SF AAPI leaders lament decline in City Hall representation

Ten years ago, San Francisco City Hall was brimming with Asian American representation, the culmination of years of progress from a generation of political and civic leaders knee-deep in the community.

Not only was Ed Lee in his first term as The City’s first Asian American mayor, but five of the 11 members of the Board of Supervisors were Asian American. Three were of Chinese descent (David Chiu, Katy Tang and Norman Yee), one was Korean (Jane Kim) and another was part-Japanese and part-Chinese (Eric Mar).

Now, Asian American representation of any kind among the San Francisco supervisors has almost completely vanished . It’s a concerning trend for a community — most of which is Chinese — that represents roughly a third of The City’s population.

Since Gordon Mar, Eric’s twin brother, was defeated by Joel Engardio in 2022 , Connie Chan has been the only Asian American San Francisco supervisor. And the Chinese American faces a tough reelection in November against Marjan Philhour, who is Filipina.

Still, if Chan loses — and other Chinese candidates do, too — it would be the first time in nearly 40 years that San Francisco wouldn’t have a Chinese American supervisor.

“I feel lonely,” Chan told The Examiner. “I always say that public service is a privilege, but I am lonely. And I think that is a burden. And I think that is a burden put on by the political agenda.”

“To some of these people, it’s more important to have power for themselves, instead of understanding the long traditions, the long fight and the long advocacy for representation for communities like AAPI,” she said, referring to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

The Examiner spoke to several former citywide elected officials who ushered in what some called the “golden era” of Asian American leadership in The City for their perspective on why representation in San Francisco politics has changed.

From H(API) Hour to City Hall

In the late 1990s, a group of Asian American organizers launched several monthly events at Asian-owned restaurants, bars and other establishments in San Francisco to discuss the front-of-mind issues facing their communities.

One of those — called “H(API) Hour” — was co-founded by David Chiu, who, from 2009 to 2014, was the first Chinese American to represent Chinatown on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

“There were several things that we all had in common,” said Chiu, now the San Francisco City Attorney. “We all liked going out and having a good time. And we wanted to support Asian American community organizations and Asian-owned small businesses.”

H(API) Hour started as Chiu and six others meeting once per month. The event ultimately grew into a 4,000-person email chain.

At its apex, hundreds of people would attend each H(API) Hour. Chiu and other activists would educate attendees on what the important issues in the Asian American community were at that time and showcase a different community organization that many of the guests knew nothing about.

“They would come out to the H(API) Hour, have a great time, and make new friends,” Chiu said. “And this network would get involved in community activism, political campaigns, and then electoral office.”

“None of us expected in 1999 when we started H(API) Hour that we would end up in public office,” he said.

“It was a way for younger Asian American community activists to get together and just be social. And most of us were either working in nonprofits or actively involved with nonprofits,” said California Assemblyman Phil Ting, one of the original H(API) Hour participants. “At the same time, it provided a deeper personal connection with a group of folks.”

Eric Mar and Kim, who each were involved with H(API) Hour, were also central to a similar monthly group called “Locus Arts,” which was more tailored towards the Asian American art scene.

“The late 1990s was a special time, where there was a flourishing of Asian American expression,” Mar said.

Those gatherings laid the seeds for what Chiu described as the “heyday” of Asian American representation at City Hall, beginning in the early 2000s with supervisors such as Fiona Ma and Carmen Chu, and peaking in the mid-2010s.

Of the seven original founders of H(API) Hour, five — Chiu, Kim, Ting; former City College Trustee Ivy Lee and San Francisco Superior Court Judge Victor Hwang — went on to hold public office.

“That was the peak of our presence at City Hall,” said Norman Yee, who in 2019 became the second Asian American president of the Board of Supervisors, after Chiu.

What’s behind the decline?

These days, most of the leaders from that era have either moved onto different government positions, termed out of office or weren’t reelected. And there has been a dearth of Asian American candidates waiting to replace them.

The five former H(API) Hour attendees turned California lawmakers with whom The Examiner spoke had a range of opinions about why demographics have changed in the years since.

