ELECTIONS : Council Victors Stressed Community Ties

The runaway victories of Councilwoman Judy Chu and community volunteer Rita Valenzuela suggested that community ties and face-to-face campaigning still outweigh either ethnic identification or lavish spending in this racially diverse city, observers said.

The victories, which leave only one Anglo on the City Council, point to an emerging reality in Monterey Park: Asian-Americans and Latinos, who together constitute more than 87% of the city’s residents, are replacing an aging Anglo political base.

Anglo voters are a strong force, but they are producing fewer candidates, said John Horton, a UCLA sociologist who has studied Monterey Park politics and is writing a book about the city. “In the near future it’s going to be entirely possible to have a majority Chinese council.”

But perhaps more important for the winners than ethnicity, Horton said, was their long record of community service. Chu was the only incumbent running, while Valenzuela sits on the city’s Arts and Culture Commission and has organized many city functions.

Indeed, although large-scale fund raising, advertising and professional consulting undoubtedly raised the recognition of previously unknown candidates, they didn’t necessarily win votes.

Some of the lowest finishers had the best-financed campaigns, including last-place Charles Wu, who reported raising $34,285 as of April 2 and had spent much of that on cable television commercials. Raymond F. Wu, who is not related to Charles Wu, had $29,139 and finished eighth of nine candidates.

Candidate John Casperson, whose wife produces and hosts a Chinese-language television program for both cable TV and a broadcast channel, appeared on the air numerous times but only received 6.8% of the vote.

Chu raised the most money, but unlike other candidates who invested heavily in broadcast time and professional consultants, she spent most of her money on mailers and devoted a lot of time to walking precincts.

Another candidate, Frank Arcuri, performed much better than in two previous elections, finishing fourth. Arcuri is best known for his newsletter, The Citizens Voice, in which he has discoursed on what he calls a “Chinese-American apartheid.”

Valenzuela, on the other hand, said she didn’t think either ethnicity or money was a factor in her victory. “I did not have the money others did,” Valenzuela said during a victory party at her house. “People thought I was authentic.”

Some who had hoped to elect a third Chinese-American to the council were clearly disappointed. Supporters of Bonnie Wai, an attorney and a member of the city’s Residential Design Review Board, said her candidacy may have suffered because the presence of four Chinese-American candidates--a record number in Monterey Park elections--probably split the vote.

Wai finished a distant third behind Valenzuela. Her campaign had been banking on a strong Asian-American voter turnout. Early in the campaign, some of her supporters conducted an aggressive voter registration drive that targeted Asian-American households. She and Chu held fund-raising banquets in Monterey Park and Chinatown, and each raised more than $40,000.

“Chinese don’t vote,” a morose Mayor Sam Kiang said as the final results were being tallied. “They just don’t vote.”

Wai blamed a mailer sent to all voting households last week in which the slow-growth group Residents Assn. of Monterey Park endorsed Chu and Valenzuela and called Wai “the choice of . . . the Developers” because she accepted campaign contributions from developers.

On Tuesday, Wai accused the group of damaging her reputation. She said she would never let money influence her vote and said she has taken strong stands against so-called mansionization while on the design board.

Chu, meanwhile, said that while she was walking precincts she made an effort to de-emphasize ethnic issues, especially when dealing with non-Chinese voters.

“The strength of a leader is in their ability to represent everybody,” she said. “This is an extremely important issue to people who are not Chinese, especially because of the ethnic feelings here.”