John Liu's embattled campaign for mayor of New York City came to an end yesterday, as he placed fourth in a primary race that saw two of his campaign workers convicted of improper fundraising tactics, which resulted in a denial of $3.5 million in public matching funds from the New York City Campaign Finance Board earlier this summer.

Despite major setbacks, Liu still performed well above poll predictions, which over the course of the campaign dipped as low as 2 percent. Bill de Blasio — barring any unexpected results from the 1 percent of precincts yet to report — won the Democratic nomination with 40.3 percent of the vote; runner-up Bill Thompson received 26.1 percent; Christine Quinn 15.5 percent; and John Liu, 7 percent of the vote at 44,972 voters. Scandal-plagued amateur photographer Anthony Wiener came in fifth, with 4.9 percent.

After the NYC Campaign Finance Board announcement in August, Liu expressed pride at having had the highest proportion of small donors of any other mayoral campaign, and the "distinct honor" of being the first political campaign to which many of his donors had ever donated. Many of those donors were Chinese immigrants; of the $3,484,127.76 raised by the campaign, $2.24 million came from donors with Chinese surnames, according to the New York Times.

New York City ballots do not track ethnicity, and exit polls only track white, black and "other races": Liu received 44 percent of the third category, and voter tallies across geographical neighborhoods overlaid with census data across the city reveals heavy support for the Taiwan-born Queens transplant in the predominantly Asian neighborhoods of Chinatown, Flushing, Sunset Park and Elmhurst. In several voting districts in Manhattan's Chinatown, more than 80 percent of voters chose Liu. A number of districts in Flushing reported votes for Liu at more than 60 percent.

In the 2009 race that won the former city councilman the seat of comptroller, Liu received 38 percent of the vote. In a poll conducted by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, 95 percent of Chinese American voters reported having voted for Liu. Across all Asian ethnicities, 84 percent supported Liu. In contrast, de Blasio received 14 percent of the Asian vote.

"Everyone knew when the polls came out for John at 2 percent this time, that it was a joke," said Wellington Chen, executive director of the Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corporation. "Chinese people are not fully on the radar screen of pollsters. As a result, people gave up his campaign for dead and he lost a lot of momentum and energy. As an Asian American, John was trying to break through a psychological barrier, but the damage was done. People want to jump on the winning man, and often perception becomes reality."

The allegations of corruption didn't help, but most people in the Chinese community believed in Liu's innocence, said Timothy Chuang, a long-time Flushing resident and president of the Flushing Cuisine Association. The great majority of people in Flushing still trusted Liu, and felt that the denial of public matching funds only confirmed unfair treatment for Asians in politics, he said.

Most damaging was the renewed perception among potential Chinese voters that civic engagement only leads to trouble, Chen said. After the investigation into Liu's campaign, many speculated about the possibility that donors would themselves be investigated by the FBI.

"Asian Americans will pay the price for this for decades to come," he said. "The scandal sent a tremendous chill through the community, because Asians are already reluctant to get involved in politics to begin with. It's extremely difficult to get people to donate and to participate. For people unfamiliar with the electoral process, who were already shy about dealing with the government, the scandal set off a domino effect of fear. Democracy is a messy business, especially for Asian Americans."

Jerry Vattamala, staff attorney and part of AADEF's democracy program, noted that voters with names in both their home languages and English can encounter difficulties when asked to present ID. When faced with rude or racist poll workers, or language barriers, voters of Asian descent have often opted out of the voting process entirely, he said.

Liu's supporters in Flushing remain loyal, Chuang said. "No matter what, John was the first Asian American city councilman and comptroller in New York," he said. "Chinese people want to feel in their hearts that you don't only have to open a Laundromat or a supermarket, because we want our second and third generations to have different roles in America. John Liu is a pioneer, and we'll always love him for that."

Contact the writer at: kdawson@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily USA 09/12/2013 page2)