Republican Fong Confronts Role Of Race In Senate Drive

Politics: State Treasurer speaks out against bilingual education and affirmative action in effort to define himself to GOP voters.

He is the highest-ranking Republican elected official of Asian ancestry in the United States. And as state Treasurer Matt Fong seeks to climb to the U.S. Senate, race is playing an undeniable role in his campaign.

Witness the meat of his campaign pitch, just past the polite niceties to his hosts and the casual appeals for money, when he slides into an attack against incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer.

“Barbara Boxer, I believe, is trying to portray all of us who supported Prop. 209 as racist extremists,” Fong said recently, referring to the successful 1996 voter initiative that outlawed affirmative action in education and public hiring and contracting.

“As a fourth-generation Californian, one who is very proud of my Chinese ancestry, I supported Prop. 209. I don’t believe in quotas. I don’t believe in racial preferences. I dare her to call me a racist.”

And, for good measure, he says he wants to junk bilingual education. “We must declare the bilingual experiment dead,” he said, drawing appreciative applause from his Orange County audience.

Fong’s tone when he confronts these emotional issues, however, is somewhat diffident. In part, that is because Fong, the epitome of the minivan-driving, suburban yuppie Republican, gets passionate about other things. He seems to be doing this less to trash Boxer than to define himself to anyone out there in the Republican world who might, because of Fong’s ethnicity, question his views.

Whichever way he turns right now, in the get-acquainted meetings that will go a long way toward determining Fong’s success in 1998, race attends. Will voters accept him, a Chinese American running in a campaign cycle rife with tales of Asian influence-peddling? Will California Republicans, dominated by white men, embrace someone different? And will the conservatives who form the party’s backbone accept someone whose views on reaching out to minorities are more inclusionary than their own?

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As he seeks to solidify his position as the GOP establishment candidate for the Senate seat, Fong is plying difficult seas: Proud of his ethnicity but rarely delving into racial issues with any heft before, he now enters a high-profile contest where problematic racial issues abound. Not surprisingly, he is optimistic.

“The advantage that we have in this election is that we’re not the stereotypical candidate,” he says. “We’re certainly not a stereotypical Republican candidate and I’m not a stereotypical statewide elected officeholder. . . . If we’re going to have a national dialogue on race , let’s do so in a very open, trusting, respectful way.”

Until this year, Fong, the 43-year-old son of former Secretary of State March Fong Eu, a Democrat, appeared happy enough to avoid that national dialogue. He was virtually silent in the two racially oriented debates here in recent years, the 1994 tussle over Proposition 187, the measure that censured illegal immigrants, and 1996’s Proposition 209, the anti-affirmative action initiative.

In 1994, when he was running for treasurer, Fong declared himself neutral on Proposition 187, saying it had both positives and negatives. Two years later he came out in favor of Proposition 209, though he did so a mere six weeks before election day, when the measure was clearly headed for victory.

Now, however, he brings up the subject regularly–and predictably, according to political analysts.

“In the last several years, with 187 and 209 being statewide ballot issues and given the results, overwhelming support particularly by white voters of both parties, I think it’s necessary for him to address some assumptions or questions people may have,” said Don Nakanishi, director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center.

“Is he sort of a closet moderate and if so, a moderate in what ways, particularly on race? Or does he sort of share the views of someone like Ward Connerly?”

Fong and Connerly, the chairman of the Proposition 209 campaign, may have supported the same initiative, but Fong’s views on affirmative action and race issues are more nuanced. He is far more convinced than some conservative Republicans of the need for reaching out to minorities, much like one of his political mentors, Jack Kemp.

“We’re a long way from where my great-grandfather was when he came here from China and wanted to be a gold miner and was told ‘You can’t–you’re going to be a coolie and a common laborer,’ ” Fong said in an interview at his Los Angeles office. “We’ve come a long way from that. But we’re still not there yet.”

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California, he believes, is the focus of the “grandest experiment today” on race, and one rife with unanswered questions: “Can people of different ethnicities but one common bond, called being American citizens . . . live together, work together and grow old together in one locality? I’m very optimistic that the answer is yes.”

Though not in every speech, Fong often tells his audience that Republicans should provide “affirmative opportunity” to all Californians. By that he means improving inner-city schools and boosting business and investment opportunities for those who have had difficulty grasping the brass ring in the past. He is not explicit about how he would do it.

Though Fong said that Republican voters “might” be concerned about his views on racial subjects because of his ethnicity, campaign aides deny that he brings up the topics to quiet any fears. Fong’s campaign strategist, Richard Temple, said that Fong has long talked about these issues but has gotten little attention.

“He’s talked about economic opportunity for years, about the need to give everybody a fair shot; it’s all tied together,” Temple said.

Unlike most Republican candidates, a generally white male bunch when it comes to big races, Fong has lived the racial dilemma. But only when asked does he recount his experiences.

Asked how many other Asian Americans studied with him at the Air Force Academy–out of a corps of 4,000–Fong answers jokingly: “There was one other American of Chinese descent; he was my cousin and he was a year ahead of me and he discriminated against me because he never let me borrow his car.”

Then he turns more serious.

“It was a funny experience because the first week, nobody spoke to me because they didn’t think I spoke English. . . . There were students who had never seen or ever been to school with anybody who was of Asian descent.”

Another time, Fong was wearing his Air Force Academy uniform at Travis Air Force Base, and “I actually had a colonel come up to me, an Air Force colonel, and ask me what Air Force I was in.”

Fong’s demeanor, in the retelling, is matter-of-fact. Because of his experiences, he says, “I make it a point to counsel all students, but I focus on minority students, on the opportunities of the Air Force Academy or an ROTC scholarship. It’s a program that most minorities don’t think of, being in the military. Asian Americans want their kids to be doctors or lawyers or engineers.”

The state treasurer and his political advisors hope that Fong will have a broad reach across the electorate, attracting Republicans as well as Asian Americans and other minorities from the Democratic and independent camps.

They also say that the campaign financing controversies, some of which involve Asian donors, will not harm Fong’s candidacy. In April, he returned $ 100,000 in 1995 campaign contributions to an Indonesian businessman because of reports that the money might have originated in China.

Among some Republicans, even those who are not supporting Fong, his ethnicity comes as a welcome relief from the almost unrelenting parade of white male candidates the party has historically supported. Indeed, the two best-known GOP Senate hopefuls do not fit that bill–Fong and San Diego Mayor Susan Golding.

“A lot of Republicans do not want an all-white male ticket,” said GOP political consultant Ron Smith.



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