The San Francisco Chronicle has again overlooked another major APA supervisor candidate. Last time it was former Organization of Chinese Americans national president and former counsel in the S.F. City Attorney office Claudine Cheng in a story about District 3 (North Beach/Chinatown) top fundraisers. The latest is District 11 (Excelsior, Inner Mission, Ingleside) candidate and former planning commissioner Myrna Lim, whom the paper left out because she did not have major endorsements or raise more than $5,000… In the Oct. 3 story, reporter Wyatt Buchanan excluded the only APA and “Chilipina American” (Filipina and Chinese American) candidate in the heavily Filipino and Chinese American district. Lim, who complained to the daily’s editor John Diaz, finished third in 2000 and second in 2004 for the same seat. This time she’s claiming some heavyweight endorsements-including Abu Ghraib investigator and retired Major General Antonio Taguba, the San Francisco Police Officers Association (a major endorsement that saved Art Agnos’ mayoral candidacy in 1987), the Deputy Sheriffs Association (led by former sheriff candidate David Wong), the Chinese American Democratic Club, the Chinese American Citizens Alliance and the Small Property Owners of San Francisco. And she claims that she’s raised well over $5,000. Ironically, the following day the Chronicle ran a front page story “Women Losing Traction in City Politics” and again left Lim out… Lim’s protests haven’t gone unnoticed. The Chronicle finally wrote about her last Monday-her late campaign filing, which she’s working on and expected to document more than $50,000 in donations and loans in overly complicated Ethics Commission requirements like IRS 1040 filings…
HOME COURT ADVANTAGE: Last week’s Chinese for Affirmative Action District 3 supervisor candidate forum has to be considered home court for candidate David Chiu, who recently left CAA’s board of directors… CAA exec director and debate co-moderator Vincent Pan said that disclosing that potential conflict of interest wasn’t necessary given that other candidates like Claudine Cheng sit on boards of other debate-sponsoring organizations. Therefore Pan did not defer his Chiu-directed questions (such as clarifying his stance on the City College Chinatown campus) to co-moderator Sarah Wan of Community Youth Center …By that standard, Sarah may not have to bow out of interrogating her chairwoman of the board, Jaynry Mak, who will appear at a CYC-CAA school board forum this week… SHOW US SOME AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: CAA is issuing slate cards and taking positions on city and state propositions that normally don’t get enough attention like APA youth issues, Pan said. The group, which led the effort to approve the two 14- and two-story buildings plan for a City College Chinatown campus, is distributing slate cards opposing state Proposition 8, the ban on same sex marriages, among its positions…FINAL ANSWER JEOPARDY: How did District 3 candidate and former prosecutor David Chiu ever get through Harvard twice when this columnist had to repeatedly ask what month and year he worked for S.F. District Attorney Terence Hallinan? Chiu eventually answered December 1997 to “late Fall 1998″…Meanwhile, Chiu’s contender, former Alameda County prosecutor Joseph Alioto Jr., worked in the summer of 1999 for four months….
DOUBLE STANDARDS: You’ve heard the racial and ethnic double standards. It’s okay for black rappers to use the n-word, but not whites. Or, in the case of AsianWeek contributor Irwin Tang, he used the racial slur in the title of his book-Gook, John McCain’s Racism and Why It Matters. Tang-who’s an APA-had license to use “gook” but not former North Vietnam POW McCain, who apologized for using it years later….Last month, Democratic White House pick Barack Obama was ripped especially by pro-McCain for Prez partisans for using the phrase “putting lipstick on a pig” as being sexist in what was interpreted as an allusion to GOP veep nominee Sarah Palin’s convention punchline on what was the difference between a pitbull and a hockey mom. Palin was a case where a woman had license to poke fun at her own gender, whereas Obama did not. The tables were turned when Obama supporters last April-especially black leaders like Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina-had ripped former President Bill Clinton. The former president was spinning Obama’s victory (and Hillary Clinton’s defeat) as predictable given the strength of black voters in South Carolina and that the state had supported Reverend Jesse Jackson in the 1988 for president. On the other hand, Obama had won in the former Dixiecrat state once represented by segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond…
IT’S TRICKY DICK, AND I DON’T APPROVE THIS MESSAGE: From the Yellowvisions APA pop culture collector Dr. Christina Fa comes a dartboard from old prickly tricky dick reflecting the racial tenor of the times. The Detroit-made artifact is of President Richard Milhous Nixon in his post-1969 red, white and blue psychedelic glory, making a peace sign with his left while crossing his fingers with his right, and speculation on whether he’d run in 1972 (he did and won re-election by a landslide). The Nixon parody, described as “Captain Middle America,” has an ethnically slurry scoring system-”Each dart sticking the ‘I like Spiro’ button scores 10 points, unless you are a polack or a fat jap, in which case you get 20 points” according to the firm “B.S. Unlimited Limited”….BUTTON UP: The Tigereye Design firm that sold “Democratic stuff” like the “Chinese Americans for Obama” with the joint U.S.-P.R.C. flag has manufactured a stranger one-”China for Obama”- with the flag of the People’s Republic of China. The firm is odd, given it’s an Ohio firm with employees represented by United Steelworkers and supports progressive, labor friendly candidates. Sounds likely they’re more a pro-Barack Obama firm than John McCain…
Reach Samson Wong at (415) 321-5886 or swong@asianweek.com.
Veteran columnist has appeared in up to 450,000 households weekly in the SF Independent, Examiner (2000-04) and AsianWeek since 1996. As Editor-in-Chief (2003-07), AsianWeek and Samson received wide recognition from the California Legislature, New American Media, League of Women Voters, GLAAD, Organization of Chinese Americans, SPUR and APA civic groups. Thru the SF Citizens Advisory Committee on Elections, SF Elections Task Force and Chinese American Voters Education Committee, Wong helped boost APA influence from 25,000 in the 1980s to over 50,000 voters by the early 1990s.
Joseph Alioto Jr. was a summer intern law clerk in Alameda County – NOT a prosecutor.
As law enforcement officers, prosecutors are issued and carry a badge. Since Alioto was only a summer intern, he worked under the supervision of an attorney and was never issued a badge. Therefore, not a prosecutor.
Again the anti-David Chiu rant. It’s amazing how you can nitpick on David, but then write how Joe Alioto, Jr. worked for four months in the Alameda County DA’s office as is that was career longevity to be proud of.
And what about the comment posted above that Alioto was never a prosecutor, even though he constantly claims to have been one? Gonna research that? I think Asian Americans and all voters in D3 deserve to know.
Samson: Do your homework.
I do not call myself a doctor because I interned at a hospital for a summer. I am not a diplomat because I summer interned for the State Dept.
Alioto Jr. was never a prosecutor, but a summer law clerk. A big difference.
By the way, Alioto Jr. has been calling himself a former prosecutor during candidate forums. An outright lie.
I always thought that the biggest endorsements in San Francisco were the Democratic Party, the Bay Guardian, the mayor and the Labor Council. Myrna Lim had four years to think up a campaign strategy, because this is the only time we see her around the neighborhood.
Otherwise, the IT Bookman Center barely keeps its doors open, her track record on the Planning Commission is marked with black clouds during the dot.com boom, she was a real problem during the Fong building negotiations, she wants to dissolve the Sanctuary City ordinance and she supports the Medi-Care fraud that occurred at the West Bay senior service center.
If you believe that this is leadership, then go ahead and vote for her. Let it be known that the Filipino American Democratic Club does not support her.