Anti-Asian Sentiment and San Gabriel Elections

San Gabriel City Hall (Photo – Ken Lund)

This is a companion piece to the op-ed on the March 2020 election in which Tony Ding ousted Juli Costanzo (see Defeated San Gabriel Councilwoman and Her Daughter Perpetuate Racially Polarized Politics at ColoradoBoulevard.net).

Discrimination has reared its head far too often in San Gabriel politics, and I love the City too much to not speak out. Once again, the opinions are my own, but the facts are the facts.

By Sean McMorris

Elections are won by extremely slim margins in San Gabriel, which speaks to the polarization of the City’s electorate. In the last five years there have been three City Council seats won by less than 15 votes. In the Costanzo/Ding race, Ding won by 14 votes.

A majority-minority city

Demographics matter. San Gabriel is a majority-minority city (60% Asian, 26% Hispanic, 21% white) of about 40,000 residents. About 18,000 residents (45%) are registered to vote. One third of those registered to vote (6,818) actually voted for City Councilmembers in March 2020 (this is higher turnout than usual in San Gabriel elections, which used to occur on odd numbered years). Thus, 17% of the population or less determine who runs the City of San Gabriel. This is important information given the language, informational, civic, and other barriers to voting that minorities and immigrants often face (according to American Community Survey data, over half of San Gabriel’s population is foreign born, over 70% of the population speaks a language other than English at home, and over 40% of the population speaks English less than “very well”).

A kangaroo court

Now, rewind to 2013. Two Asian American City Councilmembers, Chin Ho Liao and Jason Pu, were duly elected to the City Council (San Gabriel’s first Asian American city Councilmember, Chi Mui, was elected to the City Council in 2003). Both Liao and Pu unseated incumbents. The race was contentious. Liao was the second highest vote-getter in the election behind Pu for three seats up for election. Nonetheless, that did not stop the outgoing City Council from imposing a last act of revenge upon Liao. Days before the new Council was sworn in, the old Council voted not to seat Liao, citing unsubstantiated claims of poll worker manipulation and rumors that Liao did not actually live in the City. Even worse, rather than let the District Attorney look into the matter and determine whether or not to investigate, the Council decided that it would be judge and jury through a “public hearing” process, which would be more accurately described as a kangaroo court meant to publicly shame Liao and rile up a disgruntled base of voters whose candidates had lost.

Even though a judge ordered the City to seat Liao immediately or appear in court, City Hall and outside attorneys used the time before the court date to press forward with a sham public trial.

A three-day chaotic and shameful display of political theater

What followed was a three-day chaotic and shameful display of political theater that unduly exposed Liao’s personal life (he was having marital problems at the time), made a mockery of local democracy and San Gabriel politics, and created a wedge in the community that exists to this day.

Local, state, and federal elected officials condemned the old-guard-Council’s actions and rallied around Liao. Complaints regarding poll workers were irrelevant since the City Clerk determined that Liao would have won even without any of the votes counted in the precincts under scrutiny. As for Liao’s residency, the City could not prove that he did not live in the City (Liao supplied moving receipts and neighbors testified that he was living in the apartment in question).

Likely seeing the legal writing on the wall, and just days before the Mayor and the City Attorney would have had to appear before a judge to argue the legality of not seating Liao, the City capitulated and installed Liao in the City Council seat he had won two months prior.

2013 Election Records finally unsealed

After a long fight to release City records pertaining to complaints alleging poll worker impropriety, late last year all of the City’s records surrounding the matter were finally made available to the public. Nothing in them implicated Liao. On the contrary, they reveal a sad miscarriage of justice and suggest a political hit job devised by current and former City Councilmembers and their friends and family to discredit only Asian poll workers and the two Asian candidates, Pu and Liao.

Of the six complaints alleging misconduct, evidence supports that at least five were either friends or family of defeated then-Councilmembers David Gutierrez and Mario De La Torre, and one is a current Councilman.

• Councilman Harrington, who supported De La Torre and Gutierrez’s re-election;
• Edward De La Torre, Mario De La Torre’s brother;
• Denise Gutierrez, David Gutierrez’s wife;
• Phoebe Wang (and her mother Rose Wang), business associate of Mario De La Torre; and
• Suzanne Paine, wife of Fred Paine, the man who filed the complaint with the District Attorney’s office alleging Liao did not live in San Gabriel.

Independent investigators found nearly all of the allegations in the complaints to be either unfounded or not credible. No poll worker was charged with a crime.

Why it matters

Unchecked political chicanery begets more political chicanery. More importantly, when race is part of the playbook, the whole community suffers. The social fabric is shredded. We become a City of “Us” and “Them” rather than a City of “We.” Promoting racial and cultural division for political gain will not do, and it must be called out when it happens.

I wrote this and a companion piece because race baiting and political revenge have become all too common occurrences in San Gabriel, and those who engage in it should be called to task. Pre- and post-election dog whistles like “only the Asian press,” “doesn’t know how to talk,” or “is not from here” must not be condoned as acceptable political discourse in San Gabriel or any other city.

What happened to Councilman Liao in 2013 is not a one-off incident in San Gabriel. Well known past political disputes in the City have centered on race, like the bigoted statements of Juli Costanzo’s daughter this year after Tony Ding won her mother’s Council seat, or the ICE MOU/sanctuary city debate of 2017. These incidents are the by-product of the same racial animosity that was employed and fanned during the 2013 kangaroo court that targeted one of the City’s few Asian American City Council candidates. These racially based “anti” policy and political disputes serve only one purpose: minority marginalization and community division for the sake of selfish political gain.

I worry that the conduct of Ms. Costanzo and her daughter after Tony Ding’s 2020 electoral win has laid the groundwork for continued community division and a racially divisive 2022 election. “Don’t let ‘them’ cheat again!” “‘They’ don’t represent me!” “‘They’ steal elections.” “We need candidates who can speak English!” “Make ‘them’ say the pledge of allegiance!” This is wrong, and it needs to stop.

One need only turn on the TV or open up a newspaper to see the negative consequences of such racially charged rhetoric: increasing hate crimes, Asian Americans being unduly targeted as perpetrators of COVID-19, and black lives being lost to racial profiling and excessive force.

It is time to call a duck a duck. There is no place in our society, let alone our cities, for race-baiting. It’s time to put people who engage in such behavior on notice.

[This article has been corrected to include the mention of Mr. Chi Mui as the first elected Asian American in the city of San Gabriel. Updated June 9, 2020, 10:37 am]

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