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Tapping new voters in city races
Candidates make appeals to naturalized citizens
By Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff | July 12, 2005

Surrounded by paintings of Revolutionary War battles and military flags in a Faneuil Hall meeting room, Mayor Thomas M. Menino held forth before a group of several dozen new citizens listening attentively as they sat on wooden benches.

The mayor told them of services his administration offers -- language translation, help with Medicare, biweekly legal clinics -- and described how his grandparents came to the United States from a village in southern Italy.

Reading from notecards, Menino quoted a speech by former Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis on ''True Americanism," made 90 years before in that same hall.

''Judge Brandeis recognized the unique spirit of American democracy, that we embrace our newcomers from all over the world and afford them the right to liberty, equality, and opportunity in our city," Menino said. He nodded toward a voter registration table in the back of the hall. ''One of the things you have the right to do now is vote."

Aides say the event had nothing to do with politics. But with an election coming, the mayor, City Council members, and the candidates challenging them this November are finding ways to lavish attention on immigrants, who now account for 1 in 4 city residents. Some of the highest voter turnout increases in recent elections have been in neighborhoods where immigrants have settled, and candidates from West Roxbury to South Boston are appearing on Vietnamese television shows, translating their websites into Chinese and Korean and Cape Verdean Creole, speaking at Haitian churches, and planning ad campaigns on Latino radio.

''The city is now a majority-minority city, and it's transformed itself primarily through immigration," said Angel H. Bermudez, senior director for grant-making and special projects at the Boston Foundation, which has funded efforts to increase minority voter turnout. ''The political capital of these communities of color as a whole and the respective immigrant communities is growing."

Several recent campaigns have proved that forging strong ties to immigrant communities helps win citywide races, candidates said. In a special election in the spring, Linda Dorcena Forry, a Haitian-American, won the legislative seat vacated by House speaker Thomas M. Finneran. Andrea Cabral trounced Councilor Stephen J. Murphy to become Suffolk County's first black sheriff last year. And Councilor Felix Arroyo, the city's first Latino councilor, edged out Patricia White, the daughter of former mayor Kevin White, in the at-large race in 2003. (Last month, White announced that she would again seek an at-large seat.)

''To anyone running citywide, if you don't reach out to new voters, particularly immigrants who have become voters, you're not going to be successful," said John Connolly of West Roxbury, who is running for an at-large City Council seat and has been visiting churches such as Temple Salem, a Seventh Day Adventist Church in Dorchester with a predominantly Haitian congregation, where his remarks to the congregation were translated into Haitian Creole.

A number of immigrants said in interviews that they have noticed campaign signs popping up in their neighborhoods. But many added that most candidates have not yet succeeded in reaching them in any but the most superficial ways. Several said they aren't sure which candidates are running for which offices, nor were they certain of the positions of the contenders.

''I don't know which one is good and which one is bad," said An Nguyen, who was working behind the counter at Fields Corner Bakery on a recent day. The 40-year-old Vietnamese immigrant became a US citizen in the early 1990s.

Still, he said, the bloom of campaign signs in shops along Dorchester Avenue has caught his interest, and, for the first time this year, he may vote in a citywide race.

At-large candidate Sam Yoon, an immigrant who came from Korea as a young child, is making his story a central theme of his campaign. He has made his headquarters near Fields Corner, which is heavily populated by immigrants from Vietnam, Cape Verde, and a host of other countries, and he has placed campaign signs in the windows of many businesses there. He has translated parts of his website into Chinese, Korean, and Spanish and is working to add Vietnamese, Haitian Creole, and Cape Verdean Creole.

Nineteen-year-old Lisa Mei, who works at Yum Yum Chinese Restaurant on Dorchester Avenue, likes Yoon's message.

''As an immigrant, he knows what we go through; it's happened to him, too," she said. ''Coming to a new country, knowing nothing about a whole new world, speaking a whole new language. He knows what immigrants need."

Her uncle, John Chan, 42, is waiting to hear more about the other candidates.

''Usually it's what the candidates stand for, what their issues are, not just what their names are and what is their nationality," he said. ''I have no idea what they stand for."

Hilda Salazar, 56, a mail clerk at Ropes & Gray who lives in East Boston and who emigrated from El Salvador 21 years ago, also said she knows little about the council candidates. However, she reads the campaign fliers she gets in the mail and tries to keep up with local news. Salazar has attended English classes for years and now speaks the language well. She said many Hispanic immigrants in her neighborhood do not learn English. Consequently, they lack information about, and interest in, voting, she said.

''They come in here and they work, work, work; that's all," she said. ''It's very important if they don't want to go to school to give them information in their language."

Salazar, who attended the mayor's Faneuil Hall event, said she was inclined to support Menino for reelection. She said she is frustrated by parking problems and crime in her neighborhood, but the fact that the mayor indicated that he cared about immigrants' issues scored enough points for a probable