In a busy wonton soup restaurant in Chinatown, San Francisco Mayor London Breed held court with a group of Chinese American merchant leaders. The goal of this press event: to highlight her strong commitment to the city’s Chinese American community.
During this competitive election season, politicians frequently visit Chinatown to make promises and court votes. The oldest Chinatown in America, with a long history of community organizing and activism, yields outsize influence in local politics.
During that press event this month, Breed repeated a vow many have made before: to revitalize the world-famous neighborhood, which fell on hard times during the pandemic.
Breed and her competitors see the Chinese American community, which makes up roughly a quarter of San Francisco’s population, as critical to winning the mayor’s race. But the real prize of Chinese American support is to be found outside of Chinatown. None of the Chinatown leaders who surrounded Breed during her photo op are residents of the neighborhood. Instead, they represent the larger phenomenon of citywide Chinese American voting power.
“The press tends to overstate the impact of Chinatown as a neighborhood on city elections,” said Doug Chan, a former board chair of the Chinese Historical Society of America. “Chinatown doesn’t swing elections.”
Chan said political candidates know the Chinese voter base is larger in other neighborhoods: the Richmond, Sunset, Outer Mission, Portola, Visitacion Valley, and parts of the Bayview. Chinatown serves merely as “a media hub and convenient focal point for community optics,” Chan said.
A previous analysis by The Standard showed that Chinatown has about 11,000 Asian residents, but other neighborhoods have bigger Asian American populations that can easily outweigh Chinatown’s voter base in a citywide election.
The Sunset/Parkside neighborhood on the west side has 43,000 Asian Americans — almost four times as many as Chinatown. Bayview-Hunters Point, a historically Black neighborhood, has 4,000 more Asians than Chinatown.
The heavily Asian neighborhoods form a “U” shape spanning the west, south, and east sides of the city.
Alicia Wang, former chair of the Chinese American Voter Education Committee and a Democratic Party activist, said the cultivation of Chinese voters dates back almost half a century.
“We spent decades registering voters in Chinatown, and we started in the Richmond and Sunset too,” Wang said. “The potential is now all in Bayview-Hunters Point, Bayshore, and Visitacion Valley.”
Its relatively small population notwithstanding, Chinatown has wielded considerable political influence, repeatedly forcing Breed to back down on city policies. This month, Breed pressured the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to carve out Chinatown from a citywide bike-path network after community pushback. In February, Breed halted a controversial Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing plan to transform a hotel into sober housing.
In an interview, Breed denied that she gives Chinatown special treatment.
“This neighborhood, during Covid, was a ghost town,” Breed said. “This community was impacted more than any other place. We need to listen to what the community’s asking for.”
She noted that the outreach effort in Chinatown in advance of the announcement of the sober housing initiative was insufficient, while the bike-lane idea “got blown out of proportion” because it’s an election year.
In another sign of the neighborhood’s clout, San Francisco in 2018 passed an ordinance banning cannabis dispensaries in Chinatown. Notably, similar prohibitions were not enacted in other areas with large Chinese American populations, despite vocal anti-cannabis sentiment.
Split Chinese votes
Chinese American voters’ political influence in San Francisco has attracted attention from national media as candidates scramble to lock down support.
Former interim mayor Mark Farrell and nonprofit founder Daniel Lurie, both running to unseat Breed, have been actively campaigning in Chinese communities. Farrell hosted a rally Monday in Visitacion Valley to announce his plans to protect Asian elders, while Lurie set up his campaign headquarters in the Sunset area and has hosted events aimed specifically at Chinese seniors. Breed too focused on Chinatown and Portola with a “victory lap” after a trip to China in April.
In the 2018 mayoral race, Breed and then-Supervisor Jane Kim, a progressive Korean American candidate, split the Chinatown area. Breed won most of the city’s Asian American precincts. But this year, much of Breed’s moderate Chinese voter base is widely expected to support her moderate opponents Farrell and Lurie, and possibly Supervisor Aaron Peskin, a progressive candidate who has high name recognition in the Chinese community. Peskin has represented Chinatown on the Board of Supervisors for almost two decades.
In a text message, Peskin expressed confidence in his Chinese American support. He suggested that many of Breed’s supporters in the Chinese American merchant community might back him too under the city’s ranked-choice system.
David Ho, a political consultant, predicted that Peskin will win Chinatown precincts. But he said it’s unclear who the front-runners are for the large chunk of Chinese voters on the west and south sides of the city.
“I think the Chinese votes will be split this time,” Ho told The Standard. “Is that good or bad for the community, as the voting power is being neutralized?”
Overall, Ho said, Chinatown and most of the majority Chinese American districts vote similarly, but Chinatown voters may be slightly more progressive when it comes to rent control and affordable housing issues, while Chinese voters on the south side and in the Sunset are considered more conservative.
Donald Luu serves as president of the SF Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Chinatown but lives on the west side. He attended Peskin’s campaign fundraising event and Breed’s Chinatown press conference as a supporter. He said Peskin is a longtime friend — but in the mayor’s race, he’s hoping to see a moderate prevail.
“I need a mayor that can work with both sides, and the policy needs to be in the middle,” Luu said. “The city gets worse when one side gets too much influence.”