Tag: Sam Yoon

Boston’s First and Only Asian City Councilor Announces Run for Mayor

By M. Thang, EthnicNEWz.org
Boston Herald)

Yoon and children Nathan and Mimi. (Photo: Boston Herald)

Two-term Boston City Councilor Sam Yoon — the only Asian on the council of 13 elected members — announced his bid to run for mayor Sunday.

His announcement ends years of speculation that he would eventually run for the city’s top job. In an interview with Sampan newspaper in October of 2005, shortly after he won his first preliminary election for city councilor, the Korean-born Yoon demurred on answering if he’d like to run for mayor, replying “I’m going to take things one step at a time.”

More recently, the Boston Globe — which yesterday announced Yoon’s entry into the mayoral race — ran a story just five days ago, about his out-of-state fundraising as a “potential” candidate for mayor.

Yoon’s candidacy comes during a time when the racial composition of the city — and consequently the Boston electorate — has been changing. Earlier in the decade, Boston became a “majority-minority” city, with minorities making up more than half of the city’s population of roughly 589,000, according to the 2000 Census.

At the same time, Felix Arroyo, a native of Puerto Rico, became Boston’s first Latino city councilor, joining African American incumbents Charles Yancey and Chuck Turner on the council before Yoon’s first election in 2005.

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