By Chris Fuchs
Several candidates for the city council seat in Flushing and the city comptroller, who is running for mayor, have criticized Councilwoman Julia Harrison (D-Flushing) for derogatory comments she reportedly made last week about Asian Americans seeking political office.
Harrison, a member of the Council since 1985, made the remarks to a reporter for WNYC radio March 9 at the end of a City Hall hearing on term limits, The New York Post reported. In 1996, the councilwoman had made similar comments in a New York Times interview, in which she referred to the surge in the Asian population of downtown Flushing as “an invasion, not an assimilation.”
In the remarks she made earlier this month, Harrison, who cannot run again for the City Council because of term limits, said Asian Americans were trying to “buy the council seat with the money they have to spend,” according to the Post. The newspaper also reported that Harrison said: “What is this supposed to say to me when you say leaders of the Asian community have been waiting for years? They’re not citizens. They’re not registered. They don’t vote when they are registered.”
In a telephone interview last Thursday, Harrison said, “For the record, I have no comment.”
Over the last month, a movement to repeal two referendums that limit the number of terms an elected official can serve in city government has intensified. Harrison is one of the 22 council members who were in favor of such a repeal, which was killed by a council subcommittee a week after she made the comments about Asians.
In telephone interviews last Thursday, several candidates running for Harrison’s seat, the 20th Council District in Flushing, seemed unsurprised by her remarks, but expressed concern about her effectiveness as a councilwoman in a district that is comprised largely of Asian Americans.
“She’s a very straightforward person,” said Ethel Chen, one of the Asian-American candidates. “She says what she likes to say, but that shows she can’t represent the community.”
Adrian Joyce, the former chairman of Community Board 7, who announced his candidacy last week for City Council, said Harrison should offer up evidence to support the comments she made.
“As a constituent in the district, I find it insulting that somebody could believe that the council seat could be bought,” he said. “I don’t think so, and I believe people in the district are intelligent enough to know that.”
John Liu, an Asian American who has raised more money than any other council candidate in the city, said: “I don’t think I have very many comments to those kinds of remarks. I don’t think those kinds of comments really deserve some kind of response. I think people are smart enough to know what is true and what is not.”
City Comptroller Alan Hevesi, who is running for mayor, was the only elected official to issue a press release about Harrison’s remarks.
“Elected officials in the most ethnically diverse city in the world must build relationships with immigrant communities, not break them down,” he said. “We have a responsibility to ensure that New York’s communities, in all their diversity, feel included and have trusting relationships with their leaders in government.”
The New York Times’ piece on Harrison in 1996 centered on the expanding influence of Asian Americans in Flushing as they were attempting to elect the first Asian American to political office. In the interview, Harrison called Asian immigrants “criminal smugglers” and said she could not tell whether her constituents were Korean Americans or Chinese Americans.
“They did not come because of a potato famine or because some czar was conducting a pogrom,” The Times quoted her as saying. “They were more like colonizers than immigrants. They sure as hell had a lot of money and they sure as hell knew how to buy property and jack up the rents of retail shops, and drive people out.”
Reach reporter Chris Fuchs by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 156.
