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    For Taiwanese Americans, Voting Back Home Takes More Than a Postage Stamp

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    Dual citizens are flying across the Pacific to participate in this weekend’s presidential election. Many of them are motivated by Taiwan-China tensions.They are some of the most determined voters in the world.Every four years, several thousand Taiwanese Americans book expensive plane tickets, pack their belongings and fly across the Pacific Ocean to cast ballots in Taiwan’s presidential election.Dual citizens can vote in Taiwan, with one catch: They cannot do so by mail.What once felt like a patriotic duty has taken on greater urgency in recent years as China has intensified military pressure on Taiwan and doubled down on threats to absorb the island by force if it deems necessary. The increasing tensions have become an additional flashpoint in U.S.-China relations.“Freedom and democracy are on the line,” said Leslie Lai, 42, who had traveled from her home in Oakland, Calif., to Taichung, a city in central Taiwan, where she spoke by phone ahead of Saturday’s election.For many first-generation Taiwanese Americans, the quadrennial journey back to Taiwan has become something of a diaspora tradition since 1996, when the island held its first democratic presidential elections. Ms. Lai said that as a child in upstate New York, she was always vaguely aware of the latest developments in Taiwanese politics and would watch her parents fly back themselves to participate in presidential elections.The desire to still vote in homeland elections speaks to the fluid identity that many immigrants embrace in an age of air travel and nonstop campaign updates through social media and streaming video. They are fully invested in their lives in America, including bracing for the monumental U.S. presidential election in November, yet retain a toehold overseas.Foun-Chung Fan, a retired physician from Livingston, N.J., flew to Taiwan for the election and headed to a rally for the Democratic Progressive Party on Thursday.Mike Kai Chen for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Michelle Wu Is Neither White Nor Male. She Was Elected Mayor of Boston.

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      BOSTON — Time to retire the tired old tropes about Brahmin swells, Irish ward heelers and the petty parochialism that for too long has defined this city on the national stage. A Taiwanese American woman from Chicago is about to become the mayor of Boston, a town that, until Tuesday, had elected only white men to that office.Michelle Wu defeated Annissa Essaibi George, a City Council colleague whose father is from Tunisia and mother was born to Polish parents in a German refugee camp.The election of Ms. Wu, a 36-year-old lawyer, represents a seismic shift to a political landscape in which “white” and “male” were prerequisites to be elected mayor since the position was established here in 1822. Ms. Wu will join at least 11 women (and possibly 13, depending on election results) as mayors of U.S. cities with a population of more than 400,000.Ms. Wu and Ms. Essaibi George, both Democrats, emerged in September as the top vote-getters in the nonpartisan preliminary election, which included not a single white man among the five candidates. By winning the runoff on Tuesday, Ms. Wu will succeed acting Mayor Kim Janey, who in March became the first Black Bostonian and first woman to occupy the position, after Marty Walsh stepped down to join the Biden administration as secretary of labor.It’s a long way from the Irish domination of the mayoralty that began in 1884 with the election of Hugh O’Brien, a native of County Cork. The office was held without interruption by men of Irish descent from 1930 to 1993, when Thomas Menino became the first Italian American to claim the job.That was almost 30 years ago, but like most caricatures of this city, the idea of Boston as more Irish than Guinness stout retains a stubborn hold on the national imagination. In fact, Boston has been a “majority minority” city since the turn of this century, when census figures first confirmed the percentage of non-Hispanic whites had dropped below 50 percent (to 49.5 percent). The latest census data shows the city becoming even more diverse, with the proportion of Asian, Hispanic and multiracial residents on the rise.That reality stands in stark contrast to images of Boston that are seared into memory — white women in house coats and hair curlers throwing rocks at school buses full of Black children, and a white teenage thug assaulting a Black lawyer with an American flag on City Hall Plaza during a demonstration against a federal court order to desegregate the public schools through busing. Those photographs are more than 40 years old, but their power to define the city as insular and racist remains undiminished.To be sure, the legacy of that era lives on in a school system abandoned by those opposed to integration, leaving behind a student population that today is only 14 percent white. Under Mayor Ray Flynn, control of the chronically underperforming schools shifted in 1991 from an elected school committee to a panel chosen by the mayor, a change many denounced as a move that disenfranchised minority parents. A nonbinding question on the city ballot Tuesday asked whether voters should again be allowed to elect its school committee, as voters do in every other city and town in Massachusetts (it looked poised to pass). Ms. Wu supports a hybrid model with a majority of the committee elected by voters and a number of experts appointed by the mayor.It is a measure of how much Boston has changed that Ms. Essaibi George, who grew up in the city’s Dorchester neighborhood and taught in the public schools, failed in her bid to brand the Chicago-born Ms. Wu as an outsider. Ms. Wu first came to Massachusetts to attend Harvard. A Suffolk University/Boston Globe/NBC 10 poll last month found that 59 percent of likely voters said it did not matter to them whether a candidate was Boston born and reared.The election of an Asian American woman will not erase the high cost of housing, the rise in crime or the racial disparities in education, wealth and medical outcomes that persist here, as they do in most major American cities. But Ms. Wu comes to the job with bold plans to address gentrification and climate change and to reform the police, many inspired by her former Harvard Law School professor and mentor, Senator Elizabeth Warren. Some of those ideas she cannot adopt unilaterally. Her proposal to reintroduce rent control, outlawed statewide by a ballot initiative in 1994, would require the approval of the State Legislature and Gov. Charlie Baker, who would most likely oppose it.And, for all the hype about the historic nature of this race — two women of color vying for mayor in a city whose politics have been long dominated by white men — public interest in the campaign was anemic at best. Many Bostonians sat out the election, with turnout not expected to top 30 percent of the city’s 442,000 registered voters.Ms. Wu should not be misled. Those stay-at-home voters will be paying close attention when she takes the oath of office in two weeks. Politics in Boston might just have gotten more diverse, but it is still this city’s favorite spectator sport.Eileen McNamara teaches journalism at Brandeis University. She won a Pulitzer Prize as a columnist for The Boston Globe.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      As Yang’s New York Ties Are Questioned, He Cites Anti-Asian Bias

