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July 28, 2005
Sam Yoon kicks off campaign for at-large city council seat
Virgil Wright
Sam Yoon opened a bid last week to become the Hub’s
first Asian-American city councilor, citing support among progressives
and people of color to bring greater diversity to Boston’s
elected officials.
A Korean immigrant who has developed affordable housing for the
last ten years, the 35-year-old candidate kicked off his citywide
campaign in Chinatown with an introduction by former Boston mayoral
candidate Mel King, who praised Yoon as a model of pragmatic and
progressive leadership for the much-touted “New Boston.”
Yoon pointed to the site of his announcement, the Metropolitan
housing complex on Nassau Street, as an example of his work to
bring affordable development and residential stability to the
city.
“At the Asian Community Development Corporation and with
our partners in the community, in city government, and in the
private sector, we developed this building with our eye on Boston’s
future, while honoring the neighborhood and meeting its needs,”
said Yoon, barely breaking a sweat while addressing supporters
in the Metropolitan’s sweltering community room.
A Princeton graduate who taught in tough inner-city schools in
Trenton and Elizabeth, N.J., Yoon came to Boston in 1993 to attend
the Kennedy School and develop affordable housing, the last three
years as housing director for the Asian CDC.
The boyish-looking candidate, who arrived in the U.S. at age 10
months and grew up in the Amish country of Lebanon, Penn., pledged
to follow the footsteps of other hard-working immigrants to make
his educational and professional expertise work for the good of
all Bostonians.
“All my life, I’ve felt the call to service. I taught
in the public schools in some of the toughest cities in our nation,”
said Yoon, flanked by his wife and two children. “I have
devoted my career to helping communities come together to take
control of their own future.
“That is what I will do on the Boston City Council. Call
it a grateful payback to our city and country from this son of
Korean immigrants.”
Yoon, a Fields Corner resident, is one of 15 candidates for four
at-large seats on the Boston City Council. The Sept. 27 preliminary
election will whittle the field to eight, who will face off in
the Nov. 8 final election.
Yoon joins three incumbents in the race — Michael Flaherty,
Stephen Murphy and Felix Arroyo — who are favored to win
re-election and 11 challengers vying for the open seat left vacant
by 22-year council veteran Maura Hennigan.
Hennigan stopped by Yoon’s campaign kickoff buffet in Chinatown
the evening of his announcement en route to events promoting her
challenge this year to Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino.
Shaking hands with the candidate, the at-large councilor laughed
off suggestions of an endorsement of Yoon but pledged to vote
for him.
“People may not remember the ‘Kevin Seven,’”
said Hennigan. “They were the council candidates endorsed
by Mayor White. Every one of them lost. So I’m staying away
from endorsements. But I’ll be voting for Sam, which is
the most important thing.”
In a brief interview between photo ops and shaking hands at the
buffet, Yoon said he had been encouraged to run not only by Mel
King but also by the city’s councilors of color —
Charles Yancey, Chuck Turner and Felix Arroyo — and would
welcome their support.
“They have been extremely encouraging. None has yet offered
an endorsement. We’ll wait and see what happens after the
preliminary election,” said Yoon.
Arroyo, the first citywide councilor of color since Bruce Bolling
left the council to run a failed bid for mayor in 1993, won re-election
in 2003 after a fifth-finish scare in the preliminary, using bullet-votes
by supporters to ease comfortably to victory.
Bullet-voting means a voter uses just one of his multiple choices
on a ballot in order to maximize the vote’s impact for the
desired candidate.
With hard-charging candidacies this year by well-funded challengers,
Arroyo’s camp is wary of diluting its vote by supporting
any competitors, even those, like Yoon, with a claim on progressive
credentials and the mantle of Mel King’s Rainbow Coalition.
Citywide council challengers this year include two children of
former Boston mayors — Patricia White and Eddie Flynn —
and John Connolly, the son of a former secretary of state. The
line-up also includes two electoral veterans of color, Althea
Garrison and Roy Owens, who appear with near-annual regularity
on the ballot and with equal regularity in the losers’ column.
Bruce Bolling, in fact the only 1981 “Kevin Seven”
candidate to win election to the last term of the nine-member
citywide council, said a strong preliminary finish by Arroyo —
number two or three — would reduce pressure to bullet-vote
for the incumbent in the final. If a weaker finish by Arroyo resulted
in his supporters casting just one vote to help ensure victory
for the only Latino ever to serve citywide in Boston, “that
would potentially hurt Yoon,” said Bolling.
“If people go into the final election with the view that
I’m only going to vote for one candidate — and that’s
Felix — then that will reduce support for Sam. But ultimately
it’s up to Sam to show he has strength citywide and can
attract support from all quarters of the community,” added
the former councilor.
Yoon is aggressively promoting his liberal credentials on the
campaign trail, hoping to bolster support for his diversity bid
by attracting voters who approve of his calls for a return to
rent control, more school funding, and re-defining housing affordability
standards to reflect the wages of Boston families rather than
metropolitan-area incomes.
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