Growing Strength in Numbers : Government: City Council victories, including 2 in Carson, are few and far between for the state’s largest Asian ethnic group, but some polls-watchers say it could be the beginning of a trend.

For years, Filipino-Americans have experienced stunning population growth but precious few political gains. Now, however, members of the state’s largest Asian ethnic group can point to places such as Carson, considered by many to be a showcase for emerging Filipino power.

In June, voters in the ethnically diverse, middle-class city elected their second Filipino-American to the City Council. The same month, Daly City elected its first Filipino-American council member. And in San Diego, a Filipina-American is running for City Council.

Political infighting in the Filipino community could prevent such advances from becoming a full-fledged trend, experts say. But up and down the state, Filipino-Americans contend that a long-overdue political awakening may be in the offing.

“What we are seeing here is the beginning effort to get involved in mainstream politics,” said Enrique de la Cruz, a Filipino-American who is assistant director of UCLA’s Asian-American Studies Center.

Fueling such sentiment are the recent signs of Filipino power in local races.

In Carson, voters elected Lorelie S. Olaes, an American-born and UCLA-educated political neophyte who manages a scholarship program at UCLA. Her victory came a year after Peter D. Fajardo became the first Filipino-American elected to Carson’s five-member council.

Olaes sees her background in mediating student disputes as key to her acceptance by all of the city’s ethnic groups.

“I have to be very careful balancing that my candidacy was supported not only because I am Filipina but because I can do a good job,” said Olaes, 30, who typifies the young, broad-minded politicians that Filipino-American experts say their community needs.

Also in June, Michael Guingona, a 31-year-old public defender, became the first Filipino-American elected to the City Council in Daly City, whose population is about one-third Filipino.

And in San Diego, Villa Mills, a 41-year-old business consultant, is believed to be the first person of Filipino descent to run for City Council there. The former chief of staff of Councilman Tom Behr, who is not seeking reelection, she is running in the city’s 5th District, which includes large Filipino-American communities, particularly in and around Mira Mesa.

“These city council seats may not be the biggest political plums but they are a good start,” said Monty G. Manibog, a lawyer and former mayor of Monterey Park who is considered a pioneer in Southern California Filipino-American politics. “It sort of reinforces the feeling that America is for everybody . . . Filipinos need to be a true part of American society. There is a need to share in every facet of life, to provide some of the leadership as well.”

In the 1980s, according to the U.S. Census, the Filipino population has more than doubled in California and Los Angeles County--to 731,685 and 219,653 respectively--making Filipinos the largest Asian ethnic group in the state and the second largest in Los Angeles County, behind the Chinese.

Large Filipino communities can be found in Los Angeles in an area just west of downtown known as Filipino Town, although community groups squabble over what the official boundaries should be. Filipinos also are concentrated in Long Beach, Carson and the San Gabriel Valley.

Despite their fast-growing numbers, Filipino-Americans have failed to accumulate political clout.

In the 1970s and early 80s, Filipino candidates had won a handful of elective posts, mostly in small farming communities in Northern California. Gloria Ochoa won a seat on the Board of Supervisors in predominantly white Santa Barbara County in 1988, then last year lost a Congressional race against Michael Huffington, who spent close to $5 million, a record for a House race.

Filipino candidates generally have not done well because they have tended to be “extremely ethnocentric in style and politics,” says De la Cruz of UCLA.

“In early immigration waves Filipinos were not politically oriented,” said Alex Esclamado, longtime editor and publisher of the San Francisco-based Philippine News and the president of the Filipino American Political Assn., a national group that aims to promote voter awareness.

“Even if they were politically minded their competence and sophistication left much to be desired,” Esclamado said, referring to a slew of candidates in the 1960s and 70s who ran unsuccessfully for municipal offices across the state.

And while voter registration and citizenship drives have been held in several Los Angeles area communities, registration by Filipino-Americans remains low. Of the 14,100 Filipinos in Carson, for example, it is estimated that only 4,000 are registered.

Filipinos active in the registration drives say they often are confronted by suspicion among Filipinos, especially older ones, who hold politics in low regard after witnessing chaos and corruption in Philippine elections.

“A lot are dismayed about what happened in the Philippines,” said Marissa Castro, a longtime Filipina-American community activist in Los Angeles and an adviser to Assembly Speaker Wille Brown on Asian-American issues. “When you talk about government, they think government is corrupt. They have to realize the political system in the United States and California is totally different.”

