Yoon reaches out in bid for mayor
By John C. Drake
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
There is plenty about Councilor at Large Sam Yoon that makes him an atypical candidate for mayor of Boston: He did not grow up in the city; he has degrees from Princeton and Harvard; and he has held elected office for only three years.
But it is his ethnicity – as the first Asian-American candidate for mayor – that presents some of the most complex issues for Yoon in a city that has historically been steeped in ethnic identity politics. So far, Yoon has signaled an intent to have it both ways when it comes to his race.
In interviews, he says he does not want to be known by Boston voters as the Asian candidate, expressing a desire to be a transcendent political figure akin to President Barack Obama.
At the same time, however, he is putting his ethnicity at the forefront of his campaign as he seeks to energize a natural base of support and tap into Asian campaign fund-raising networks.
He hoisted a giant fortune cookie at the traditional Saint Patrick’s breakfast in South Boston on March 15, part of a joke that drew nervous laughter because of its overt ethnic reference. And as he strolled the parade route later that day, he passed out fortune cookies to spectators.
Yoon, a Korean-American, also began raising money for a mayoral run in a West Coast fund-raising tour of Korean and other Asian communities. E-mailed announcements cited his bid to become the Hub’s first Asian-American mayor. Even his formal campaign kickoff was held at Chau Chow, a Chinese dim sum restaurant.
Yoon has defended his collection of out-of-state contributions as necessary to build a competitive campaign against more entrenched politicians like four-term incumbent Thomas M. Menino and Councilor at Large Michael F. Flaherty, a former City Council president.
Interest in his candidacy is to be expected from among Asian-Americans, Yoon said.
“There’s no doubt that a lot of Asian-Americans are proud of what I’ve accomplished, and there is no doubt that I am proud of my Asian heritage,” Yoon said in an interview. “And I’ve never made any effort to hide it.”
But he added, when it comes to voting, he believes that few people will do so with his ethnicity in mind. “Anybody who bothers to go to the polls has some idea who a person is,” he said. “One aspect is a candidate’s race, and maybe that’s the first thing they learned. But what our campaign seeks to promote is my background in organizing, in developing affordable real estate, in teaching, and studying government at the graduate level.”
Boston political campaigns have long been entangled with questions of race and ethnicity. Irish politicians dominated city politics for most of the 20th century until Mayor Thomas M. Menino made history as the city’s first Italian-American mayor in 1993. Black politicians have strung together race-based coalitions to win in district races, fueled by racially tinged issues like busing and housing policy.
But the Asian-American community in Boston, while growing, does not represent a large enough voting base to make solidifying its support a winning strategy. About 8 percent of Boston residents are identified as Asian, according to 2007 estimates by the US Census Bureau.
“Let’s not kid ourselves,” said Paul Watanabe, a political scientist and director of the Institute for Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. “You cannot ride an Asian-American vote alone into the mayor’s office.”
Yoon, 39, was born in Seoul, but he has lived in the United States since he was a child. He changed his birth name in the mid-1990s from Sang Hyun to his present name, a relatively common practice among Asian-Americans to make their names roll more easily off the tongues of friends and associates.
Myong Sool Chang, editor of The Boston Korean newspaper, said excitement about Yoon within the Korean-American community predates his run for mayor.
“The Korean community knew long ago about Sam Yoon, because he regularly participates in Korean community events,” said Chang, one of several Boston-area reporters Yoon contacted on Feb. 8 to announce his plans to run. “He does very well with the Korean community.”
But Chang, who has contributed money to Yoon’s campaign, said he worries about there may be too much focus on Yoon’s ethnicity. “He can’t deny his identity,” Chang said. “But the major newspapers and the major media, if they focus on racial issues and identity issues, I kind of worry about that. I hope that is not a factor in this campaign.”
Myeong Ho Lowe, an Arlington business owner who got to know Yoon as president of the Korean Dry Cleaners Association of New England, said that while there is a cultural affinity for Yoon, support for his candidacy is not merely race-based.
“A lot of people might think the Korean community is just excited because he is Korean-American, but we listen to what he is trying to do and what he is saying, and as a mayor, I think he’d be a great one,” Lowe said.
The fortune cookies on Saint Patrick’s Day, Yoon said, were meant as a joke.
It started with the Saint Patrick’s Day breakfast Sunday morning, where he brought along an oversize fortune cookie wrapped in plastic that he kidded contained the name of Boston’s next mayor. To the audience, he mock-explained: “This is a Chinese fortune cookie. Now, I was born in Korea. And that’s the truth. But Chinese and Korean, it’s fine for me. Because I look at Chinese people, and I can’t even tell the difference.”
The crowd at these breakfasts is accustomed to race-based humor, but nervous laughter sprang from the crowd after the lines. Fortune cookies, while common in US Chinese restaurants, are a peculiarly Western stereotype of Asian culture, because restaurants in China do not serve them.
Watanabe said the episode showed Yoon is still trying to “feel his way around the identity issue.”
“To me, the fortune cookie thing is so stereotypical that I personally would have avoided it,” he said.
Former city councilor Lawrence S. DiCara said the role of race in Boston politics is overstated and largely a relic of the past. He said that as people get to know Yoon more, he will probably be identified more as a highly educated policy wonk than as an Asian-American candidate.
“You are who you are, and you don’t hide it, and you don’t flaunt it, and the people will decide,” DiCara said.
Yoon said he believes that his ethnicity will be an issue that many voters take note of, but that his success as a candidate will be based on more substantive factors.
“I am campaigning on the notion that there is more to me than meets the eye, but what meets the eye for a lot of people is my appearance, and my age, which I also poke fun at,” he said. “They have to go through this thing of ‘Who is he? Is he Chinese? Is he Korean?’ It is an important step along the way, but it’s not the whole thing.”
