By Keith Kamisugi, Curtis Chin and Mike Fong
http://filam.foundasian.org

October’s Filipino American History Month is an opportune time for other Asian American communities to evaluate our progress in supporting the efforts of Filipino Americans in achieving fair and more equal representation for their community in politics.

One glaring fact demonstrates why this issue is ripe for discussion: no Filipino American has ever been elected to the California State Assembly, a body representing a state that is home to approximately 60 percent of Americans of Filipino heritage.

By our count, a little more than 20 Asian Americans have served in the California Legislature, including ten currently serving in the Assembly and one in the Senate.

Six of those current members are of Chinese ancestry. Three are of Japanese descent. Of the last two members, one is Korean American and the other is Vietnamese American - and both were the first from their respective communities to be elected to the Legislature.

Americans of Chinese, Filipino, South Asian and Vietnamese descent comprise the four largest Asian American communities in California. (In addition to the absence of a Filipino American from the history of the California Legislature, voters have never elected a South Asian to that body as well.)

For many, if not most, of the Asian Americans successfully seated in the Legislature, part of their success has been the response by Filipino Americans to candidates’ calls for pan-Asian American support, especially in fundraising.

As Maeley Tom noted in her April 21, 2008, column for AsianWeek, numerous Fil-Am leaders heeded those calls. Alice Bulos, Irene Bueno, Gloria Caoile, Dennis Normandy, Mona Lisa Yuchengco, Charmaine Manansala, Tessie Guillermo, Vida Benavides, Ray Buenaventura - just to mention a few - have contributed both their political skills and their community connections in the Fil-Am community to strengthen other Asian American candidates.

Has the broader Asian American community reciprocated?

Four Fil-Ams to date have offered their candidacies for the Legislature: Larry Asera, Henry Manayan, Christopher Cabaldon and Arlie Ricasa. In looking back at the reasons for their respective defeats, we should consider if the lack of enough support from other Asian American communities was a factor. Mariko Yamada’s primary election over Cabaldon in his second run for the state Assembly is the exception, if only in that it divided Asian American support.

Granted, success and defeat in politics often results from a more complex combination of factors than simply support from the Asian American community. And no candidate should be supported or elected to office just because of her or his ethnicity. But it’s fair to ask if we’ve done enough to help the Filipino American community earn at least one seat at the table.

That being said, we need to credit the considerable support from Asian American electeds who endorse down-ticket candidates.  Congressman Mike Honda and State Controller John Chiang, for example, are incredibly supportive of many contenders from all of our Asian American communities. But the support of a few high-level electeds is not enough.

And the issue of support for state level candidates just scratches the surface. Many of our successful Asian American legislative candidates first won office at the municipal and county levels. But for every Manayan and Cabaldon (both mayors), there are numerous other Fil-Ams whose efforts fall short at those same levels, constricting the pipeline of leaders better able to compete for higher office.

A good example is Mark Pulido’s unsuccessful bids to join the Cerritos City Council in Cerritos, Calif. Pulido is a two-term member and former president of the ABC School Board, which serves a unified school district encompassing several Southern California communities. He was elected to the school board without opposition in November 2001, a first in that district’s history.

Pulido’s candidacy for the Cerritos City Council earlier this year was expertly run with considerable grassroots organization and attracted wide support from community leaders. His fundraising fell short though, even though like many other Asian American candidates, he attempted to generate support from Asian Americans outside of his district.

Pulido was the tenth Fil-Am to vie for the seat on the Cerritos City Council, which serves a city with one of the largest percentages of Asian American - and Fil-Am - residents in California.

Numerous other Filipino American candidates throughout the country who have faced similar obstacles. Hawai’i is the exception. Ben Menor became the first Fil-Am elected to a state legislature in 1962 and Ben Cayetano became the first Fil-Am elected a state’s governor in 1994.

Those are undeniably incredible achievements, but in the context of Hawai’i’s unique demographics and longer history of Filipino American empowerment - we cannot point to political success in Hawai’i to offset the lack of Fil-Am electoral success on the Mainland.

Let’s begin an honest discussion on how we can better support qualified Fil-Am candidates at all levels, but especially at the Legislative tier in California.

We first have to acknowledge that the Filipino American community, like any other group, isn’t monolithic.  There are diverse and competing ideas within the Fil-Am community on how to increase their political strength. We can still improve our support for Fil-Am candidates in a way that avoids interfering with their process of political self-determination.

Donate to political action committees such as the National Fil-Am Democrat PAC, an affiliate of the AAA-Fund (aaa-fund.org) and the Filipino American PAC in the Bay Area; donate to KAYA: Filipino Americans for Progress (kayagrassroots.org), support Fil-Ams aspiring to serve through elected office and make an extra effort to respond to contribution and other requests from Fil-Am candidates.

Our support must also extend beyond fundraising resources.  We need to be more proactively inclusive in our outreach and recruitment of Fil-Ams in both the political and civic arenas.  Leadership training that ensures representation by Fil-Ams can go a long way to inspire and encourage Fil-Ams to serve on boards and commissions and run for elected office.

Asian Americans have long advocated for better representation in politics not only because having a seat at the table provides us our due voice in governing, but also because diversity benefits all Americans.

It’s time we walk the talk when it applies to building political empowerment within the Filipino American and other under-represented Asian American communities.

Keith Kamisugi is the communications director of a San Francisco-based racial justice nonprofit, an APA for Progress board member and the former project director of the Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans, co-founded by Dale Minami as one of the country’s first AAPI political action committees. Curtis Chin is a Los Angeles-based writer/director, an APA for Progress board member and a former director of Asian American and Pacific Islander Outreach with the Democratic National Committee. Mike Fong is a field deputy for a Los Angeles city councilmember and chair of the Asian Pacific Islander Caucus of the California Democratic Party.