Woo: Councilman Does ‘a Real Balancing Act’ in Serving Both His Own District and L.A.’s Big Asian Community

Los Angeles City Councilman Michael Woo rushed in late to a rally last August marking the second anniversary of the assassination of Benigno S. Aquino Jr., arriving just in time to add his voice to others honoring the slain Philippine opposition leader.

Stepping to the podium, Woo recalled for the audience how his former boss, state Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), had commented to him, after meeting Aquino, that “he had just met a great man with a noble mission.”

With that sure-fire crowd-pleasing sentiment, the Chinese-American councilman added a bit more cement to his political support in the Los Angeles Filipino community. And he was late because earlier that evening he had addressed a Japanese-American Optimists club.

Years of such cultivation of an Asian ethnic constituency extending far beyond the boundaries of his Hollywood-area political base may have saved Woo’s political life in recent weeks, as a wave of Asian-American lobbying helped defeat a redistricting proposal that severely threatened his future on the council.

Mayor Tom Bradley, in vetoing the proposal, charged that by targeting Woo’s district to be redesigned to favor the election of a Latino, to satisfy a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit, the plan discriminated against Asian voters. A new proposal, more acceptable to Woo, received final council approval Wednesday, and Bradley immediately signed it. The proposal is now before a federal court for resolution of the lawsuit.

“It took (Asian-Americans) a century to get someone elected to the City Council, and then one year after he’s elected, you want to dump him,” Stewart Kwoh, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California, said last week in an interview. “People felt angry, insulted, affronted. Plus, Mike’s track record led to a tremendous outpouring of concern and protest. . . . You wouldn’t realize the number of people behind the scenes calling up the mayor and the council (members). Some City Council people were simply flooded with calls. One politician said that in his experience of 20 years he has never seen the Asian-American community so angry.”

Kwoh said that the lobbying on Woo’s behalf also marked an emerging trend for Asian-Americans from various ethnic backgrounds to work together on community issues.

“The thing that was amazing is that all the Asian communities rallied behind this issue,” Kwoh said. “It wasn’t just a Chinese issue.”

Woo said he thinks of himself as serving two constituencies--”my constituency that elected me, which is not primarily Asian, and my Asian constituency, which did not elect me but has high expectations.”

“It’s a matter of keeping both communities satisfied that I’m providing the kind of leadership they’re looking for,” he said.

Woo said there can be political danger, however, in being identified too narrowly with Asian concerns. He became aware of that problem, he said, during his unsuccessful 1981 race for the seat he won in 1985.

“As a neophyte candidate, I for the first time had to deal with race as a political issue, when my opponent sent out mailers making charges about Chinese bankers trying to buy the district, and things like that,” Woo said.

After losing that election, he realized that he “needed to do something to get over the negative perception that an Asian only cares about Asian issues,” he said.

Woo, who at the time was an aide to Roberti, said he put additional energy into such activities as supporting the efforts of environmentalists, homeowners and gay-rights organizations, both to help those groups and to demonstrate his own leadership ability.

During his 1985 election campaign, Woo carefully distanced himself from uniquely ethnic concerns, and after winning office he said that Asians should not expect special favors from him.

But none of this meant that he neglected his ties with Asian-Americans.

“At the same time I was trying to show non-Asians I could represent them effectively on issues of concern to them, I also had to reinforce the perception in the Asian community that I could be an effective symbol of Asian-Americans in Los Angeles,” Woo said.

Woo said that he had to show Asian-Americans that he “wouldn’t care only about Chinatown and Chinese issues” but could speak effectively on subjects of specific concern to each Asian group. All of this, he said, “required a real balancing act.”

Charles J. Kim, executive director of the Korean American Coalition, cited as an example of Woo’s concern about Korean community issues his support last year of financing for a Korean senior citizens’ center, even though the proposal ultimately was rejected. Councilman David Cunningham, whose district includes the heart of Koreatown, headed a committee that recommended 10 projects for funding, with the proposed senior center losing out in 11th place.

Woo said the presence of hundreds of Korean senior citizens at City Hall to support the proposal prompted him to risk violating council etiquette by speaking out.

“I got up and spoke on behalf of the Koreans, which I think elicited a harsh reaction from Councilman Cunningham,” Woo recalled. “He’s the councilman for that district, representing that area, and I think he felt I was meddling in an affair in his district. But what was I to say to the Korean senior citizens, who felt they needed the center, and needed someone to give voice to that need? I felt that I had to.”

Although pleased that they had helped rescue Woo from the original redistricting proposal, Korean community leaders protested the feature of the new plan that placed Koreatown in three council districts. Koreans demonstrated their disapproval on the day the council took its final vote. In the council debate, Woo agreed that the Koreans had a legitimate gripe, as did other members of the council. No one promised that there would be a solution, however, and the issue remains one that the council, including Woo, must face in the future.

Extends Outside L.A.

Woo’s support among Asian-Americans extends well beyond the boundaries of Los Angeles.

Ron Wakabayashi, national director of the Japanese American Citizens League, headquartered in San Francisco, said that Woo “reflects a lot of community attitudes” and has been very accessible to various Asian groups, and that partly because of this it was easy to organize a coalition of Northern California Asian-American groups to issue a support statement and to lobby Los Angeles officials on his behalf during the redistricting debates.

“I think Mike has been very good at covering his own district, but at the same time recognizing he is the first and only Asian on the council,” Wakabayashi said. “He has addressed specifically issues like our major concern right now, which is (redress for) the wartime internment. He’s been very supportive of that.”

By joining the power bases of Woo and Councilman John Ferraro--the Hollywood and Hancock Park areas--in a restructured 4th District, the compromise redistricting plan approved Wednesday sets up a probable confrontation between the two incumbents in next April’s municipal elections.

If that occurs, Woo said, he may need help again.

“In terms of the broader citywide, statewide and national picture,” he said, “I’ll need to mobilize the Asian community.”