Ethnic Leaders Get Campaign Lessons : Politics: In an effort to reach out to the growing minority community, the Republican Party offers potential candidates lessons in how to reach out to voters--and why they should do it in the GOP.

They learned about the value of knocking on doors to meet voters, the strain of campaigning on family relationships, and ways to avoid being pegged as “too ethnic.” In short, the dozen community leaders and would-be candidates who gathered at Republican Party Headquarters on Sunday learned about politics, American style.

“When I ran for City Council, I found out how hard it is to smile all day,” said Charles Kim, a Korean-American who made an unsuccessful run for a seat on the Cerritos City Council. “It hurts. And you have to shake so many hands. You come home and your hand hurts so much. I had to put mine in ice.”

Kim’s insights to the campaign experience came at the local Republican Party’s first Ethnic Candidate Campaign School where those gathered--all of them members of ethnic groups--heard why they should consider running for public office, and why they should do it under the mantle of the GOP.

Party leaders said the school is just one part of their effort to reach out to the growing numbers of California’s fast-growing ethnic minorities. That effort has taken on new urgency with the latest results of the 1990 U.S. Census--which showed that the number of Latinos in Orange County doubled in the past 10 years, while the number of Asians almost tripled.

The local GOP has to reach out to ethnic leaders and encourage them to participate in party politics if Orange County is to hold its place as “America’s most Republican county,” county party Chairman Thomas A. Fuentes said.

“We recognize that in order to sustain that margin of leadership in this county, we must have the continued registration and the continued embrace and participation of ethnic community members and ethnic community leaders,” Fuentes said.

Those who attended the afternoon session included Latinos, and immigrants from Iran, Vietnam, Laos, Korea and Cambodia.

“As a matter of fact, I sympathized much more with the Democratic Party when I first came here,” said Alineza Jazuyeri, an Iranian-American who made an unsuccessful run for the Irvine City Council last year. “But when I was running, and I really thought about it, I learned that my philosophies are really much closer to that of the Republican Party.

“I think it’s good that the Republican Party is doing this to get minorities more and more involved.”

During an afternoon of speeches, the would-be candidates sat around a table and received a primer on politics and campaigning, learning what factors they should consider before making a decision to run for office, how much time it would take from their families and businesses and how to keep from getting tired after a day of smiling and shaking hands with potential voters.

Kim gave those at the conference some tips on “How to Get Started.”

He warned them that running for political office takes a huge commitment in time, energy and money and that any campaign would take its toll on family relationships.

“Is your spouse going to be willing to work full time while you’re campaigning? You will not have time to earn much money,” he said.

He also cautioned them to do their homework before launching into a race. They should not only study ethnic and socioeconomic breakdown of the area they represent, but also look at how many in each of those groups are “high propensity voters” more likely to go out and vote.

He encouraged them to know the issues and to become involved in their communities before making a run for an office. They could show their involvement by volunteering to serve on city or school board commissions and boards, or on the boards of ethnic minority groups.

But Kim cautioned them to broaden their community involvement because if their resumes reflected participation almost exclusively in ethnic organizations, some in the “mainstream community,” possibly with the help of their political opponents, would label them “too Chinese, or too Arab or too Iranian.”

“Once they identify you as the ‘ethnic candidate,’ you’re not going to get elected,” he said.

“Your enemies will try to convince the voters that you are too ethnic,” he said. “So be careful what you write in your campaign information.”

He also said the ethnic candidate should expect to face some cultural misunderstandings from “mainstream” voters.

For example, he recalled, when he was running for office, he spoke to a Republican woman’s group. One of the women asked him “Why are Asian people not polite? They pass by my lawn and I say good morning and they do not respond,’ ” Kim said.

“It has to do with cultural understanding,” he said. “We don’t say hi or good morning to everybody, and it’s not that Asians are rude. But that kind of impression will hurt you.”