Politics Are Changing for Asian-Americans : Demographics: While they are vastly underrepresented in elective office, a new generation of activists are landing jobs with legislators. And they are having an effect on public policy in California.

Not a single Asian-American holds a seat in the California Legislature and none held a seat last year when a bill was introduced making it a crime to eat dog.

No one rose from the floor to explain that while dog meat is a delicacy in some Asian regions, the mere thought makes most Asian-Americans shudder. And no one warned that some would surely view the bill as an ethnic slur.

But behind the scenes, a cadre of influential Asian-Americans went into action. These were not elected officials, but well-placed aides to powerful politicians. Armed with political savvy, legislative know-how and the ear of their bosses, some of them set to work to take the bite out of the “dog bill.”

The legislation that Gov. George Deukmejian ultimately signed made it a crime to kill and eat domestic pets--language that did not implicate any ethnic group. In an unusual message, the governor also called for a follow-up bill to make sure no pet-eater goes to jail.

One of every 10 Californians now is of Asian heritage, and the fraction is growing fast. However, Asian-Americans are vastly underrepresented in elected posts--a legacy of both discrimination and a traditional distrust of politics. Asian-Americans hold only 2% of the state’s top 300 elected offices and only 1% of city council and school board seats. In Washington, only two of California’s 47-member congressional delegation are of Asian descent.

The 1990 elections offer little hope for improvement. As in previous years, few Asians are candidates, and those who are running generally face tough campaigns.

But into this political vacuum has stepped a new generation of Asian-Americans who have landed jobs as legislative aides and analysts, consultants, researchers, press secretaries, campaign managers, attorneys and advisers.

They are the first to say they are no substitute for elected representatives. But as they begin to climb the political ladder, they are having a subtle but substantive effect on public policy in California.

“What you’re seeing now is that Asians are not only donating money, but asking to be partners in the process,” said James Lee, 26, state press secretary for U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson. “More Asians my age are coming to work in campaigns and doing pretty well. . . . They are really going into positions where they are having a major impact.”

Like their black and Latino counterparts, Asian staffers were once hired primarily to help lawmakers cover their flanks in heavily minority districts. Nowadays, those aides are increasingly likely to be public policy professionals juggling issues that affect all citizens, from health to transportation to insurance.

“We are not just ‘the Asian staff person’ where we handle Asian complaints or bills which have the title ‘Asian’ in the bill,” said Dale Shimasaki, 36, a special assistant who handles education issues for Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco). “We’re trying to diversify ourselves in public policy areas.”

These staffers are rarely quoted--except when touting their bosses’ accomplishments. But they have put their stamp on such issues as discrimination in Asian admissions to the University of California, divestment from South Africa, redress for Japanese-Americans interned during World War II and the portrayal of that incident in state publications and textbooks, bilingual education, school funding, hate crimes and redistricting.

When Congress approved reparations to Japanese-American internees, for example, the payments were exempted from federal taxes. Priscilla Ouchida, an aide to Assemblyman Pat Johnston (D-Stockton), realized that state taxes would still apply and wrote a bill to also exempt the reparations from California taxes. Johnston introduced the bill in the Assembly, and Ouchida enlisted Asian-American staffers on the Senate side to smooth its voyage through the Legislature.

Asian staffers also played a role in bringing the question of discrimination in UC Berkeley admissions to a head by taking the issue directly to Brown and Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti of Los Angeles, aides, politicians and community leaders said.

After aides arranged for the leaders to meet with the Asian American Task Force on UC Admissions, Brown in March, 1987, backed a resolution calling on UC Berkeley to disclose its admissions policies. And Roberti asked the state auditor general to investigate.

The resolution passed both houses unanimously in September of that year. Three months later, then-UC Berkeley Chancellor Michael Heyman apologized for the way the university had handled the issue.

“Had the (Asian) community gone to a member that didn’t have an Asian-American staff member, it probably would have happened, but it might have taken a year more,” said Shimasaki, a Berkeley alumnus who drafted the resolution for Brown.

Today, 64 Asian- or Pacific-Americans hold professional jobs as aides to state senators or representatives, according to Maeley Tom, special assistant in Roberti’s Office of Asian and Pacific Affairs.

“When I first started here 17 years ago, we were able to count them on one hand,” Tom said.

The Sacramento staffers are a tight-knit bunch who keep in touch through their own group, the Asian Legislative Staff Caucus. A similar group, the Southern California Asian/Pacific Legislative Staff Caucus, includes at least 29 other aides to legislators, mayors, city council members, supervisors and congressmen.

The Asian community is pushing for more.

“When anyone calls, the first thing I ask is, ‘What have you done for the Asian community?’ ” Maria Hsia, a fund-raiser and political activist, said of politicians asking for help. “If they are not even going to hire Asian staff, I don’t see that they’re very sincere about trying to understand Asians.”

