<Begin Segment 8>

SY: And then, but there was one other race in between where you ran for state senate.

GN: That was in '94.

SY: '94, and can you talk a little bit about that?

GN: Well, in '92 Katy Geissert, who was the mayor at that time, had asked me to run for mayor and I decided to run for mayor, and so we started making preparations for that a couple years in advance. But then I was approached by Asians about running for the state senate seat that was held by Ralph Dills. And what happened was his senate district, half of it was totally new because of reapportionment, and usually when an incumbent loses his seat it's because of reapportionment because fifty percent or higher the district is not the original district. It's a whole new district.

SY: And was this the reapportionment plan that you had put forward?

GN: No, because that's the senate district.

SY: Oh, I see. I'm sorry.

GN: I didn't deal with the senate.

SY: That's right. This was the assembly district.

GN: I only dealt with it from the aspect that two assembly districts made up the senate district, and so our assembly district was not combined with the... well, let me take it back. The district that we were, we dealt with was the fifty-first district in order to reunite Torrance, and that fifty-first assembly district was not part of the senate district. It was another assembly district that was a part of it.

SY: I see. So the state senate seat was, the incumbent was, you were running basically against an incumbent when you decided to run.

GN: Yes, yes.

SY: And what was the result of that? What happened as a result of that election? Or how can, how do you characterize that election?

GN: Well that, that election, of course he spent well over a million dollars, but being an incumbent you could raise that kind of money. I raised about, perhaps about two hundred and, two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars at that time. And then one of the things that we did notice that happened is that all of our campaign materials was going out of the Long Beach post office, and normally those campaign materials will be in a bag with a red tag that says political and so they have a priority, and we weren't getting, the mails weren't coming out. So we had our staff go check at the post office and they found that the, all the tags had been taken off, and so to this day we think it was an inside job and so our mail didn't start coming out until about three weeks before the election. A lot of it was just two weeks before. Whereas his mail had been already coming out in abundance from about five weeks, six weeks before.

SY: So just to back up a tiny bit, so Venice, I mean the Torrance city council, you were, then you went back to serving? You were still within your term, term limit?

GN: Yes, I was still in the middle of my term when I ran in '94, yes.

SY: Ran for state senate. And just to talk a little bit more in general about the city of Torrance, does, was it, did you find that it was, because it was predominately Caucasian, was there a tone in the city council that was kind of not as conducive to minorities being there in the city? Or did you feel that it was...

GN: Well, city council as a whole, I didn't get that impression. But there was one councilwoman, when, well, when Katy Geissert was the mayor she had asked me to see, we were in the process of building the Torrance Cultural Arts Center and we had funding for all the buildings. We got donations, for example, for the community hall from Toyota, we got funding for the plaza, and the only thing that was not funded was the Japanese garden. So the mayor at that time had asked me if I would be willing to reach out to some business to see if they would be willing to donate toward the Japanese garden, and I already had a relationship with the, Mr. Kawai, who's the executive VP of Epson computer 'cause I had invited him to, like the kendo tournament, and he donated computer to the kendo federation. He also, Epson also donated a computer to the Gardena Valley JACL. So I took him out to lunch and had a rendering of the cultural arts center and a little blank spot where the Japanese garden is supposed to be, and I asked him if Epson might be interested in undertaking the cost of the Japanese garden. And he said, well, he'll be going to Japan in a couple of weeks and he'll be seeing the president of Seiko watch company, and he said the Seiko watch is the parent company of Epson computer, and so he'll be talking to the president then and he'll, he said he'll propose that to him. And it was about, probably about two months later, we got a letter from Epson computer saying that they will undertake the cost of developing the Japanese garden but they would like to pick the landscape architect, but they will make sure that the landscape architect works closely with the main architect so everything would blend in. And it was Takeo Uesugi they picked.

SY: That's a very well-known architect.

GN: And so that's how it happened. And so when we got that letter the mayor asked me to make an announcement at the city council meeting, so I started to make the announcement and this councilwoman interrupts my speech and says, "I don't have anything like that to announce." And I paused momentarily, ignored her, and went on to make my speech. And it was at a budget workshop, I was approached by one of the staff persons from the city manager's office, telling me that the tape did not come out where I made my announcement. And I knew that was a flat out lie, but the thought occurred to me, should I make a big issue out of this or just ignore the whole thing? I decided, hey, I'm the first minority to get elected to the city council, kind of did it on my own. I wasn't part of any coalition. And so maybe it's best to just not make a big issue, so I didn't. And she had asked me, the person from the city manager's office, if I would repeat my announcement at a subsequent council meeting, which I did.

SY: That's nice.

GN: But I should have also realized at that time that this was a result of jealousy, and jealousy has a tendency to manifest into hatred. And so when this woman became mayor she also saw, showed another side of her. When she would describe Asians she would slant her eyes physically, and she's done that on two different occasions. And then in the closed session, in a fit of anger, she makes an anti-Semitic statement. So answering your question, that's the only incident -- and now what has happened is that the city manager who is still there is still trying to cover this up.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.