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This past Tuesday, Boston held a preliminary election. The two top vote getters - Tom Menino (51%) and Michael Flaherty (24%) - will face off in the November Runoff election for Mayor. Yoon came in with a respectable 21% of the votes.
The day after the election, I was in Boston Chinatown with my family and couldn't help but notice all the Menino signs in the windows of bakeries, groceries, tea shops... pretty much almost every store front in Chinatown. From this superficial observation, it looked like Chinatown, the most established Asian American community in Boston, didn't support the first viable Asian American candidate for mayor. When Obama had this problem, the mainstream media asked "Does Obama have an Asian problem?" and I couldn't help asking the same question yesterday, "Did Yoon have an Asian problem?" Was this a generational challenge? An inter-ethnic difficulty (Yoon is Korean American.)? In such a close election, would the support of more voters in Chinatown have been the margin between a Menino-Flaherty runoff and a Menino-Yoon runoff in November?
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There's a lot of reasons why Sam took third and not second, but what you raise is not one of them.
In Chinatown's voting districts, according to City of Boston records, Sam pulled 29% of the vote - second place - whereas Menino got 52%. Flaherty got 18%.
In Sam's two campaigns for City Council (05 and 07), Chinatown overwhelmingly supported him over their next favorite candidate (who was actually Flaherty).
In addition, based on election results in Chinatown over the last several elections (including last year's heavy-turnout Obama election), there are not enough voters who did not vote to have swung the results in Sam's favor. (And that's not even considering that every voter who did not vote would not have voted for Sam Yoon.)
Regardless, Sam tends to be very popular among Chinatown residents. But of course, Menino is the heavy favorite and many businesses here have relationships with him. Of course the day after the prelim election his signs were everywhere.
thanks for sharing that information. this is why locals should be writing about local events... :)
an asian candidate winning 29% of the vote in an asian neighborhood against a non-asian winning over 50% is not very good. but then, maybe boston is less racially polarized than new orleans, which is my barometer. down here that kind of showing would be considered terrible.
I think the problem is that Menino has shaken hands with so many people. Many of those who voted for him are influenced by the fact that he's met them, rather than what it is that Menino actually does. After 16 years in the same position, he's built a huge following. I hope whoever comes after Menino (or maybe Menino himself after his almost inevitable win) will bring about term limits.
but seung, chinatown is not a 100% asian neighborhood. It's about 60% asian, and considering how many of that 60% are eligible, then how many of the eligble are registered, and how many of the registered actually voted in a preliminary election in an off year when - face it - menino is guaranteed victory...29% starts looking pretty good.
during the obama election, the line for voting wrapped around the block, and i remember looking up and down the line like - why have i never seen any of these people? where are all the asian people?
and then bigWOWO is right, menino has so many years of having built up relationships throughout every neighborhood - including with chinatown's business leaders. everybody's seen him around town because the man is in all the places you go to be seen around town.
Question for the Boston folks (hi Giles!) - why is there a run-off if Menino got 51% of the vote? What is the threshold to win outright? Or is this an election system where there are always two rounds no matter what as long as there are more than two candidates?
I like to see all Asians regardless where they are from must stick together 100% and support their candidate. We are divided so much ethnically and have very little unity among us. To me Sam Yoon did very well in this election. Boston city council still wants to push the term limit for Mayor. You may be surprised that Yoon's name will appear on the November 3rd ballot.
hey ramey - it was a prelim election, so top two vote getters will appear on the ballot for the mayoral election in november.
in addition, the top 8 vote getters for city councilor-at-large will appear on the ballot in november. Hiep Nguyen did not make it.
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