Eric Mar’s Mahjong Tile and JROTC Kids
July 2, 2008
Eric Mar kicked off his November campaign for District 1 supervisor with more than 150 supporters last Saturday at Argonne Elementary in the Richmond. Eight-year old daughter Jade, adorned in a pink “Richmond” sweatshirt, scooted around on her skate shoes as daddy and his political allies - like emcee and school board candidate Sandra Lee Fewer and former student representative Alan Kenny Wong - spoke …. “I carry around good luck charms and other things, but I’m not superstitious,” said Mar, pulling from his pocket and holding up a yi wan (ten thousand) mahjong tile. “It’s the last remaining mahjong piece that I have that my grandmother who passed away last year gave to me…this piece represents the best and the worst times of my life in the Richmond District for 24 years,” he said. The morning after Jade was born in April 2000, Mar’s house burned down: “We were left homeless. [Wife] Sandy and Jade luckily were still at Kaiser [Hospital] at the time… I was in the street barefoot and in my underwear”… BURNED OUT OF OFFICE: “The reason I got to be a supervisor eight years ago is because of an [electric blanket] fire on the two hundred block of Second Avenue,” said the district’s terming-out Supervisor Jake McGoldrick as he endorsed Mar (who was previously his campaign treasurer). Mar’s APA contenders include Chinese Historical Society of America executive director Sue Lee and California Democratic Party vice chair Alicia Wang…
MAR AND JROTC: Mar’s vote last week to eliminate JROTC for P.E. credit attracted to his kickoff a silent, respectful protest of nearly 100 mostly-APA JROTC cadets, alumni and supporters like American Legion Cathay Post leader Nelson Lum and parent Quincy Yu, whose young charges hoisted banners outside. Mar and a school board majority overturned the P.E. credit resolution in a step to phase out the leadership program that serves up to 1,400 students, nearly three-quarters of who are APA. Mar, joined by Jane Kim, Mark Sanchez (he and Kim endorsed Mar for supe) and Norman Yee, criticized the program as a pro-military recruitment vehicle. However, Johnny Wang, overseeing the pro-JROTC Choice for Students petition campaign, emphasized, “This group has nothing against Eric Mar. We’re against his vote. We would love him to reconsider.” Wang, not hopeful that Mar will change his vote, was expected to have more than 7,200 valid signatures last weekend to qualify a November advisory measure for the school district to restore the program. “We were here to send a message to Eric Mar to show him it’s real students are getting hurt,” he said, calling the board’s move “underhanded maneuvers” with two pro-JROTC P.E. credit votes (Hydra Mendoza and Kim-Shree Maufas) out of town. “It was clearly a political move,” said Wang…
CHANGE IS COMING: Mar, whose politics are steeped in Chinese Progressive Association organizing (director Leon Chow has endorsed Eric), director of the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights and shop steward for SEIU Local 790, declared, “This is our San Francisco, not the San Francisco of developers and big business groups…I’ve been listening to Sam Cooke over the last couple weeks, the song ‘A Change is Gonna Come.’ I feel that this [in this] country there’s a change that is going to come. If….change is going to come, we’re going to kick Bush, Chaney and the big-business backed war machine out of office this November.”
EVIL TWIN: After introducing his biological and “quirky” family of mom Betty and big sister Ricki of Sacramento and sister Sandy of L.A., Eric Mar ended his kickoff saying said they would “hold me accountable” and “look out for me.” Later he confessed accidentally leaving out campaign manager Gordon his “evil twin, who’s my last family member [and] mad I left him out”….
FINAL NOTE: The campaign headquarters of Alicia Wang, vying with Mar for the District 1 seat, is being leased from Geary Boulevard neighborhood RE/MAX realtor Wayne Chan, not donated as reported in the June 20 column.
Reach Samson Wong at (415) 321-5886 or swong@asianweek.com.
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