» Boston city mayoral candidates (left to right): Kevin McCrea, City Councilors Sam Yoon and Michael Flaherty and Mayor Thomas Menino.

What are some your new ideas for the Boston city government and new ideas that will support and help the Asian Community?

Some very simple new ideas I have to improve our Boston city government are to give all our residents a very simple phone number to call: to make complaints, or to make a report, anything that isn’t a police emergency.  

It’s called 311.  We can reach a lot more people.  The more data you collect listening to these phone calls, and put them into the data base, the better you can become at your programs and services. That is one idea that I will definitely bring to the city government.

In terms of ideas for the Asian community, it’s very simple.  What’s so missing in the Asian-American community is a voice that has the ability to bring people to the table and say “this is a concern for the Asian-American people”.  If I’m elected as the mayor for Boston, in essence, I will become a spokesperson for the Asian American community.

How long have you lived in Boston? What have you done for the past 3 years for the Chinese community as a councilor? What are the major issues you think that Chinatown is facing now?

I came to Boston to attend graduate school, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, in 1993. And I moved to Dorchester, which is a neighborhood of Boston, in 2002.
 
What’s important, some of the mainstream press criticize me and say “You haven’t lived in Boston long enough.  How can you be a mayor?” My response to that is if I haven't lived in Boston long enough, then how did I get elected in 2005 to City Councilor At-large?   

Second, I chose to live in Boston, Boston didn’t choose me. I chose Boston to raise my family here, and send my children to Boston public school here. That makes me as much a Bostonian as anyone, because this was my choice. I so much care about the city.

One of my accomplishments for the Chinese community was to push for bilingual ballots. As a quick background, the voting ballots in Boston are translated into several different languages, including Chinese. But the one thing that secretary of state for our state refuses to print on the ballot is the name translated into Chinese. 

So I have sponsored a bill, started in city hall, that supports it, and it went to the state house. But when that bill got to the state house, it got killed. And we’re starting it again this year. We’re going to push and push again until we secure equal rights for the voters.

One of the main issues facing Chinatown has to do with development, real estate and building.  I have tried to balance the needs of the community with development and really encouraged developers to keep working with the community to arrive at compromising solutions.
 
I am very sensitive to the needs of Chinatown because I worked for Chinatown for about 8 years in the area of community development.

What other ways have you helped to improve Boston during your time as a city councilor?

 During my three years as a city councilor, my main goal has always been to make sure that the city government is modernized. Boston city government is very old fashioned. One of the problems is that in Boston politics, it is kind of an exclusive club; if you don’t know who’s already inside the government, you don’t have a voice, no access.  

It’s called openness and transparency, meaning that there should not be a wall between the government and the people. The process should be transparent, and people should see how the decision is made, and should be able to ask the government what is going on. But there are secret meetings and secret phone calls. That’s not how the government should be run in this century.

How would you improve the rate of teenage crime committed in Boston?

 That is one of the most important issues for me. We need everyone who cares about the issue—the police, after-school program managers, judges, prosecutors—to start working together and share information to solve the problem.  

Boston has done this before, in 1996 and 1997, when there was no teenage homicide. The media called it a Boston miracle.  We need to put additional resources that bring the police and community programs together to solve the problem.

 Do you have political allies supporting your candidacy?

A. Because Mayor Menino has been so powerful, many politicians are reluctant to be very open about supporting me right now.  It is very early for politicians to declare their support one way or the other. What’s more important now is that I get the support of regular people. 

We want to do a grassroots campaign. And if we accomplish that we’ll be successful. Then other politicians will come onboard and have the courage to support me.

How do you respond to some of the criticisms of your fundraising efforts?

Contrary to perception, the majority of my fundraising comes from Massachusetts donors.  We want the 2009 club to be a challenge to the Asian American community.  The 2009 club is a special program, but that’s not going to be the main program. 

