Congratulations Jean Quan

Thanks to the new ranked choice voting system Jean Quan pulled out a surprising victory to become the first female, first Asian-American, and first Asian-American female (kinda follows?) mayor of my other hometown, Oakland.

Nice job at the campaign, now the hard part begins.

The San Francisco Chronicle puts it into perspective...

As Oakland, California's next mayor, Jean Quan makes history and, in a sense, completes a Chinese American/Asian American political journey begun 99 years ago.

On November 8, 1911, two Oakland Chinese American women, Clara Lee and Emma Tom Leung, made American political history. They were the first two women of their race to register to vote in the United States. They did that in Oakland, where almost a century later, Jean Quan will become the first Chinese American/Asian American woman mayor.

That's a pretty big deal in a racial and gender historical context. From the time the first large numbers of Chinese came to America during the California Gold Rush of the late 1840s and early 1850s through World War II, Chinese Americans and other Asian Americans had almost no political presence, let alone clout, in Oakland, San Francisco or pretty much anywhere else in the United States. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and subsequent anti-Asian legislation, basically denied most Asian Americans citizenship, and thus voting rights.