Asians Politics

Congressional hearings have produced enough evidence of illegal fund-raising in the 1996 presidential campaign to warrant criminal indictments by the Justice Department, Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) said Thursday. "The ball is in their court," said Thompson, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which is probing the campaign abuses. "I don't want to prejudge them, but [Atty. Gen.

"I still need the evil, sexy dog bark," says director Philip W. Chung to an actor in the lobby at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica. "And the hoochie girls are coming in too soon." What's a nice, bespectacled Asian American guy doing talking like this? For starters, he's battling the very notion of Asian American politesse.

With social services and other vital needs growing increasingly scarce, Orange County's burgeoning Asian population needs to unite, get involved in politics and join other ethnic groups to get its fair share, community leaders said Friday. Echoing pleas increasingly voiced by Latinos and other minority groups, a broad slate of participants gathered at the Garden Grove Community Meeting Center to exchange perspectives on how best to push for more services for the county's nearly 250,000 Asians.

The steep Sierra Madre mountains here are blanketed with lush, well-tended coffee plants, a testament to the successful efforts of small-scale coffee growers who have defined for themselves a specialized niche in the international marketplace. But there is trouble in these fields. The shrubs are laden with overripe coffee beans rotting on branches. The peasant farmers of La Union de Huatusco cooperative have good reason to leave their coffee unpicked.

The growing ethnic diversity of California society, as reflected in newly released 1990 census numbers, is now visible in suburbs and small towns, agricultural counties and desert subdivisions--almost everywhere, except in the corridors of power.

The Rolling Stone article infuriated Yoon Hee Kim. In a satire of the South Korean presidential election last year, the magazine made references that were offensive to Koreans. Kim and other leaders from Los Angeles' Korean community, looking for an apology, turned to the one man they knew would help: City Councilman Michael Woo. 'A Role Model' Woo immediately called a press conference and denounced the article as racist.

In a time when national minority organizations are pushing for better representation on network television, a handful of Orange County Asian Pacific Americans have been training to establish a foothold in a different arena: local politics. While the number of Asian Pacific Americans has more than tripled in Orange County since the '80s, the group is conspicuously absent from local leadership positions.

It is not a question of if it will happen. The only question now is when will Los Angeles' shrinking African American population result in fewer black elected officials? "A lot of us have been handicapping this one for a long time," said veteran political consultant Chris Hammond. "The assumption is that somewhere down the road--I don't know if it will be the year 2000--we're going to lose a council seat."

The Republicans' report on President Clinton's "China connection" has been completed. It is a remarkably incomplete and distorted document, one that makes the most of any possible links to China while failing to pursue similar questions about Taiwan. For more than a year now, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee has been examining the fund-raising for Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign.

Nationally speaking, it's a fairly small neighborhood, but in the last few years the Asian-American communities in northern Orange County have surely been among the most heavily trafficked political territories anywhere. Today's visit by President Bush in Fountain Valley caps a three-year parade of Republican luminaries that includes Vice President Dan Quayle, First Lady Barbara Bush, U.S. Sen.

This city, as diverse as any in the world, has had a black mayor and two Jewish mayors. Its City Council includes natives of Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. Yet no Asian American has ever served as mayor, on the City Council or in any citywide office--a "shocking" situation, one candidate says, considering that nearly 1 in 10 New Yorkers is of Asian descent.

In a time when national minority organizations are pushing for better representation on network television, a handful of Orange County Asian Pacific Americans have been training to establish a foothold in a different arena: local politics. While the number of Asian Pacific Americans has more than tripled in Orange County since the '80s, the group is conspicuously absent from local leadership positions.

The Republicans' report on President Clinton's "China connection" has been completed. It is a remarkably incomplete and distorted document, one that makes the most of any possible links to China while failing to pursue similar questions about Taiwan. For more than a year now, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee has been examining the fund-raising for Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign.

Congressional hearings have produced enough evidence of illegal fund-raising in the 1996 presidential campaign to warrant criminal indictments by the Justice Department, Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) said Thursday. "The ball is in their court," said Thompson, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which is probing the campaign abuses. "I don't want to prejudge them, but [Atty. Gen.

The FBI has acknowledged overlooking key intelligence information gathered as far back as 1991 that investigators believe shows further Chinese government efforts to buy political influence in the United States, senior U.S. government sources said Thursday. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno learned of the new evidence on the night of Nov. 5. A senior Justice Department official said Reno was "livid" at the FBI foul-up and two days later apologized to Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.

The House committee investigating campaign fund-raising subpoenaed Johnny Chien Chuen Chung on Friday to testify next week, setting up the likelihood that the Torrance businessman will decline to testify before television cameras. Chung, among the Democratic Party's largest campaign donors in recent years, emerged as one of the most colorful figures in the fund-raising furor--an entrepreneur who has brought embarrassment to a president he supported with hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In a remarkable rise, a San Francisco real estate broker left a checkered past in Hawaii and established herself as an important Democratic fund-raiser with access to some of the country's most powerful politicians. Just 18 months after she finished federal probation for income tax evasion, Chong Lo joined a small group of contributors at the White House for a coffee with the president and vice president in 1995.

From the minority communities that will soon make up a majority of this state, this year's contest for governor has ushered forth a rumbling of resentment. As they cross California, Dianne Feinstein and Pete Wilson are talking about issues they consider important to minority voters, from crime to education to leadership. Each has rounded up enthusiastic supporters.

The House opened its own campaign finance hearings Wednesday by announcing that two former Democratic fund-raisers are prepared to testify that President Clinton's 1992 campaign had provided an endorsement to a candidate for political office in Asia in exchange for a $50,000 contribution.

Saying that recent portrayals of Asian Americans in the media have deeply offended him, Assemblyman Nao Takasugi (R-Oxnard) has co-written a resolution that urges federal leaders to condemn Asian-bashing. The resolution was introduced in the state Assembly on Thursday, the same day a coalition of prominent Asian Americans filed a complaint with the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.