That will come from inside the city.  As this campaign goes on, you should know that my opponents will spend a lot of money and a lot of time trying to create negative publicity and bad information about me.  

On the other hand, the Boston Globe even admitted that raising money from out-of-state was essential for an outside candidate like me since it is so difficult to raise money in Massachusetts against entrenched opponent like Menino.

Could you tell us one or two factors that helped you decide to run for mayor?

My wife’s support was crucial because I felt like with her support I could do this campaign. I also considered the risk of losing my city councilor seat and decided that if I wanted to make a change in Boston politics and modernize the city government, I could not do that as a city councilor due to the structure of our government which gives all the power to the mayor.

 What would you do if you were to lose?

A.  That’s obviously possible.  I believe that politics is where you can really make positive change for society, so I will continue to be in politics.  Many great political leaders often lost.  Barack Obama lost his first congressional campaign. 

I feel like I’m getting old at 39, but in a political career, that’s still young.  I’m in my 3rd year; if I were to lose I would want to come back again.  At any rate, I’m very focused on this year. 

Sam Yoon, Boston’s first Asian-American city councilor, announced his candidacy for the mayor.  Joining fellow city councilor Michael Flaherty and South End business owner Kevin McCrea as candidate, the unprecedented mayoral race is drawing a crowded field.  Mayor Thomas M. Menino has not yet publicly declared his intention to seek a fifth-term. 

Yoon (39) came onto Boston’s political scene just four years ago after having worked as a project manager for Community Builders, the nation’s largest non-profit developer of affordable housing.  He also worked for other community organizations in Boston before running for city council. 

Most political pundits would raise their eyebrows measuring Yoon’s potential for unseating the long-running Mayor Menino, currently serving his 4th term, given his popularity and formidable political resume.  However, as the economy continues to worsen and the city government faces a severe budget crisis, Yoon may just have the opening that he would need to become the city’s next chief executive despite Menino’s popularity. 

As a city councilor, Yoon has been a vocal proponent of increasing transparency and open government at city hall.  With his extensive background in affordable housing development, Yoon has led efforts to resolve the problem of developers converting affordable units to market-rate housing and has sought creative solutions to the city’s affordable housing issue.

In the last two elections, Yoon garnered broad support from Boston voters throughout all the precincts.  However, whether this tradition-laden city is ready to embrace an Asian American as mayor remains to be seen.  Perceived as an unconventional candidate, Yoon’s relative inexperience in politics could be seen as a plus in this rough-and-tumble political town.  

Paul Watanabe, a political scientist and director of the Institute for Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, said “[Yoon’s participation] is historic in that seldom in the history of Boston has a person who is non-white challenged the sitting leadership.”
On February 12, Boston City Councilor and mayoral candidate Sam Yoon spoke with members of the Asian-American media regarding his candidacy for mayor.  The following is a summary of the telephone news conference.

» Archived photo of Sam Yoon's family: wife Christina and their two children, Naomi and Nathanial, taken at their home last year. Although Councilor Yoon hasn't lived in Dorchester (Boston) for long time, he said Boston is his adopted hometown and deeply cares for it. (Photo by Sue Yang

Opening Remarks:
After spending three years as a Boston city councilor, I have concluded that the city of Boston needs new ideas and new approach to doing things.  Challenging the incumbent mayor will be very difficult because Boston’s political system favors the incumbent.  Over the last 16 years, Mayor Menino has built a massive supporter base.  

Funding is the most pressing need, and I believe that our campaign can meet that challenge. In fact, we believe that we can raise at least 1 million dollars because it represents 2000 people each giving a maximum limit of $500, so named the “2009 club”.  

In the days and weeks to come, we will be promoting the 2009 club and will be asking people to join.  We really have a good message, a new way of doing politics.  Bostonians will be interested, but we need to make sure that we have resources to reach them, and then let them hear who I am. With that, I’ll open this up for questions. 




(c) By The Korean American Press. (KAP)