‘The Question for Me Is Why Those Funds Were Ever Accepted’

Republican WESLEY RU is a top fund-raiser for many candidates, including California Governor Pete Wilson. The owner of Western Badge & Trophy Co., Ru bought the L.A. company for $50,000 in 1985 when it had 15 employees; it is now a multimillion-dollar firm employing several hundred workers. He is active in many community organizations and has sought innovative ways to reduce racial and ethnic frictions.

Most of his political fund-raising work has been with Asian American contributors. Here he discusses with TRIN YARBOROUGH the fallout within this group from the Asian donation problems in the Democratic Party.

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I have always been a competitor, not a spectator. If I sit in the stands watching a game, I start to get itchy. I want to participate. And that’s how I feel about the political process in America.

My family came here from Taiwan when I was 11, and I believe that if someone is going to be a part of this country, they need to get involved. A lot of people whine and complain about how things are, but they don’t get involved in changing them.

There’s an Asian saying that “the taller the tree, the more wind it attracts.” It means that too much attention can bring trouble along with it. I think this belief was reinforced, at least temporarily, among Asian Americans who followed the problems that arose when the Democratic Party recently accepted, then returned, several very large financial contributions from Asian donors. They were donors who lived not in America, as required by law, but in their own foreign countries. I feel sorry for any politician holding a fund-raising event to raise money from Asian Americans since then, because right now only a few might show up.

But the real question for me is why those contributions were ever accepted in the first place. Because everyone who has been even slightly involved in political fund-raising--which presumably includes those on the Democratic Party committee--knows it’s common to reject all kinds of contributions. That includes donations that may be totally legal but which could give the appearance of being improper. Why didn’t the party officials who accepted the donations explain to the foreign donors that they couldn’t take their money?

When the story broke, it was given a lot of attention. There’s an unfortunate perception that Asians are a strange, demonic people who go around performing Kung Fu and acting like Charlie Chan. We are guilty until proven guilty. And unlike many groups in America, we Asians don’t have strong organizations to defend us in the court of public opinion. That means we often just take abuse and don’t complain. You don’t see us marching or rioting--in that sense, we are seen as a so-called model minority.

When Asians and other immigrants become citizens and start to participate, there has to be an educational process so they can learn how to participate the proper way. For instance, in businesses a manager may have many loyal, intelligent employees who have lost their desire to participate in that business because over the years their input was downplayed and disregarded. The manager needs to rekindle that desire. He also needs to bring in new people with new ideas to contribute. And those new people have to learn the basic policies and operating ways of the company. It’s management’s job to teach them those things as they go through a period of adjustment.

Most new citizens want to participate, but remember, they are usually just average folks, not professional politicans. Mainstream America has to show them how to dot all the I’s and cross the Ts. Actually, this is true not only for new citizens, but for many Americans who don’t know a lot about our political process and laws even though their ancestors may have come over on the Mayflower.

Remember, too, the uniqueness of America. With all its faults, it’s still the best country in the world. It’s a country where you don’t have to be part of an elite inner circle or a member of a powerful family to succeed in business or become a major political leader. What other country lets immigrants come in and have the same rights and opportunities as native-born citizens? And although America has some corruption, it’s not the accepted norm as it is in many countries. Moreover, political change can come about peacefully here, without violence, coups, assassinations, military clashes and imprisonment, banishment or even death for those who take the losing political side. Many immigrants come from such systems and when they arrive here they are still afraid. They are not sure how things work. They do not trust the government or politics.

Both of my parents came from well-to-do families in China, but when the communists took over the country all their property was confiscated and they fled to Taiwan, where I was born. We were not wealthy, but we lived comfortably. Yet when we first came to the United States we were so poor that I was embarrassed to have friends come to our house. At night we looked for furniture discarded on curbs to furnish our house. My mother took a job as cashier in a car wash, and my father took three jobs--bank clerk by day, dishwasher by night and janitor on weekends.

I looked around for Asian role models. The only Asian politician then was California State Sen. Al Song, whose son was a school friend of mine and who once showed me around the state Capitol. It was the beginning of my involvement in politics.

So we Asian Americans are here to stay. Like me, many are more American than Asian. The kids are eating hot dogs and wearing jeans, educated in American schools to think like Americans. Their generation is much less likely to take a back seat and keep quiet. As Asian Americans understand our need to participate in the political process, you can be certain we will not be left out.

Maybe as we become more active we won’t seem such a model minority anymore. Yet I am certain that our increased participation will turn out to be a real asset for America.