• MEMBERS

Asian-Americans grade legislators

By Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality (AACRE)
Print | Email

Legislators from the Bay Area were among the highest scorers across the state, including 17 who voted in favor of all 14 bills chosen for the survey. Democrats overwhelmingly voted in favor of the legislation.

Among Republican lawmakers, Assemblyman Ken Maddox of Garden Grove, which is more than one-quarter Asian-American, scored highest in his party with support of more than half of the bills.

Several of the bills considered in the Legislature this year related to multilingual services. The others covered a range of issues including granting high school diplomas to Japanese-Americans pulled out of school and forced into internment camps during World War II.

One resolution, sponsored by Assemblyman Manny Diaz, D-San Jose, urged Attorney General John Ashcroft to suspend the deportation of 275 South Koreans, many from the Bay Area, who were apparent victims of a corrupt immigration official and private consultants.

State Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-San Jose, trailed behind his party members, many of whom had a perfect score, with a score of 86 percent. He didn't vote on bills that required state contractors to comply with anti-sweatshop conditions and required health-care service plans to translate documents and provide interpreters, according to the report.

Sue North, Vasconcellos' chief of staff, said Wednesday that the senator voted in favor of both bills when they were first brought to the Senate floor. When the bills were kicked back to the Senate after being passed by the Assembly, Vasconcellos was in meetings during both votes, North said.

"John Vasconcellos has been a very vocal, visible friend of Asian-Pacific Americans and a stalwart vote on civil rights issues," North said. "If these bills were in trouble, which they weren't, he would have been found and called to the floor to vote."

Malhotra said that failing to vote was considered in the report the same as voting against legislation because "in our experience, when a legislator decides to stay off a bill, it makes our job all that much harder to make sure that bill gets passed."

The report card comes during a year when Asian-Americans have been more visible in the state Capitol than ever. Seven of the 80 Assembly members are Asian, and the number of Asian-Americans around the state continues to boom. Almost half of the legislators represent districts with more than 15 percent Asian-American populations, according to the report.

But despite their greater numbers, Asian-Americans have historically been divided politically, depending on a range of factors including economic class and politics in their homeland.

"It's time to hold our state policymakers accountable to the needs and concerns of their burgeoning Asian and Pacific Islander American constituencies," said Stewart Kwoh, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center.