By SARA KUGLER, Associated Press Writer Thu Sep 29, 1:57 PM ET
NEW YORK - Mayor Michael Bloomberg quietly slipped away from City Hall one morning last week to meet with York Chan, the powerful community leader known as the "mayor of Chinatown." A day earlier, Chan sat down with Fernando Ferrer, the Democrat challenging Bloomberg in November.
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"Two candidates in 24 hours — that never happened before," Chan said during an interview in his office above bustling Mott Street in the heart of the Chinese neighborhood. "They used to ignore us."
A lot of things are happening for the first time in New York's Asian communities, where an explosion of new voters is thrusting the campaign trail into unfamiliar territory.
Until recently, candidates did not put much energy into wooing Asians, but that is changing. Asians as a group are becoming an influential force, joining the established blocs of black and Hispanic voters already crucial to winning office in New York City.
"The numbers of Asian-Americans on the voter rolls are increasing by leaps and bounds, and the actual turnout rates are increasing correspondingly, so ignore this group at your own peril," said John Liu, the only Asian on the 51-member City Council.
New York's Asians account for 11 percent of the city's 8 million people, compared with blacks' 26 percent and Hispanics' 28 percent. Asians are one of the city's fastest-growing minority groups: At nearly 900,000, their numbers have more than tripled since 1980, because of both immigration and a high birth rate.
Since the last mayoral election in 2001, 400,000 new voters have registered, including about 40,000 Chinese, according to an analysis by John Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research at the City University of New York Graduate Center.
There are about 14 million Asians nationwide — a population that expanded at a rate of 3.4 percent from 2003 to 2004, second only to the Hispanic boom, according to the
Census Bureau. The growth is certain to change the course of the political process for years to come, from local races to presidential campaigns.
The shift is already evident in the pages of New York's largest Chinese-language daily newspaper, which made history this summer with its first-ever political endorsement. Sing Tao Daily, which has a New York City circulation of more than 50,000, backed Bloomberg.
"Ten or 15 years ago, people in Chinatown were just interested in taking a picture with the politician. Now they want to explain their opinion, they want to exchange ideas and they also want to ask for something," said Sing Tao Daily's deputy general manager, Rick Ho. "Chinese nowadays, they're more involved with politics because the politics, they feel, are more involved in their life."
Ho said Bloomberg is the first mayor who appears to genuinely care about Chinatown, which has never served as much more than a backdrop for campaign lunches, fund-raisers and news conferences.
"Sometimes he just comes down and talks to a few people to understand what we need and find out what we know, and sometimes he even doesn't let the reporters know he's here. That means we have some real interaction," Ho said.
The newspaper may have considerable sway with its readership: An exit poll by the Asian American Legal Defense Fund on Election Day last year found that the majority of Asian voters get their news from ethnic media rather than the mainstream English-language press.
As for Ferrer, he has the backing of the city's only Asian elected officials: Liu and state Assemblyman Jimmy Meng.
Support from the city's Asian voters appears to be up for grabs. Exit polls find that while the majority of Asian voters in New York City are registered Democrats, they are willing to cross party lines for the right candidate.
Both the Ferrer and Bloomberg campaigns employ workers and volunteers fluent in Asian languages and are producing multilingual advertisements and literature. The candidates also visit Asian neighborhoods more frequently and court leaders like Chan, and have been lobbying ethnic newspapers more aggressively than ever.
Another noticeable change is on the airwaves: Some televised debates are being translated and rebroadcast on Korean and Chinese stations.
Victoria Chan, the 18-year-old daughter of York Chan, said she has encountered voter registration tables and campaign posters around every corner in her neighborhood. Suddenly, it seems everyone is talking about politics and getting into the race.
"I've never in my life in Chinatown seen anything like this before," she said.
