LOCAL ELECTIONS / 41ST CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT : Victory for Kim Could Make History

When he came to the United States from Korea 31 years ago, he was Chang Joon Kim, dishwasher and busboy.

Now, he is Jay C. Kim, 53, the prosperous owner of an engineering firm and mayor of Diamond Bar, well on his way to becoming the first Korean-American elected to Congress.

“I never dreamed that I would become a congressman,” Kim said, as amazed as anyone that he captured the Republican nomination in the new 41st District, an area of burgeoning--and Anglo-majority--suburbs where Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties meet.

Kim must defeat Democrat Bob Baker in November, but he is heavily favored in the solidly GOP district.

Kim defeated five Republican competitors by stressing his business success and railing against professional politicians. He overcame the handicap--if it was that--of running as an immigrant from Asia in a district that is only 10% Asian.

“When I ran, a lot of people told me I wasn’t going to make it because I’m Asian,” he said. “The election gives the message to the whole world that this is nonsense.”

Alan Heslop, an expert on political demographics at the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College, said Kim’s victory has national significance.

“The Republican Party has been appealing to Asians rather fruitlessly,” he said, but Republicans can point to Kim as evidence that Asians can win for the party. Kim would be the only Asian-American Republican in Congress.

His surprise victory has also elated local Korean-American leaders.

Jerry Yu, executive director of the Korean American Coalition, a nonprofit community action organization, said he expects Kim to become “a leader and spokesperson for our issues.”

Jong Moon Lee, a Diamond Bar dentist who heads the Korean American Federation of Eastern Los Angeles, said many Korean merchants whose businesses sustained damage in the Los Angeles riots believe help would have come faster “if we had had the right person speaking.”

Moreover, Kim drew heavily on ethnic support in outspending his rivals in the primary, raising $150,000--much of it from Asian-American donors both within and outside his district--to go with $130,000 of his own money.

But Kim says he is uncomfortable in the role of Korean-American spokesman in Washington. He said he has a plan to help his district but no agenda for the Korean community. “I’m not sure how I can help.”

As to Korean-black relations, Kim said he thinks the issue has been overplayed as a factor in the Los Angeles riots, which he blames primarily on economics.

“If there were plenty of jobs, the riots would not have occurred,” Kim said. “Create jobs. . . . Keep (people) busy. Give them a worthwhile life.”

Now a bespectacled, gray-haired businessman, Kim was 22 and fresh out of the South Korean army when he came to the United States on a student visa in 1961. “I couldn’t speak a word of English,” he said.

June, his sweetheart from Korea joined him. They married, and, in quick order, had the first two of their three children.

He toiled in restaurants and delivered newspapers; she worked as a restaurant hostess and grocery store clerk.

Kim earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering from USC, changed his legal name to his American nickname, Jay, and obtained permanent residency by showing he had skills needed in America. In 1976, Kim started his own company, Jaykim Engineers Inc., which designs highways, water reclamation plants and other projects, many on contract to government agencies. The company, which operates throughout the West, grew to 170 employees before shrinking in the recession to 130. The firm is one of five named to a consortium of minority-owned firms to demolish buildings gutted in the riots.

As his business prospered and his children grew (his older son is a neurosurgeon, his daughter an interior designer and his younger son a college student), Kim plunged into civic activities. He won election in 1990 to the Diamond Bar City Council. He also switched from nonpartisan to Republican about 2 1/2 years ago and began contributing to Republican candidates.

When reapportionment created the 41st Congressional District, Kim endorsed former Republican Assemblyman Charles Bader of Pomona. But when Kim found out that Bader lived just outside the district and that the other leading contender, James V. Lacy, had just moved into the district, Kim decided to get into the race.

Kim’s platform includes the standard conservative prescription for prosperity: reduce taxes and regulations on businesses to create jobs.

Bader, who had spent most of the last 20 years in public office, attacked Kim for a potential conflict of interest, saying he was “making a ton of money from government contracts while he’s seeking a government position as a liberal.”

After the primary, however, Bader endorsed Kim. But Lacy said he still has reservations about endorsing Kim because his support for abortion rights and his opposition to school vouchers are not consistent with the Republican platform. Heslop of the Rose Institute said Kim’s victory was the most surprising to him in the California primary and the result reflected “a strategy that worked brilliantly.”

He said Kim’s mailers and cable television commercials told voters up front that here was an Asian-American businessman with substantial financial resources running for office. So when Bader attacked him as a “wealthy government contractor,” Heslop said, there was no payoff.

Addressing perhaps his most problematic issue, immigrant Kim, who would follow 405 other foreign-born senators and representatives in American history, took a strong stand against illegal immigration.

Ironically, Kim says, the crucial decisions in his life were to come to the United States and not to go back.

After graduating from USC in 1967, Kim had briefly considered returning home, as foreign students are generally expected to do.

But his father advised him to stay.

“That was the best decision I ever made,” Kim said. “I made a lot of mistakes, but not that one.”