Ting said he saw the political winds shifting away from that era.

“I think it’s sad. I think it’s unfortunate that so many people will say representation doesn’t matter,” said Ting, who’s represented San Francisco’s west side in the California Assembly since 2012, though he will be termed out at the end of this year.

“To them, ideology matters more than representation,” Ting said. “It’s sad, the fact that The City is becoming less diverse in terms of its institutions, at a time when the state’s becoming more diverse. It feels like The City’s going backwards.”

He said the saturation of Asian American leaders at City Hall in the 2010s was an outlier rather than an indicator of any larger political drive in the Asian American community.

Ting, who was San Francisco’s assessor-recorder under former Mayor Gavin Newsom before moving on to Sacramento, said community organizations and nonprofits continue to be pillars in the Asian American community. But those clubs are different from political pipelines, which are key to pushing people into elected roles.

Those, he said, are lacking in The City.

“We were anomalies,” Ting said, referring to the group of Asian Americans who became politically active in the 2000s. “I don’t think the community has done anything to build political infrastructure. And that’s why we’re at where we’re at.”

“If you look at the LGBTQ community, they have two big Democratic clubs , and their leaders come through those clubs, they get active, they get introduced to politics,” he said. “If you look at the AAPI community, the Democratic clubs are still not very strong. They’re still fairly small. They’re still fairly insular. They don’t have that many regular meetings. So they’re not really growing the next generation. That’s one of the major issues — there’s no real entry point.”

Yee offered a similar sentiment, though he also pinned the blame on elected officials — himself included — for not fostering the next group of Asian American leaders.

“None of us really made a conscious effort of trying to build a cushy, cohesive pipeline. I would go out, try to ask somebody to run, and support them, but that’s about it,” he said

Eric Mar — who ran the Chinese Progressive Association along with his brother, Gordon Mar, in the late 1990s and early 2000s — blamed the nationwide rise of toxic political discourse, fueled by “neo-fascism” and “based on bullying tactics, hounding and trolling through social media,” for turning Asian Americans away from political careers.

“It’s a certain type of politics that makes so many of us want to just stay away from it because it’s become so ugly, and I think that’s a reflection of Trumpism and how it’s played out in San Francisco,” Mar explained.

Yee similarly called out the political dialogue for discouraging Asian Americans.

“A few years back, I was grooming some people to try to run, and they’d get close enough to see what’s happening and they said, ‘forget it,’” Yee said.

Reasons for optimism

Kim, a San Francisco Supervisor from 2011 to 2019, had a more optimistic outlook. She emphasized that representation, while important, is not the only measure of a group’s political power — which she defined as the ability to sway and win races.

That ability, she said, has only gotten stronger in San Francisco’s Asian American electorate.

Kim pointed out that when she ran for the San Francisco Board of Education in 2004, only a handful of candidates printed mailers in Chinese.The ones who did, she said, were almost always Chinese American.

Now, it’s standard for most political candidates in The City to distribute multilingual pamphlets and have their Chinese name directly next to their English name on the ballot.

“I actually think this demonstrates the impressive rise of Chinese and AAPI political power,” Kim said. “Representation is important, but I think that it’s important to talk about both political power, which I believe the Chinese still have in San Francisco regardless of who represents them.”

She said the community has become “one of the most consistent voting blocs in San Francisco over the last 20 years.”

Chiu admitted the Asian American generation behind him doesn’t seem to be as interested in political careers.

“I was told repeatedly that — compared to other private sector or nonprofit careers — electoral politics had little appeal,” he recalled. “I’m not exactly sure why.”

But Chiu said he was encouraged by the surging amount of young Asian American activists, activated in the wake of the increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans at the onset of the pandemic.

He said their energy reminds him of the groups he was a part of that congregated monthly at Asian-owned bars more than 20 years ago.

“Skyrocketing anti-Asian hate violence that followed COVID-related scapegoating has led to a new generation of Asian American activism,” he said. “And I’m optimistic that this new generation will have a significant impact on our body politic.”