As a divisive five-way Democratic primary played out in Flushing this past summer, Republican candidate Peter Koo remained quietly above the fray.
That approach appears to be bearing some fruit. In a campaign where all the candidates talked about uniting the ethnically divided district but few ran their primary campaigns that way, Koo comes to the general election with a clean slate.
In recent weeks, some influential Democrats have thrown their support to Koo, a Flushing businessman who has already put $205,000 of personal money into his campaign and who, like Chou, is Chinese-American.
Isaac Sasson, a Sephardic Jewish leader who placed a close third in the primary, has crossed party lines and endorsed Koo. In part, the decision appears motivated by events during the primary.
Last spring, Chou sparked controversy when her campaign stated in a Chinese language newspaper that, according to one translation, “voting for Peter Koo in the General Election instead of voting in [the] Democratic Primary Election is equivalent to indirectly giving the throne to the Jews,” appearing to allude to Sasson.
Chou’s campaign manager, Michael Olmeda, attributed the divisive sound of the statement to translation issues between Chinese and English.
But Terence Park, an influential Democratic leader in the Korean-American community, remains unconvinced. He is also supporting Koo.
“I’m a diehard Democrat and I will be for the rest of my life. But this race is between a competent candidate versus an incompetent candidate,” Park said. “Yen Chou is not seen in the community as a good woman—and that is spreading around the Chinese community like wildfire.”
Koo has also picked up the endorsements of Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani.
He will need all the support he can get. In some ways, Chou’s primary night victory offered the worst-case scenario for Koo. If another candidate had emerged from the five-way primary, Koo could have counted on a large number of Chinese-American votes. That appears unlikely, however, with him running against another first-generation Chinese- American immigrant.
He now must pull votes from Democrats in the Korean-American, the Jewish and the African-American communities.
“He’s counting on his reputation as an honest, hard working guy,” said Koo’s campaign spokesman, James McClelland.
Koo first learned the difficulties of running as a Republican in New York City when, during his 2008 State Senate run, Democratic Sen. Toby Stavisky defeated him by 38 points. But Koo is hoping the ties he has developed over decades in Flushing will help him overcome his Republican label. Chou, meanwhile, only moved to the district last year, though she had long lived before that in neighboring Bayside.
Chou, a former aide to Council Member David Weprin, raised a whopping $355,000 during the primary, though she spent most of it and has only $66,000 on hand.
Since the primary, she has picked up most of the institutional support from the Queens Democratic Party and the Working Families Party. Notably, the WFP helped edge S.J. Jung, the party’s candidate in the primary, out of a general election challenge against Koo, fearing that an active campaign on the WFP line could split the liberal vote.
Olmeda, Chou’s campaign manager, said that Koo was a formidable candidate—and one who appeared mainly hindered by party label.
“The joke in the community is that Peter Koo is in the wrong party,” Olmeda said. “If Peter Koo was a Democrat, I think he would have been elected a long time ago.”
cbragg@cityhallnews.com
Alex_Koo
