It's no surprise that David Chiu, Ed Lee and Leland Yee are pushing their campaigns for mayor in the city's Asian neighborhoods. But it's the Chinese-language literature put out by Tony Hall, Joanna Rees and virtually every other candidate for San Francisco's top job that highlights the growing political clout of the city's Asian American community.

"For decades, Chinatown was an ATM for local politicians, a place where they could go and get campaign money," said David Lee, executive director of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee, which works to boost Asian American voter registration. "Now the politicians are coming into our community seeking our votes, not just our cash."

Politics is a numbers game, and the demographic power of Asian Americans is an important measure of their political strength. Asian Americans, who, in census terms, include Pacific Islanders and South Asians, now make up a third of San Francisco's population and about 18 percent of its registered voters. And those numbers are growing.

Yee, a state senator, has watched as the city's Asian American community has both grown and become more politically savvy.

"When I first ran for the Board of Education (in 1988), it was said that you could get money in the Chinese community, but you had to get the votes outside that community," Yee said. "Now if you come to get the money, you need to do more than stand up for a picture. You have to articulate an agenda."

Yee was talking after finishing a campaign event outside Gordon J. Lau Elementary School in Chinatown, which was named for the first Chinese American elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1977.

Longtime links

Yee said he chose the Chinatown backdrop to present his citywide education plan because it was the first school he attended, back when it was known as Commodore Stockton. But it was also a way to remind an important group of his political supporters of his longtime links to their community.

Members of the fast-growing Asian American community have become increasingly visible on the city's political scene. Four members of the Board of Supervisors, including Chiu, are of Asian or Pacific Islander background, as are four school board members, two community college trustees and two other candidates for mayor, Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting and Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who is of Japanese heritage.

But City Administrator Ed Lee's taking over as mayor after Gavin Newsom moved to Sacramento as lieutenant governor in January galvanized Asian Americans' attention to city politics. And with Lee and four other well-known Asian American politicians vying for the mayor's office, the interest is growing.

"There's a huge amount of excitement in the community," said David Lee, who also teaches political science at San Francisco State University. "Not only do the candidates look like them, but they care for the culture."

Gaining a voice

That's a big change for a community that for years existed in a political vacuum. While Chinatown was, in David Lee's words, "the very definition of a ghetto before 1940," even in the '40s and '50s it was a neighborhood happy to live apart from the rest of the city, ignored, but not bothered by political leaders.

But by the late 1960s, "that started changing with punk activists like me," said Gordon Chin, executive director of the Chinatown Community Development Center, one of the city's most powerful nonprofits.

Tenant rights battles over places like the Ping Yuen public housing project and the International Hotel, along with land-use concerns around Chinatown, fired up the community and helped Asian Americans realize the need to deal effectively with City Hall, Chin said.

More recent battles include the fight over the design for a City College extension in Chinatown, which is now under construction, and the proposed Central Subway.

The controversial $1.6 billion plan to build an underground transit line into the heart of Chinatown shows how much power the Asian American community can wield at City Hall.

Politicians aren't the only sign of the growing Asian influence, added Chin.

"Name a profession, and there's an Asian group represented," he said. "The Transit Workers Union used to be mostly black, and now it's heavily Asian, with Chinese bus drivers."

A growing influence

The growing presence and political strength can be seen across the city. It isn't limited to Chinatown (District Three) or even to the heavily Asian Sunset (District Four) and Richmond (District One) neighborhoods. While all three of those districts are represented by Asian American supervisors, so is SoMa's District Six, where Jane Kim was elected last year in an area where Asians make up about 28 percent of the residents.

That's a sign that both the city and its Asian American politicians are maturing, said Chiu, president of the Board of Supervisors.

"San Francisco is moving beyond looking at just ethnic or racial identity and focusing on what's best for the city," he said.

But racial identity is still an important factor in the voting choices of ethnic communities, and continuing demographic trends could boost the Asian community's political power in years to come.

In District 10, which includes Bayview-Hunters Point, the Potrero and Visitacion Valley, Asian Americans now are the largest single ethnic group, with better than 38 percent of the population. And District 11, the Excelsior, Oceanview, Ingleside and Outer Mission, now has an Asian majority, with 51 percent of the residents.

Because so many Asian American residents are recent arrivals and noncitizens, the community's voter-registration level runs much lower than the adult population, David Lee said. And even those registered voters don't show up at the polls as regularly as other voting groups.

But that could all change this November, and it's a change that could go a long way toward cementing the strength of Asian American voters in San Francisco.

"I wouldn't be surprised to see (Asian voting numbers) 10 to 15 percent above the citywide average," David Lee said. "I see it in my students; they're engaged, interested and want to go out and volunteer."