco State in 1996, leading the first attempts to tap into alumni and corporate fundraising. Last year, she raised $14.7 million to create opportunities her father never had when his 1942 incarceration ended hopes of attending the College of the Pacific.

“It’s not just being an administrator,” she explained. “But it’s really providing opportunities for other students to go to college (through) endowment funds, or provide resources to faculty who are teaching. Development, fundraising was very, very new to the university.”

Hayashino’s fundraising acumen has sustained many educational programs.

“One of my first major projects was raising money for the Jewish studies program,” she recounted. “We were able to establish the first endowed chair in the university -- a $1 million endowment to fund a chair in Jewish studies.”

Before her leave of absence to run for office, Hayashino was an adjunct faculty member for SFSU’s Asian American Studies Department, where she revived a course on the Japanese American internment, an outgrowth from her passionate coordination of the National Redress Committee since 1980. Her efforts led to President Jimmy Carter’s national commission to examine redress, and eventually to Congressional passage of the Civil Liberties Act in 1988.

Her fundraising skills also helped Hayashino become one of the leaders in campaign donations, raising over $130,000 as of last December.

Hayashino already has attracted significant talent and support, including one of California’s top political consultants, Richie Ross.

She was also the first non-Latino endorsed by the powerful Latino Legislative Caucus, and she has the support of state Senators Patrick Johnston and John Vasconcellos, along with former Congressman Norman Mineta, current Congressman Bob Matsui and Assemblymen Mike Honda and George Nakano. Honda has loaned her $10,000, and Johnston has given $1000.

Hayashino said she senses that the Democratic assembly district has a progressive tilt. The 6th district was one of the few that opposed the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 in 1994 and anti-affirmative action Proposition 209 in 1996, both of which passed statewide. Proposition 227 (bilingual education) passed overwhelmingly in the state, but only passed 55-45 in the district.

“I found that Marin and southern Sonoma, on the one hand, are very different from San Francisco,” Hayashino continued. “On the other hand, its a district and a community with a special conscience.”

Hayashino has a progressive background, as well, and the scars to prove it. Steadfast in her positions for social justice and civil liberties, she was fired in 1994 after seven years as associate national director of the national Japanese American Citizen’s League for advocating same-sex marriage (this would be banned if Proposition 22 passes this March 7th). She was honored by the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice and Marin County for her stands.

Hayashino also predicts that the area’s burgeoning ethnic diversity will become an important issue. Ethnic minorities are emerging in a predominantly Anglo district. Seven percent of residents are Latino, and African and Asian Americans represent three percent each in Marin County alone, and their numbers are even higher in the public schools.

“I really think this district is grappling with issues of diversity,” Hayashino commented. “They want their children to function in a very diverse California.”

If successful, Hayashino will be the first Asian American woman elected to statewide office in that district. And so far, only one Asian American woman serves on the Marin Community College Board.

At a November reception in San Francisco, Hayashino noted the last Asian American to succeed there was another SFSU alumnus -- the late S.I. “Sam” Hayakawa, a Republican Mill Valley resident who became a U.S. Senator in 1976.

Surprisingly, Hayashino showed her partisanship and promised, “I’m going to change that.”

E-mail me at potsticker@prodigy.net or samson@sfindependent.com