Chinatown voter awareness helped propel Yoon's win

It used to be that politicians rarely stopped in the tiny neighborhood between the Central Artery and downtown. Chinatown residents didn't vote in big enough numbers to matter. The few who did, it seemed, often took their marching orders from a cadre of savvy, well-connected businessmen who ran the neighborhood.

But Chinatown's political might has been quietly and steadily growing, and Tuesday's city election showed just how much. In the precincts with the highest concentrations of Chinese residents, thousands of voters went to the polls, nearly three times the tally from eight years ago. That turnout helped propel Sam Yoon, the city's first Asian-American candidate, to a seat on the City Council.

Asian voting participation rose across the city in Tuesday's election. While the precincts encompassing Chinatown saw the greatest increase in turnout from 2001, the second-highest jump occurred in heavily Vietnamese Fields Corner in Dorchester, according to an analysis released yesterday by the voting rights organization MassVOTE.

It is not just that more Asian voters are showing up at polls in Boston, organizers say. Their political attentiveness and sophistication have grown, too. Voters now appear more invested in the political process and more concerned about specific issues than ever before.

The community activists who have spent years trying to boost voting and political action among the 44,000 Asians who live here were elated yesterday. They said that strenuous efforts to enroll more voters, increase citizenship, provide bilingual services and civic education have paid off.

''Chinese-American voters are really developing a new awareness, becoming more independent voters," said Lydia Lowe, president of the Chinese Progressive Association. ''In the past, there was very little discussion of issues. Now people are talking about issues, and there is campaigning. People are trying to win the hearts and minds of Chinatown voters, and that's a really positive thing, no matter who wins an election."

Indeed, many see the surprising success of Yoon, a Korean-American who lives in Dorchester, as the culmination of years of spade work.

''What we've done over the last five years is to really work, not just on registration and turnout," but on voter education, Lowe said. ''So people know what are the issues, what are the platforms, who are these candidates."

This fall, Lowe's group led two rounds of voter education workshops in 10 Chinatown housing complexes and other areas in the city. Residents learned about how city government affects them, how building political clout helps a neighborhood, and how to fill in ballots. In addition, thousands of pamphlets mailed to Asians in Chinatown and other areas of Boston outlined mayoral and City Council candidates' positions on issues, offered instruction on casting a ballot, and provided updates on the city's efforts to make voting easier for residents with a limited command of English.

In all minority areas of the city, a program called the Civic Engagement Initiative, run by a coalition of voting rights and neighborhood development groups, has been working to increase registration and turnout since 2002.

The city, too, has been trying to boost registration and turnout among minority voters, particularly in the election cycle after a Department of Justice lawsuit alleged that the Menino administration had failed to accommodate voters with limited English skills.

Candidates took notice of the increasing activity in Asian areas. Previous neighborhood candidates' forums were spottily attended, Lowe said, but all of the political hopefuls showed up this year. One debate in October between Councilor James M. Kelly and challenger Susan Passoni drew 100 people and was simultaneously translated for residents.

Most of city councilors' campaigns put out fliers in Chinese, which Lowe said had never happened before. On Election Day, every campaign had workers in Chinatown, she said.

There were similar mobilization efforts in Fields Corner, said Nhan Paul Ton That, executive director of the community organization Viet-AID. ''We have worked hard in registration drives in the last three years, and we're seeing the results from that work," he said. ''I'm very, very happy."

Chinatown's voters have been motivated, too, by changes in their neighborhood, which has undergone a development boom in recent years, bringing new residents and voters into the area and driving up housing prices.

''Residents are very concerned about their quality of life," said Mary Moy, cochairwoman of the Boston Chinatown Residents Association. ''That's why they are . . . coming out to vote."

In the mid-1990s, a battle over a massive parking garage proposed for the neighborhood spurred some residents to action, and eventually they helped shape the future development of the land, which became mixed-income housing. A more recent controversy over Parcel 24, land the neighborhood sought to reclaim from the Central Artery Project, added fervor to the ranks.

But several people interviewed yesterday said it was the decision by Yoon, formerly the housing director of the Asian Community Development Corporation in Chinatown, to run for office that galvanized the Asian electorate.

''That's why I went to vote, because of Sam Yoon, because there was an Asian face," said voter Katherine Wong, 85, of Chinatown. ''There aren't any on the political scene."

''You have to have Asian people running," said Jeremy Liu, Yoon's campaign chairman and executive director of the Asian Community Development Corporation.

Asian voters still have a long way to go politically: Only about 25 percent of the state's Asian residents are registered to vote, according to a study released this year by the Institute for Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

But ''I think people feel they have a voice now," said Eileen Heng, who has worked at the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Association for 25 years. ''Now they realize they can make a difference."