CAMPAIGN ’88 : Dukakis Strikes Gold With an Ethnic Appeal

The ethnic fund-raiser is a staple of any presidential campaign, but a recent one in Long Beach may have taken the concept to its logical extreme.

The guest of honor was Katherine Dukakis, daughter of Soviet Jewish immigrants.

The candidate she represented was her husband, Michael S. Dukakis, son of Greek immigrants, governor of Massachusetts and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

And the donor-hosts were 200 or so members of Long Beach’s large community of Cambodian refugees.

Cambodians number 150,000 in the United States and 50,000 in Los Angeles County. Most are poor and only a few have qualified yet for U.S. citizenship--and the right to vote--but Than Pok, organizer of the Friday night dinner that raised $11,000 for the Dukakis campaign, said: “We are right now starting to realize we need to participate in the democratic system.”

The choice of Katherine Dukakis was no accident. She has made several trips to refugee camps in Thailand, where 280,000 Cambodians still live, and has helped reunite several Cambodian families. She has been active in the Dukakis Administration’s efforts to set up an aggressive immigrant-assistance program in Massachusetts--a program that is now headed by a Cambodian.

At the dinner, she emphasized both her own ethnic roots and her husband’s. She noted that a 17-year-old Cambodian boy she helped rescue from a refugee camp in 1985 entered Brandeis University this fall.

And she impressed her hosts. “I believe she understands our issue,” said dinner organizer Pok. “If we want to have more refugees in this country, this is the way to go.”