<Begin Segment 11>

SY: So how were you able to work in the social issues that you were -- or maybe we should back up and say, what were some of the things that you consider to be major accomplishments in the state assembly? What were some of the things that you would, you would look back and say you were able to do as a state assemblyman?

GN: I think on a, well, for one thing, I supported, you said social issue, the first one that I had to deal with, of course, was the AB 222, which had to do with prohibiting discriminating against gay and lesbian students in public school. And I remember distinctly, here's an issue that I haven't even dealt with before so you really don't know politically how it would affect you depending on which way you voted on it, and so my first thought was that it would be negative for me given the spread that they had on the local newspaper. They did it twice, just demonizing me, and then demonstrating in front of my district office with these mothers with their babies in the stroller. And it turns out that I wasn't the only one that was subjected to this. There were nine other Democrats that were subjected to this, mostly the minority Democrats. But many of them were in the safe seats. Here I'm representing the seat that has only a three percent advantage and, but I also felt strongly that I had to take a position in support of the bill. When I came out of camp I had to deal with kids that would use racial slurs at me and I would get into fights. I was not one that would back down. And so I felt very strong about supporting it. I didn't think any gay or lesbian students, or even someone that appears like one, should be subjected to harassment or beatings. And so the day of the bill going before the -- well, by the way, I voted in the, voted for the education committee, and the degree of the harassment that took place by the far right on this was just horrendous. I got, I would say, a total of nine thousand phone calls combined, both at the district office and the Sacramento office, against this bill, but I would say probably ninety-five percent of the calls came out of out of the district, and they probably called the eight other Democrats as well. It was at a very organized event, so when the bill got to the assembly it was two-thirty in the morning still going on with the debate. I spoke up and I made a very strong speech in support of it, and I condemned the people who were against it as being a bunch of cowards, that they had not even had the courtesy to call me and sit down and talk to me, that they had already projected me as evil by putting my photograph in the newspaper demonizing me. And I told 'em I was gonna do the right thing. And so finally that bill came to a vote, four o'clock in the morning, and it didn't pass. It was short one vote. But then another bill came from the senate, I think a few days later, and it had enough votes to pass. So that was a major social issue that I had to deal with.

But there were three other things that I can think of, the social aspect. One is the creation of the Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus, after we had three Asians in the state legislature. I mean, there's a lot more now, but that caucus has a force that people will reckon with, and we're talking about whether it's the media, broadcasting station, people who engage in racial slurs against the Asians. They'll hear from this legislative caucus, and not only that, but the caucus will also contact the lobbyists who represent these businesses and they could be hurt politically. If there's an issue that has to do with, budgetary issue or financial issue that will have an impact on those businesses, you have a caucus that could vote as a block and also have influence in other, black caucuses as well as the Latino caucus. It's gonna have an impact on them.

SY: How did that actually come about, that API legislative caucus? Were there, there were other groups that had their own...

GN: Well. Latino and African, the black caucus already existed.

SY: And so it was sort of your independent that you came up with the idea?

GN: I was just waiting to have enough Asians in the legislature before I could do this. And so what happened was in the year 2000, November election, here I am, the only one from the previous...

SY: Term?

GN: Term. And what happened was Wilma Chan and Carol Lu got elected. So the first thing I did -- and this was in, this was in December -- what they do is they have a big dinner the night before the swearing in ceremony in December. It's always the first Monday in December they have the swearing in ceremony. The funny part is that first Monday in December was December 7th, but we had this dinner on the sixth, okay, and Herzberg was the speaker, so I approached Bob Herzberg, I said, "Bob, we have three Asians now. I would like to create the API legislative caucus." He says sure, and he said, oh, gave me a hundred thousand dollar budget for it. So that's how that happened.

SY: Wow. So it was the, it... and what was your relationship with Herzberg at the time? Were you close?

GN: Oh yeah, very, very close. In fact, what usually happens is that when the person is representing a very marginal seat they will assign somebody, if they could, from the leadership position to be your mentor, and so he chose himself to be my mentor when I was running. So as my mentor he's gonna help me in terms of advising me on politics as well as helping me raise money.

SY: Wow. That was very fortunate.

GN: Oh yeah.

SY: Yeah. So he obviously took a liking to you.

GN: But he wasn't the speaker at that time. It was, Antonio Vergosa was the speaker. He became my mentor when I first ran.

SY: I see.

GN: But then, so I served that one term, and year 2000 now, he became the speaker and so I approached him about the API legislative caucus. And then the other two things that, subsequent to that, is the commission that we created for the API, and the important part of that commission is that they will go to the different API communities in California and hold hearings to find out what are some of the issues, what are some of the problems that the legislature needs to deal with, and so it provides a forum for people to participate, whether it's the Hmongs or the Vietnamese, all the API groups.

SY: And there were similar commissions in other ethnic groups as well on that --

GN: No.

SY: Yours was the first.

GN: The first.

SY: And how did that come about? Why did you decide to take that on?

GN: Well, and this commission was actually suggested by Diane Yuiji -- She was working with APACON -- and also Warren Furutani was also involved in this. And Warren, I think, at that time was working for the speaker, I think as a staff person.

SY: So they approached you?

GN: Yeah, they approached our office about doing this, and so I had this bill and I had funding in it, and it was right around the time when the state started to have some budget problems, right in the beginning. And so I had the Democratic support, but I didn't have the Republican support yet, so I started polling them and they said that they're concerned with it because the money involved, and so I decided on my own I'm gonna strip all the money out of it and just have the bill as a commission. And so what the commission would have to do is raise their own money, and because I didn't want this bill to go to Governor Davis with just a Democratic support 'cause you don't know for sure what he'll do with it. If he vetoes it, then you miss that opportunity. And then also the thought that, okay, we're beginning to have this budget problem. That may last a long time. So I stripped it all out, told my staff I'm gonna strip it out and I want to take this on the floor without the money, so then I approached those Republicans again. I said, "There's no money attached to it at all," so they all supported it. So that's how I got it through.

SY: Very clever. That's great. So then, as a result of that then the other ethnic groups, did they --

GN: Well, once they saw that API commission was in operation then the other groups wanted to have their commission too. But now, when they created the bill, the Republicans says that you have to have language in there that this is going to be a bipartisan commission. Well, for the African Americans, or the black caucus, they don't have a single black Republican, and the Latinos, it was such a handful of maybe one or two Latino Republicans, so they don't want that kind of language in there so they didn't pursue it.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.