The ‘C’ in the ‘Big C’

For the Dec. 9 mayoral runoff, Supervisor Gavin Newsom has been consolidating and expanding his support by edging leftward in the hope of splitting a potential Matt Gonzalez liberal-progressive coalition.
Newsom has picked up lesbian/gay liberal Democratic endorsements, such as those from the San Francisco Democratic Party, City Treasurer Susan Leal, Assemblyman Mark Leno, Supervisor Bevan Dufty and the Alice B. Toklas Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Democratic Club. In addition, Newsom added two longtime liberal lions — former Supervisor Sue Bierman and state Sen. John Burton.
However, in the Nov. 4 general election, Newsom qualified for the runoff with 42 percent of the vote, predominantly in what’s called the “Big C” of San Francisco politics. Newsom’s support can be traced along a crescent-shaped area going westward from North Beach and Chinatown through Pacific Heights, the Marina, and the Richmond, then shifting south into the Sunset and West of Twin Peaks neighborhoods and arcing eastward into the Excelsior and Visitacion Valley.
On Nov. 4, Newsom picked up support from the “little Cs” living in the “Big C”: conservatives, centrists, Caucasians, and Chinese Americans.
Some politically tuned-in Chinese and their allies have been waiting for years to permanently shift the city’s liberal politics to the middle.
Although Chinese residents make up one-fourth of the city’s population, the long march of Chinese American empowerment has resulted in only one in eight voters being Chinese, according to the Chinese American Voters Education Committee.
The potential of a Chinese voter bloc has moderates and conservatives salivating — and pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into voter-registration efforts since 1983. They’ve been investing in groups such as Vote 2000, the Asian American Voter Project of the early 1990s, CAVEC, and the 2003 Asian American Voter Project.
For some, bringing the Chinese American community into the political fold could mean breaking the left’s hold on San Francisco politics. For example, moderate-to-conservative Chinese Americans, and, to a larger extent, all Asian Pacific Americans, could be elected to six or seven of the Board of Supervisors’ 11 seats. Currently, the board contains only one Chinese American supervisor — liberal-moderate Fiona Ma, who represents conservative District 4 (Sunset).
The potential for political realignment is detailed in a July study conducted by professor Richard DeLeon. The author of Left Coast City — an analysis of the city’s progressive politics — found that in 95 of 646 precincts, APAs constituted the majority of the voting-age population, with a high proportion of them likely to be Chinese Americans. DeLeon labeled 62 precincts as politically “conservative” by San Francisco standards, 32 as “moderate,” and only one precinct as “progressive.”
These labels drive home the point: Chinese American voters are likely to vote in a conservative-to-centrist direction rather than with the liberal standard of San Francisco.
And Chinese Americans have indeed voted contrary to that standard.
An exit poll commissioned by the non-partisan CAVEC and conducted by Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin and Associates on election day, Nov. 4, surveyed 124 Chinese American voters. While the high error margin of 12 percent might cast some doubt on the polling, the results verify DeLeon’s assertions.
For example, Chinese American voters surveyed rejected Proposition A, the $295 million school bond. Fifty-nine percent of Chinese American voters rejected Prop. A, which needed a supermajority of at least 55 percent for passage. By contrast, the city as a whole overwhelmingly endorsed it, with 71 percent voting yes.
The Chinese vote suggests concerns about the San Francisco Unified School District’s past financial scandals and the district’s controversial policy used to assign students to schools, which some have alleged discriminates against Chinese children.
In addition, Chinese American voters are more likely to own or live in their own home, and their property taxes pay for general-obligation bonds such as Proposition A. Half of San Francisco’s Chinese American voters own their home, according to a 1999 breakdown of the electorate prepared by the Santa Clara–based Computerized Political Services. To compare, the same data showed that 70 percent of San Francisco’s overall electorate were renters.
The same CAVEC/Fairbank exit poll revealed that an overwhelming majority of Chinese American voters — 72 percent — supported Supervisor Gavin Newsom’s Proposition M, the anti-aggressive- panhandling measure. The Chinese American vote far exceeded the citywide percent of the vote — 60 percent — in favor of the measure.
Along with overwhelmingly backing Prop. M, Chinese American voters supported Newsom’s mayoral candidacy: 45 percent voted for Newsom, 24 percent for Angela Alioto, 14 percent for Susan Leal, 8 percent for Matt Gonzalez, 3 percent for Tom Ammiano, 2 percent for Tony Ribera and 3 percent for other candidates.
Having recently received the endorsements of Alioto and Leal, Newsom can now consolidate his support in the Chinese American community.
On Nov. 26, six out of seven elected Chinese officials weighed in for him: Assessor-Recorder Mabel Teng and Supervisor Fiona Ma — both of whom had previously supported Leal — along with Assemblyman Leland Yee, Community College Board member Lawrence Wong, Board of Education member Eddie Chin and BART Board director James Fang, whose family owns the Independent, the San Francisco Examiner, and AsianWeek.
For Newsom to win the mayor’s office, one key factor will be winning the Chinese vote by a landslide margin. The same bloc delivered key support for conservative former police chief Frank Jordan in his narrow upset over incumbent liberal Art Agnos in 1991 and incumbent mayor Willie Brown in his victory over progressive supervisor Tom Ammiano in 1999. That year, Brown shifted from his liberal stance to the political center to successfully broaden his appeal to conservative and centrist voters — including Chinese Americans.