It Is Time To Reverse The 80/20 Strategy That Is Hurting The Asian/Chinese Community?  How About 20/80; 20% Vote For the Democrats And 80% Vote For The Republicans Starting This Year’s Election?

SB Woo, through the 80/20 initiative, sent out a question and answer memo recently regarding our upcoming election. He suggested that Asians nationwide should vote with Blacks and Hispanics for the Democrat US Senate candidates so the Democrats can retain control of the US Senate. Why? Because “…the Senate under the Democrats’ control has Tripled the number of AsAm federal life-tenured judges, including increasing the number of AsAm federal Appeals Courts judges from zero to four.”

So the deciding factor SB Woo would have the Asian-American community adhere to is not about voting for the candidate who can best represent us or a given area, or even appointing the best qualified candidates for judges; it’s about all minorities voting together along party lines, to pay off debt for supposed past appointment confirmations. In other words, your vote is owned.

Doesn’t this flawed logic sound a lot like California’s SCA-5, wherein we would go back to race-based school admission policies? Race-based decision making is fine when it works in our favor. But what happens when it doesn’t? How did that work out last year when it was members of our community who cast the deciding votes to send SCA-5—someone else’s agenda—to the Assembly?

Not well. Only a backlash from the Asian-American community temporarily stopped the measure.

It is time for us to move beyond race-based admission policies as well as race-based political votes. Voting for people who share our most important values and punishing those who don’t is absolutely the right and responsibility of voters—regardless of skin color or race.

Mr. Woo goes on to pose a question about how this upcoming election impacts SCA-5. He says there are two schools of thought:

1.     Deny the Democrats a supermajority in the Assembly or Senate, and the Democrats won’t be able to revive or pass SCA-5. (This only works because Republicans have consistently opposed race-based decision making.)

2.     Woo believes in the second school of thought, where we can “…induce a MUCH STRONGER accountability from AsAm officials nationally, by defeating Paul Fong for NOT serving our interest during the STOP SCA 5 struggle.  Such a defeat will delight AsAm officials who have been faithful to us.  It'll warn the others.”  

He then goes on to postulate that SCA-5 can’t ever be passed in the California Legislature, because “…all AsAm Democratic Senators and Assembly-persons will vote against it. None of these officials will want to be the next Leland Yee or Paul Fong.”

Let’s be clear. There wasn’t one Republican vote for SCA-5, which needed 2/3 vote to pass. Three Chinese-Americans in the Senate voted for it, which sent the measure to the Assembly. The Assembly never took up the measure, but sent it back to the Senate where the Democrats no longer had a super-majority, and it was held. (FBI raids removed Leland Yee and Ron Calderon. Felony perjury convictions removed Rod Wright).

So the resolve of the Chinese-American Senators was never re-tested. But to say all AsAm Democratic Senators and Assemblymembers will vote against reintroducing affirmative action is naïve. It’s not just Paul Fong. Assemblymembers Richard Pan and Al Marasuchi have each subsequently said they still believe in affirmative action. More importantly, Speaker Toni Atkins, and President Pro-Tem Kevin De Leon have said within the last 30 days that affirmative action is among their priorities for next year.

Additionally, Democrat Asian-Americans have a track record of voting for affirmative action. Since 2003, nine different measures have been crafted to reintroduce affirmative action, and each time, every Asian-American who had an opportunity to vote against it, failed to do so! The Republicans, on the other hand, have consistently opposed; they believe that merit is a much better and fairer way to determine a school’s student body.

SCA-5, or affirmative action, is desired from the belief that by giving a helping hand to Latinos and Blacks, more will be accepted into our public universities, and better break the cycle of poverty through a more educated and productive society. Republicans believe in the same goal but through a different method.

Rather than changing the standards for some to get into college we should better prepare everyone for college by reforming education at the lower grade levels. The legislative Democrats have resisted common sense education reforms, which should also be on voters’ minds as they head to the ballot box.

And what do the four Asian-American Republican legislative candidates (SD34 Janet Nguyen, AD 55 Ling Ling Chang, AD65 Young Kim and AD41 Nathaniel Tsai) believe about these issues? They all oppose SCA-5, and support true education reform. Those are policies we can all get behind in this election. Do not forget to vote this Tuesday, November 4!