The Color of Power: Racial Coalitions and Political Power in Oakland by Frédérick Douzet

Author:Frédérick Douzet [Douzet, Frédérick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, History & Theory
ISBN: 9780813932811
Google: j161yiG1hT0C
Goodreads: 15863975
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2012-01-15T07:31:05+00:00

Real Ethnic Solidarity?

The 1994 Municipal and School Board Elections

The 1994 elections were held soon after the redistricting and can therefore be considered the first test of the recently negotiated voting power of minorities. It involved the possible replacement of the city council and school board members for district 2, largely redrawn in favor of the Asian community the year before. In 1994, for the first time, an Asian candidate ran against the sitting black mayor. At the same time, the first Asian candidate ran for city council in district 2 against a white candidate; Mary Moore, the sitting member, had decided not to run. According to her successor, John Russo, she had ruined her political career by her public statements during the redistricting negotiations.23 As minorities, stimulated by the redistricting battle, tried to establish their political power, the city also had to vote on a statewide ballot measure hostile to immigrants, Proposition 187 (Save Our State). Through the prism of these three elections, it is possible to measure the electoral relevance of the racial criterion in Oakland as well as the extent of solidarity among minorities in the voting on Proposition 187.

Participation in the June 1994 primaries was very low. It increased sharply in November when the city had to choose between Asian and black candidates for mayor. In the district 2 election as in that for mayor, voter mobilization is not what seems to have been most lacking for the Asian candidates. Lily Hu and Ted Dang committed mistakes of political novices, and both ended their campaigns with no intention of running again.

Lily Hu defined herself as a typical Chinese American, except that she was married to a black man. She had come to the United States to pursue studies at the University of Massachusetts and moved to California to join her family. Her parents were both engineers, and her brothers and sisters were professionals like her. Hu, who was 38 in 1994, was a telecommunications consultant working on her own. She began to get involved in the Asian community in 1985, when she became the first woman to head the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce. Since the redistricting, she had been trying to expand the Asian community beyond Chinatown, conducting activities with other neighborhoods, and proudly boasting of a $10,000 deposit by the Asian Chamber of Commerce in the credit union run by Allen Temple, an East Oakland church whose pastor was the very influential Jay Alfred Smith Sr.

Lily Hu was beaten by white candidate John Russo in the primaries by 67 to 23 percent of the votes cast. Despite support from leaders of the Chinese community, she did not succeed in persuading enough voters to win the election. One of her major mistakes was to commit a true sacrilege in the eyes of the Asian community: she lied about her education. “I needed six credits to get my degree, and I said that I had gotten it. They [the Asian community] were furious.”24

But the election results did show that Chinatown heavily supported the Asian candidate—Hu won 74 percent of the vote there.

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