There are some Asian-American political veterans such as Jadine Neilson, who started as a receptionist in U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston’s San Francisco office 18 years ago. Now she directs his California staff of 20 and, significantly, his schedule. Sacramento has a veteran Chinese-American power couple, legislative aide Tom and her husband, Ronald L. Tom, a lobbyist who was once a pharmacist.

But most staffers are in their 20s and 30s. Democrats far outnumber Republicans. Many work in nearly all-white districts. Most--like Audrey Noda, an aide to Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles)--set their sights on politics early.

As a fledgling legislative aide in 1982, Noda was assigned to draft what became known as the “Peking duck bill” on behalf of Chinese restaurant owners, whose ancient method of hanging the ducks at room temperature was under assault by Los Angeles health inspectors. Torres, whose district includes parts of Chinatown, Koreatown and Little Tokyo, successfully sponsored a bill to permit the traditional method of preparing Peking duck. At 32, Noda is now Torres’ chief of staff.

Like Noda, most aides are second-, third- or even fourth-generation Americans. Some of their parents and grandparents fled corrupt or brutal governments and saw politics as a dangerous, disreputable, or--at best--an unseemly pursuit. But the children thrill to the rough-and-tumble of American politics.

“In Asia, your father wants you to be a doctor,” said Hung Trung Le, 35, once a medical student in Vietnam and now an aide to Assemblyman Phil Isenberg, (D-Sacramento). “But this is a free country. I want to do what I want to do. . . . Even now, my father thinks I’m crazy. He wants me to get a stable job.”

Staffers like Le, who is so blunt that his friends call him “Uzi mouth,” smash any lingering stereotypes of Asians as quiet, studious, technical whizzes who don’t make waves.

“All of us are going to explode that myth quickly if it hasn’t been exploded already,” said Kam Kuwata, a 36-year-old Venice-based political consultant who is slated to manage Cranston’s reelection campaign in 1992. “It doesn’t mean we’re going to be bomb-throwers. It means the stereotype isn’t accurate--wasn’t then, isn’t now.”

A few of today’s staffers say they want to become tomorrow’s candidates. They are well-positioned to do so, according to scholar Fernando Guerra, head of the Chicano studies department at Loyola Marymount University.

Guerra said that more than one-third of all black, Latino and Asian officeholders in California did stints as political aides--including all six minority members of the Los Angeles City Council.

“It’s the best base for an ethnic to run,” Guerra said. Staffers know the district and the donors, how to organize a campaign and whom to hire, he said. “They take on all of the advantages that the incumbent has, except one, and that is name identification. But that can be made up with enough financial backing.”

In fact, the two top Asian-American challengers on the ballot this fall trained in behind-the-scenes political jobs.

Butte County Democrat Lon Hatamiya, who once worked for Torres, would become the first Asian-American in the Legislature in more than a decade if he succeeds in unseating Republican Chris Chandler in the Yuba City-based 3rd Assembly District.

And the Republican candidate for state controller, Matthew (Kip) Fong, cut his political teeth working for his mother, Secretary of State March Fong Eu, the first and only Asian-American to hold a statewide constitutional office.

But other staffers say they prefer to wield power behind the throne.

“I like my personal life private,” said Esther Kim, 23, an aide to Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove).

The Sacramento staffers count 20 to 30 lawmakers who are dependably sympathetic to Asian-American interests--which often coincide with Latino concerns. The aides call such members surrogates. Nevertheless, Ouchida and others say they are wary of overstepping their bounds by pushing what might be seen as special-interest legislation too often.

“I time my bills five years apart,” Ouchida said. “I figure you can only go to the well every once in a while.”

“We don’t have . . . a vote on the floor so, by default, staff become the members for the Asian community,” said Shimizu. “That isn’t right.”

Staffers point to the dog bill, saying it would have been killed if one of their own had held a seat in the Legislature.

During the debate, the Cambodian Assn. of America backed the ban on dog-eating. They argued that it would lessen anti-Asian discrimination, which they said had been inflamed by the arrest of two Cambodian immigrants in Long Beach for killing a puppy. And several lawmakers ordinarily sympathetic to Asians sided with animal rights activists instead.

A number of the Asian staffers are still smarting over that loss.

“It’s a testament to the insensitivity of the governor and the Legislature on Asian issues,” fumed Nguyen T. Nguyen, a Vietnamese-born consultant to the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Refugee Resettlement, who argues that the law is vague and bound to be applied in a discriminatory fashion against new Asian immigrants.

“I want to be the first person arrested for eating my goldfish,” he added.

Then there was a 1989 Assembly debate on how textbooks should describe the Japanese-American internment. During the debate, Rep. Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) incensed Asian-Americans by referring to the internees as “American Japs.”

Several of Ferguson’s colleagues stood up and blasted him from the floor. Still, said Maeley Tom, “Our feeling is that if we had Asian-Pacific members on the floor, I don’t think any member would have the courage to look a fellow member in the eye and say, ‘You Jap.’ It just shows what lack of representation means.”