A Rising Wave of Fil-Am Women Mayors
/In the wake of the election of Kamala Harris, the first-ever woman, Black, and Asian Vice President of the United States, Filipina Americans made waves in local government, outnumbering their male counterparts as city heads in California.
Unique in their individual ways, they share a common heritage and face parallel challenges.
Embracing Sisterhood
Sierra Madre Mayor Rachelle Arizmendi is pumped up to preserve her town's fiscal solvency and pay her success forward.
"We should do something to memorialize our sisterhood," exults Rachelle Sumagaysay Pastor Arizmendi over the number of Fil-Am women city executives, as she starts her second turn as Mayor of Sierra Madre in Los Angeles County.
Carmel-born Arizmendi reflects a minute fraction, or 3.7 percent, of her town's 11,000 residents, which is 82 percent white, according to statistics she finds sobering.
"Not only am I the first Fil-Am woman, but I’m also the first person of color to be elected to the City Council of Sierra Madre. Nevertheless, my primary responsibility is to my constituents that elected me to represent them,” she says, before debunking the fabled crab mentality on which older predecessors blame their failed political forays.
"I do recognize the role I have as Filipina American," Arizmendi discloses a self-imposed responsibility: "With Filipinos being the largest Asian group in California, we need to see more Fil-Ams in elected offices and leadership roles. I hope to serve as a role model and a support to the Asian Pacific Islander American community, to other people of color, and to any young person that hopes to be a public servant."
But first she touts the fiscal solvency of her town, which she attributed to "fiscal discipline,” something she sees as carrying over through 2021. Meeting the goal requires the engagement of the entire community, she said, "given the impact of both the pandemic and the wildfires of this past year."
Sierra Madre may be a small municipality, but it has its own police and fire departments. What it doesn't have are traffic lights or a major grocery chain. Or crime, which gives folks confidence to walk their dogs late in the evening in the three-mile area that its leader proudly says "houses the seven horticultural wonders of the world (and) - the 125+ year-old wisteria vine that weighs over 250 tons and has 1.5 million blossoms."
"It’s a place where you feel like you’ve stepped back in time--that’s also why so many movies and TV shows are filmed here," says Arizmendi, who has a BS in nutrition and food science and a BA in psychology from San Diego State and an MS in family and consumer science and nutrition from Eastern Illinois University.
Arizmendi is vice president & chief operating officer of PACE -- Pacific Asian Consortium in Employment, a nonprofit community development corporation born in 1976 with a grant from the City of Los Angeles to provide job training and placement services. PACE responds to issues of poverty and economic inequity in minority, ethnic, and immigrant communities, a seedbed for future leaders like her.
"The success in my career is due to the mentors and pioneers who took the time to help nurture people like me. My hope is to continue building and supporting a pipeline of the next generation of leaders in both the Filipino community and the community-at-large," she acknowledges.
Community Advocate
Los Gatos Mayor Marico Sayoc dedicates herself to environment and social justice issues.
Los Gatos Mayor Marico Sayoc, too, internalizes the significance of her position, even echoing VP Harris' victory quip about pulling up more women of color.
"I am always surprised by how many people are shocked by my presence on the Town Council," she bares to Positively Filipino. "As the first Fil-Am woman and the first woman of color (Council member), I am proud to show the next generation of children that local government can look like me. I am careful to look at all policy issues through a racial equity and inclusiveness lens and I look to mentoring many younger people so that I am not going to be the last Fil-Am woman on the Council."
Caucasians make up 73% of Los Gatos' 30,000 residents, says Sayoc, who notes the percentage as higher than most cities in Santa Clara.
Sayoc was born in the U.S. Naval Base in Okinawa where her father was in the service. Hers was a linear path to the present; she earned a BS in environmental science from UC Berkeley and a master’s in environmental management from Duke. She worked with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and then immersed herself in the field with a stint at the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Mental health is another issue foremost to Sayoc. She heads a nonprofit called CASSY –Counseling and Support Services for Youth, which collaborates with schools to provide free resources and professional, on-campus, mental health services to students.
She threw her proverbial hat in the political ring to make a lasting impact on her city.
"I have always been a community advocate dedicated to making positive impacts on social and environmental justice issues,'' she explains. Her first campaign in 2014 was to "ensure that the issues I was working on as a community volunteer became codified in town policy."
The youngest elected to govern Los Gatos, where housing and the cost of living are higher than the national average, sees a better year ahead.
"I am hopeful that under a Biden administration we will have a national Covid strategy that will expedite testing and vaccinations across the country," she says, expecting that the executive leadership’s "understanding (that) our words and actions are a model for others, (so) we can begin to heal from the (country’s) social divisions."
She vows to support her town through the pandemic "with minimum loss of human lives and business” and aims to effect "changes to institutional policies that lead to systemic racism in government."
The social unrest has strengthened her resolve to be proactive from her higher platform.
“As a civil servant and as a human being, I need to call out bullying and intimidation immediately and loudly. I have always tried to work behind the scenes and with a polite veil and 2020 made me realize that sometimes, one just needs to call BS loudly and strongly to jolt a conversation forward."
Resolutely Resilient
Daly City Mayor Juslyn Manalo has been mayor twice in five years since she became the first Fil-Am woman elected to the City Council of Daly City.