Filipino immigrants also tend to focus more on getting established, rather than getting elected.

Said Mills, who was born in the Philippines but came to California as a baby: “We were taught very clearly that you go to school to get a good education and get a good job. The political education was never part of that process.”

To boost political awareness, particularly among young Filipino-Americans, a coalition of Los Angeles Filipino service organizations and political groups sponsored an internship program this summer for 12 Filipino-Americans who are working in local, state, and federal government offices as a way for them to learn about politics.

Political observers believe large Filipino populations in Long Beach and the San Gabriel Valley have the potential to produce elected leaders if voter registration and awareness are increased.

“As of now we are still far behind,” said Paul Blanco of Long Beach’s Federation of Filipino Assns. “I’m glad Carson has two council persons, but over here I don’t know. We haven’t identified anybody yet who has the qualifications and financial backbone and political support.”

Even strong candidates, however, have had to contend with infighting in the Filipino-American community.

Although Mills in San Diego so far has been spared such friction, divisions and rancor marked the candidacies of both Olaes in Carson and Guingona in Daly City.

Some wonder how anybody could expect people with lineage in a nation of 7,100 islands and almost 100 languages to agree on anything.

In Daly City, older Filipinos who had been trying to win a seat on the council skeptically viewed Guingona, 31, as a Young Turk who hadn’t paid his political dues.

“It was the old guard versus the new guard,” said Guingona, one of two Filipino-Americans in a field of five in Daly City, whose population of 97,000 is approximately one-third Filipino.

But, Guingona said, his victory was tied to his strategy of reaching out to other groups besides Filipinos, something Olaes in Carson also said she had done.

Olaes, in her Carson run, prevailed even though she did not receive the endorsement of the Pilipino American Alliance. The alliance, considered the city’s most powerful Filipino organization, helped put Fajardo in office but endorsed a non-Filipino who lost in June’s race.

The alliance backed Coni Hathaway, another candidate to whom it felt indebted for her support of Fajardo last year. Olaes garnered 2,300 votes, not usually sufficient to win a seat in Carson but good enough to outpace the other seven candidates and stun local pundits. Precinct-by-precinct results showed she did best in heavily Filipino areas.

For Olaes, the concerns of the Filipino-American community reflect those of the city as a whole--more programs for youth, less crime, and good relations among all ethnic groups. Carson’s population of 83,995 is roughly evenly divided among African-Americans, Asians and Pacific Islanders, Latinos and Anglos.

Many attribute her win partly to the dispersion of votes among five African-American candidates. Their losses left the council without an African-Americans for the first time since the city was incorporated 25 years ago. The council now consists of two Filipino-Americans, a Japanese-American (who has campaigned heavily in Filipino communities), and two Anglos.

Olaes, however, prefers to downplay the importance of council members’ ethnicity. If she and other Filipino-American politicians are to succeed, she says, all constituents must be taken into account.

“The composition of the council is very important but I’m going to back up with action what I said in the campaign--we are a multicultural city,” Olaes said.

Such talk heartens activists in the Filipino-American community. Said Esclamado: “This new class of Filipino-Americans were young when they came here or they were born here. These are the people on which we pin high hopes on achieving great heights.”

Flipino Power Filipinos, a new force in Carson politics, are one of California’s fastest-growing immigrant groups.

Flipino population 1980 1990 + /- Los Angeles 43,713 87,625 +100% Long Beach 7,757 17,329 +123% Cars0n 6,892 14,100 +105% Glendale 2,215 8,022 +262% West Covina 2,864 7,185 +151% Norwalk 1,352 3,759 +178% Walnut 541 3,660 +577% Rowland Heights 877 3,071 +250% Los Angeles County 99,043 219,653 +122% California 358,738 731,685 +104%

The Phillippines Population: 65.8 million (est. 1991) Languages: English, Pilipino (based on Tagalog), and about 100 other regional languages and dialects. People: Malays are the largest group, with some having Chinese, American and Spanish ancestry. Religions: The vast majority are Roman Catholics, followed by Protestants and Muslims. Area: 115,831 sq. miles (slightly larger than Nevada in an archipelago of 7,000 islands of the southeastern coast of Asia. Government: Republic (modeled after U.S.). Headed by President Fidel Ramos, electedJune, 1992. Capital is Manila. Industries: Food processing, textiles, clothing, pharmaceuticals and wood products. Source: U.S. Census Bureau