The mayoral runoff saw the biggest effort to turn out the Chinese vote for victorious Willie Brown -- and it worked, reports PNS editor Rene Ciria-Cruz. He is also the executive editor of NCMonline.com, a multi-ethnic news media website.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Mayor Willie Brown's landslide victory in San Francisco's Dec. 14 runoff elections is widely credited to his all-out bid for moderate and conservative voters. But far more fruitful than this "shot-gun" marriage of liberal black Democrat and white Republicans , says David Lee, executive director of the Chinese American Voter Education Committee, was Brown's courtship of the Chinese American vote.

Brown decisively trounced Ammiano in the heavily Chinese neighborhoods of Sunset (73 percent-27 percent), Richmond (64-36), Visitation Valley (88-12), West of Twin Peaks (76-24) and Chinatown (64-34), according to San Francisco Department of Elections tallies.

"This is an historic election for the Chinese community," declared Lee, a close observer of the city's political trends. "After 150 years of civic and political marginalization, Chinese Americans can no longer be discounted by any politician. This election has changed that. Chinese voters are finally at the political table."

Brown and his supporters spent heavily for it. "We saw the largest soft money expenditure in history to turn out the Chinese vote," said Lee. Business and community groups, he said, targeted 25,000 Chinese absentee voters, and 12,000 turned out. "Brown had a 3 to 1 showing over Ammiano in absentee voting," he added.

Lee said a CAVEC turnout poll also showed a 10-15 percent turnout in the heavily Chinese neighborhoods of the city. By contrast, Board of Supervisor President Tom Ammiano's "grass-roots mobilization of disaffected young voters" didn't materialize in his core areas.

A federal court injunction earlier this year against spending caps on soft-money allowed Brown supporters "to independently spend as much as they wanted," said Lee. This allowed Brown to stay within his spending limit but still reach his targets.

While Brown spent about $3 million for his re-election, San Francisco Common Cause estimated that independent committees set up by business and political groups may have spent as much as $2 million.

"Ammiano was hit by a tidal wave of soft money spending on TV ads, targeted mailings, ethnic media buys targeting gay and Chinese communities and hammered home the image of Ammiano as a tax-and-spend candidate," said Lee.

"In the end, Ammiano's integrity issue failed, and pocketbook issues outweighed character issues in the decision of moderates and conservatives who went for Brown," Lee added.

The Ammiano campaign also appeared to have given up on outreach to new voting bases in key ethnic communities, due perhaps to thinned out resources. Lee estimated that while Ammiano spent $250,000 on his campaign, soft-money spending on his behalf may have amounted to only $8,000-$9,000.

Brown, by contrast, never stopped "working" the ethnic voters, particularly Chinese Americans. He met with publishers and editors of ethnic media a number of times and even "prayed for victory" in a Chinese temple. Ammiano, meanwhile, seemed ill at ease at a large meeting of ethnic journalists arranged by New California Media.

"Ammiano made the classic mistake of not reaching out to ethnic communities," agreed Davey D, talk radio host and deejay at KMEL, northern California's biggest hip-hop radio station.

"We had to pull teeth to get a mere 15 minutes with him, he didn't show up for our morning show," Davey D added. "And we're the number one station in a prime market, targeting his potential voters -- the 18 to 24 age range. Willie Brown wanted to spend as much time as he could with us." Ammiano "has to mend fences because a lot is expected of him," he said.

Agreeing with the observation, Lee said that Brown has built a "new coalition" with the Chinese American community. "Whether anybody other than Brown can sustain this coalition for future political campaigns is an open question," he said.