David Chiu, the first Asian-American to serve as president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, says San Francisco should remain a city for everyone and not just the very wealthy and the very poor. Qidong Zhang / For China Daily

 

David Chiu is a politician who understands people and policy.

"I love tackling the most urgent problems of the day, bringing together stakeholders representing the diversity of my city and the world to hammer out solutions and deliver results," said Chiu. "And as the son of immigrants, it's amazingly humble to represent the oldest Chinese community in the country and to help new generations of immigrants seek the American Dream."

Chiu, the first Asian-American to serve as president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, is running for state Assembly in November.

His supervisory district in the northeastern corner of the city includes the famous neighborhoods of North Beach, the Financial District, Fisherman's Wharf, Russian Hill, Telegraph Hill, Nob Hill, Union Square and the oldest Chinatown in the United States. Chiu is also the first supervisor in San Francisco history elected to three consecutive terms as board president.

Now he has his sights set on the Statehouse in Sacramento. In a State Assembly primary election in June, Chiu took 48 percent of the vote (26,217 votes) over City Board of Supervisors colleague David Campos, who pulled about 43 percent. As the top two vote-getters in the June primary, the two will face off again for the seat in November. The two Democrats are vying to fill the seat held by another Democrat, Tom Ammiano, who has reached his term limit.

The 17th Assembly District encompasses the eastern half of San Francisco. Chiu, if elected, would become the first Asian American to hold the seat in California history.

Chiu said it is the toughest campaign he has faced. He raised more than $920,000 for the primary, and practically every Chinese community leader rallied behind him. Chiu has another prominent supporter of his campaign. Last year, he married Candace Chen, a public interest lawyer and third generation San Franciscan whom he met seven years ago. The two were friends for a while, and she was a volunteer on his 2008 supervisor campaign.

David Lee, executive director of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee, attributed Chiu's primary victory to the Chinese-American absentee-voter turnout. Chiu himself, however, said he has always delivered "bold leadership" that delivers for San Francisco.

Chiu described his daily schedule as "intense", with 16-hour days packed with public meetings, speeches, news conferences, legislative negotiations, 15-minute blocks for back-to-back discussions with neighborhood advocates, labor unions, business leaders, reporters, elected officials, constituents, and nonprofit organizations, and three to five events every evening.

Chiu said his top priority as an assemblyman would be to fight for resources for affordable housing, to fund public schools and to improve the transit system.

Chiu was born in Cleveland in 1970, the eldest child of Taiwanese-American immigrant parents. The family moved to Boston, where he attended Boston College High School.

"When I was growing up in Boston in the 1970s and 80s, I heard many anti-Asian slurs, and also had some teachers who assumed I couldn't speak or write in English," Chiu told China Daily.

Chiu said his experience as a minority Asian youth made him aware of racial discrimination.

His life made a sharp turn after a trip to San Francisco in 1992. Chiu fell in love with the city and decided to spend some part of his life in San Francisco. On that particular trip, he visited the neighborhoods that the entire world knows: Telegraph Hill with Coit Tower, which became his favorite part of the City; Chinatown and North Beach, Russian Hill, and discovered the cable cars.

In the mid-1990s, Chiu served as Democratic counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee's Constitution Subcommittee and as an aide to Senate. Paul Simon of Illinois, when Simon was on the Senate Budget Committee.

After moving to San Francisco in 1996, Chiu worked as a criminal prosecutor in the San Francisco district attorney's office and as a civil rights attorney at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights. He subsequently founded Grassroots Enterprise, an online communications technology company, and served as its chief operating officer. He also served on the San Francisco Small Business Commission and on the board of directors of numerous non-profit organizations.

Before Chiu was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 2008, many viewed San Francisco City Hall as dysfunctional. Under Chiu's leadership, San Francisco went from high unemployment, large budget deficits and political infighting to a vibrant economy, stable budgets and a solution-focused City Hall.

Chiu also has helped pass more than a dozen first-in-the-country regulations, including a half-dozen ground-breaking environmental policies and the first local ordinances establishing the rights of workers to ask for flexible and predictable schedules; city contracting preferences for socially responsible companies; and programs to provide pro bono legal assistance to tenants and immigrants.

Other measures involved budget reform, public transit, the environment, small business, affordable housing and public safety.

One of the measures he proposed in 2011 that got wide attention was a transparent, user-friendly online database outlining all spending by the city and county of San Francisco. The purpose is allow residents to see exactly where San Francisco's billion-dollar budget is going at any time.

Chiu said the proposal provided an open budget database that increased transparency and helped the public better understand where its money goes.

When asked about San Francisco's relationship with the Pacific Rim economies, Chiu pointed with pride to San Francisco's successful Sister City relationships with the great Asian cities of Shanghai, Taipei, Osaka, Seoul, Manila, Bangalore and Ho Chi Minh City.

Chiu says he has been supportive of San Francisco's ChinaSF program, which has fostered economic development and job creation between San Francisco and China, by supporting San Francisco companies expanding into Chinese markets and Chinese companies creating jobs in San Francisco.

"I think making sure that our people are safe, get a good education and get jobs after college is what I strive to make happen," he said. "After all, San Francisco should remain a city for everyone and not just the very wealthy and the very poor."

For China Daily

qidongzhangqidong@gmail.com

(China Daily USA 10/17/2014 page11)