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Chu Wins, Headed for Sacramento

Judy Chu. File Photo.

Battle between Asian, Latino candidates could hold lessons

By Michelle DeArmond/AP

Chinese herbalists hawk exotic roots along the main drags in the San Gabriel Valley. Aromatic taco stands and Spanish-language street signs dot the nearby thoroughfares in East Los Angeles.

Together these distinctly different cultures co-exist in a legislative district that many say represents the future of California and, eventually, the country. Whites and blacks are in the minority in this district, while the booming Asian and Latino populations are struggling side by side to get a political leg up.

That contest was played out on Tuesday when voters cast ballots in a special election to fill the vacant 49th Assembly District, where Latinos have fended off challenges from Asian Americans repeatedly for the office over the past decade. But on Wednesday morning, early counting indicated Chinese American Monterey Park Councilwoman Chu had surged past her her opponents, Alhambra Mayor Daniel R. Arguello and school board member Robert Miranda.

Democrat Chu had 58 percent of the vote, while Arguello was in second with less than a third of the votes.

Chu’s victory makes her the fourth API in the Assembly, joining Carol Liu of District 44, George Nakano of District 53, and Wilma Chan of District 16.

It is an election that many say could provide lessons in coalition building for other diverse areas.

“The practical politics of any district are increasingly that there needs to be really good crossover candidates who can address the multiracial complexion of the voting base,” said Stewart Kwoh, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California. “I think the good thing that I’ve seen is all the candidates are trying to reach out to different racial and ethnic groups.”

While most expected the vote to break down generally along ethnic lines, it was clear from the outset that the winner would have to get some crossover votes. Although 45 percent of the district is Latino, some predicted the bloc was split between Arguello and Miranda, and many Latinos endorsed Chu, such as Sheriff Lee Baca and Reps. Loretta Sanchez and Hilda Solis.

The district includes unincorporated East Los Angeles, which with a 96.8 percent Hispanic population has the greatest concentration of Latinos in any community of 100,000 or more nationwide. The district also includes Alhambra, Monterey Park, Rosemead, San Gabriel and unincorporated South San Gabriel.

Twenty-two percent of the district is Asian American, giving it the highest percentage of registered Asian American voters of any Assembly district in the state, but still significantly fewer than Latinos.

It’s the candidates’ ability to appeal to those remaining voters, most of them white, that many think is key to winning.

“I think there’s … an Asian voting bloc, and I think there’s … a Latino voting bloc. There always has been. People don’t want to talk about it,” Miranda said. “There’s the Anglo vote out there, and there’s also the Republican vote,” he said. “The question is where are they going to go.”

No Republicans ran for what is considered a safe Democratic seat, and since Chu took more than 50 percent in the open primary, she bypassed a runoff against Libertarian Kim Goldsworthy.

Joe Cerrell, a longtime political consultant in the Los Angeles area, had predicted that while Miranda is not as well known as Arguello, his very presence on the ballot would undercut Arguello’s ability to get Latino votes. Chu, he believed, would end up with the most Asian American votes and likely much of the white vote.

Leland T. Saito, who wrote the 1998 book, Race and Politics: Asian Americans, Latinos and Whites in a Los Angeles Suburb, has studied how the huge influx of Asian Americans into the sprawling San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles has dramatically changed the area over the past 30 years.

“I think for some voters there is still the perception that somebody of their ethnic or racial group knows their issues best,” he said, noting that some voters want to elect someone of their own racial group to rectify problems of underrepresentation in Sacramento.

Chu, who proudly touts her Latino endorsements, predicted the election would be a “history-making” one. Chu ran for the seat in 1998 and lost to Gloria Romero, who recently was elected to the state Senate to replace Hilda Solis, who got elected to Congress.

“I think that it’s significant in that all of these groups that have endorsed me, I think, have looked basically at issues beyond ethnicity. They’ve looked at how qualified a person is,” she said. “It’s a tremendously diverse district, and I think there’s some positive things that could be learned from it.”