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Korean vote adds up for Petersen
According to State Sen.-elect Chap Petersen (D), probably the main reason he won on Election Day was that he personally knocked on about 20,000 doors in Annandale, Fairfax City, Vienna and other parts of the 34th District to ask voters for their support face to face.
Another reason is the support he received from the Korean-American community, with which Petersen has close ties through his marriage to his wife Sharon, a Korean American.
Petersen, who is a lawyer, a former Fairfax City councilman, and a former state delegate who ran for lieutenant governor in 2005, said his campaign targeted about 3,500 Korean-American voters, many of whom he estimates helped him defeat incumbent Republican Sen. Jeannemarie Devolites Davis by more than 5,000 votes.
The unofficial vote tally was 25,513 or about 55 percent for Petersen and 20,490 or about 44 percent for Devolites Davis.
U.S. census figures from 2000 indicate that about 66,000 Korean Americans reside in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Some estimate the number is much higher. Fairfax County statistics show that about 25,500 county residents say they speak the Korean language at home.
“All good politicians try to be accessible to different groups,” Petersen said during an interview with The Times on Nov. 14. “I spoke to Pakistani groups. I spoke to Vietnamese groups. I was at the Islamic-American picnic. I try and speak to all groups but with the Koreans it's different because there is a very strong family connection. So that's unique.”
Korean-American voters, especially in polling precincts that are part of Fairfax County's Braddock District, to the south of Fairfax City, are believed to have come out in force for Petersen.
“Now I have to look at the numbers, but if you look at my numbers down in the Braddock District, for example, Laurel precinct, which was carried by [President George] Bush, we won it by 260 votes,” Petersen said. “A major factor in that was definitely the Korean vote coming out for us.”
Out of the 3,500 Korean Americans his campaign targeted, Petersen said, “I can't assume they all voted for me, but it's fair to assume probably 5-to-1 they did. It's a significant voting block.”
Korean Americans also constituted a major base of Petersen's financial support, especially early on in the campaign when contributions were harder to come by. Combined, the two candidates spent more than $2 million on their races.
“They were huge financially,” Petersen said. “I would say the Korean-American business community, many of whom I represent as an attorney, probably [contributed] in the neighborhood of $100,000 for me. That's a nice chunk of change, and we were very happy to get it.”
As voters, Korean Americans, Petersen said, are “highly independent” when it comes to their political affiliations.
“I would say five years ago, highly Republican, but now maybe leaning Democratic. It's very candidate-specific,” Petersen said. “I don't doubt that a lot of people who voted for me voted for Tom Davis, maybe even George Bush. So it's a community that's really up for grabs.”
In life, as well as in business and in politics, Korean Americans, he said, also place a high value on personal loyalty and family connections.
“For me, it's not just the fact that my wife's Korean, but I have a very deep client base that's Korean,” Petersen said. "I speak a little bit of Korean and I'm sort of very familiar in the Korean church network.”
“You know, you put all those things together and that's a good community for me,” he said.
Although the Petersen campaign conducted outreach in other ethnic and religious communities, probably the most sustained and critical to the coverall vote outcome was to Korean Americans, Petersen said.
To help him bring out the Korean-American vote, Petersen employed two 23-year-old part-time staffers, Julia Kim and Janice Park, to head his campaign's outreach to the Korean-American community.
Jeff Ahn, president of the Woodbridge-based Virginia chapter of the League of Korean Americans, introduced Petersen to the women, both of whom are McLean residents and graduates of Langley High School.
Kim is currently studying for her bachelor’s degree in economics with a minor in the Korean language at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., while Park works as an English language instructor having graduated from George Mason University with a bachelor's in history and a minor in English.
Both headed the operation of a Korean-language phone bank for the campaign. Using a script written by Kim, volunteers manning the phone bank told potential voters about Petersen and his run for state senate. Voters were identified by their Korean-sounding last names compiled from previous election data.
“Mostly they were very receptive because someone reached out to speak to them in their native language," said Park describing some of the feedback received.
The two also helped plan campaign advertising for Petersen on the local Korean AM radio station and cable TV station, plus in two Korean newspapers.
"What we would do was bounce our ideas off of him,” Kim said, noting that Petersen was very open to the suggestions offered for the campaign ads.
"Rather than make the advertisement about me, I made it about my father-in-law,” Petersen said. "In Korean culture, it's a little bit boastful to talk about yourself."
The message in the TV and radio spots was that Petersen is an advocate for children and the elderly, as well as business people, like his father-in-law Duk Kyu Kim, of whom the ads said escaped from communist North Korea to eventually settle in Fairfax County to run his own business and raise a family.
"Chap really did a good job finding out what the Korean people stand for," Kim said.
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