Though home to the highest concentration of Filipinos per capita on the U.S. mainland, no Fil-Am woman had been elected to the City Council of Daly City until housing advocate Juslyn Manalo won in 2016. Hours after she swore in, the City Council voted her vice mayor. In 2018 Manalo became Daly City's first Fil-Am woman mayor and then again in 2020.
While finding solutions to curb Covid-19 cases, Mayor Manalo lists her top priorities as "Igniting the Small Business Commission to aid in the horizon of recovery and introducing social justice and equity initiatives with staff and residents such as Ethnic Studies for Residents and implicit bias training for all staff."
She underscores "agility" and "adaptation" in the manifold crises, being a member of the "Sandwich Generation," or the sector caring both for their parents and their nuclear family. Manalo became a mother for the second time with the birth of daughter, Juselle, within days from her second mayoral oath-taking.
"Life teaches you to pivot and trust God, do your best and hope this all will pass," she tells Positively Filipino how she rolls with the changes demanded by each situation.
She believes that being the first Fil-Am woman mayor of her town assigns her the duty to answer the "intertwining needs of our 'kababayan' and the whole community at large," reminding constituents she is "an email or message away."
Manalo also presides over the Filipino American Democratic Club of San Mateo County. Last year she led food drives and the Census outreach in her city. She recognizes mentors and allies as mostly her peers on the City Council and fellow elected and appointed officials.
Hopeful for Healing
Colma Mayor Diana Colvin is hopeful for recovery from last year’s adversities.
Colma Mayor Diana Colvin, the second Fil-Am woman on her City Council with four-time Mayor Joanne del Rosario, also gives props to predecessors and her cohort.
"I have had the privilege of working with many experienced and trusted colleagues whom I credit as having mentored me," she tells PF. "We share the same principles and common goals of serving our constituents, face many of the same challenges and issues, and seek resolution through which a sharing of ideas can often lead to solutions.”
This isn't Colvin's first rodeo, as earliest purveyors of her worksite - the state-owned Cow Palace Arena & Event Center in Daly City where she is Rental and Operations Officer - might have put it.
Colvin has called Colma home for some 43 years since her family moved to the mainland from Honolulu, her birthplace. Colvin received her early education and began community service in perhaps one of the smallest towns in California with 1,302 residents in 2019 per the U.S. Census.
She had been volunteering with the Colma Historical Association and North Peninsula Emergency Food Pantry in Daly City, activities that boosted her candidacy for an open seat on the Colma City Council in 2008. Colvin served out the remaining seven months of the vacated post and won her election the following race. Her colleagues elected her mayor in 2010.
Contemplating 2021 makes Colvin flex her entrepreneurial muscles.
"My top priorities focus on recovery and rebuilding of our local economy, strengthening our fiscal health, continued support and assistance to our business community at-large and ensuring that the needs of our residents continue to be met," she says, bullish about recovery for specific reasons.
She hopes "that the long-awaited COVID-19 vaccines will live up to our expectations in battling the virus and bringing this pandemic to an end," and for the new administration to "succeed in bringing about the critical changes needed for America to heal, restoring the fundamental values and principles of democracy, renewing our faith in humanity and the human spirit, and suppression of the mounting division that has taken place across our nation."
In hindsight, she considers the past year's adversities as opportunities to "reflect and redefine my role as a civil servant with an even stronger sense of compassion, humility and commitment to those I serve."
The pandemic reinforced her obligation to family, "knowing our time for reuniting and celebration will come again and will be all the more cherished" after physical separation.
Double Representation
West Covina Mayor Letty Lopez-Viado is the first-known Filipina Mexican American town Mayor.
Elected in 2018, newly installed West Covina Mayor Letty Lopez Viado is the first known Filipino Mexican American to head the town where Hispanics make up almost half of the 106,000 residents, followed by Asians who comprise nearly a third. PF was unable to contact Lopez Viado at press time.
The West Covina website states among her goals as public safety and promoting local business with a balanced budget and community engagement. She holds a master's degree in communication studies from Cal State Los Angeles and works for the City of Los Angeles, Department of Recreation & Parks.
MORE WINNERS
In last year’s reorganization, City Councils elected their second in command: Vallejo Vice Mayor Rozzana Verder Aliga, Alameda Vice Mayor Malia Vella and Artesia Mayor Pro Tem Melissa Ramoso. Their male counterparts are Vice Mayors Rod Daus - Magbual (Daly City) and Mark Nagales (South San Francisco).
No known Fil-Am woman has been voted Mayor by the general electorate. The honor went to new San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, who identifies as part-Native American and part-Filipino.
Newly elected to their City Councils are Minnesotan Nikki Villavicencio (Maplewood), Californians Gina Dawson (Lafayette), Evelyn Chua (Milpitas) and their male counterparts Alex Griffin (Hercules) and Eric Arias (Bakersfield), and Hawaiians Radiant Cordero and Auggie Tulba (Honolulu).
Cherie Querol Moreno
San Francisco Bay Area-based Cherie M. Querol Moreno learned empathy, courage and responsibility from her journalist parents. The Positively Filipino and Inquirer.net correspondent is executive editor of Philippine News Today.
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