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      Mr. Yang, who is seeking to make history as the city’s first Asian American mayor, says anti-Asian sentiment has crept into the campaign. Andrew Yang said that a New York Daily News cartoon played into anti-Asian stereotypes by characterizing him as a tourist.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesAndrew Yang, a son of Taiwanese immigrants and a leading candidate for mayor of New York City, took on issues of race and identity in extraordinarily personal terms on the campaign trail this week, seeking to reframe some criticisms of his candidacy as questions of his Americanness.Mr. Yang, a former presidential candidate, has in this race spoken out often and forcefully against a spike in anti-Asian violence that has alarmed many city residents.But his efforts to condemn anti-Asian racism entered a new phase this week, as he criticized unnamed opponents for questioning his New York credentials, while his typically private wife, Evelyn, appeared with him at a news conference to blast a cartoon that portrayed him as a tourist.The Yangs said the New York Daily News editorial cartoon played into anti-Asian stereotypes, and painted it as an example of subtle racism that had crept into the campaign.“It is not OK to use Andrew to make Asians the butt of racist jokes, especially during this time of unprecedented racial tension,” Ms. Yang said, her voice appearing to waver at times. “A time when Asians are being randomly attacked on our streets just because of how they look.”The joint news conference was called in part to denounce the cartoon, which the Daily News’s editorial board has defended, and in part to grapple with a spike in hate crimes and other attacks directed at Asian Americans. The Yangs spoke outside a subway stop in Queens on Tuesday, a day after a man of Asian descent had been pushed onto the tracks — one more incident in a string of violent assaults on Asian Americans across the city.The emotional appearance, which was later featured in part in a digital ad, also came as the mayoral race appears to be tightening in the final stretch. Mr. Yang, who repeated criticisms of the cartoon on CNN on Thursday, is seeking to make history as the city’s first Asian American mayor.From the beginning of his candidacy, Mr. Yang has banked on his ability to inspire significant turnout among Asian American voters, who have become an increasingly powerful force at the national level in recent campaigns.Even as Mr. Yang’s front-runner status has begun to slip in some recent polls, he has demonstrated growing traction with New York’s diverse Asian American community, landing the endorsement of Representative Grace Meng, the highest-ranking Asian American elected official in New York, earlier this month. And on Monday, State Senator John C. Liu of Queens, who has previously sounded skeptical of Mr. Yang, endorsed him, calling him “a bit our A.O.C.,” a reference to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.“It’s not easy to call out racism when it’s against you, because it’s not easy for anybody to cast themselves as the victim,” said Mr. Liu, who ran for mayor himself in 2013 and is known as a formidable surrogate and retail campaigner. “I’m very happy that he spoke out about it.”Mr. Yang, who was born in Schenectady, N.Y., and has lived in New York City for around 25 years, has faced vigorous scrutiny throughout the campaign over the depth of his civic ties to the city.His allies say that some of the mockery reinforces stereotypes that cast Asian Americans as outsiders — the “foreign tourist,” as Mr. Liu put it, as encapsulated in the cartoon. He has been ridiculed over his definition of a bodega and his knowledge of subway lines, and he sparked an incredulous online outcry after citing Times Square, near his Hell’s Kitchen apartment, as his favorite subway station.But Mr. Yang has also drawn criticism over the extent of his knowledge of municipal government and of the city’s fabric — issues that have nothing to do with his identity, but are central to questions surrounding his ability to govern.Indeed, he has never voted for mayor of the city he hopes to lead, or worked in its government. Before running for mayor, he has said, he “almost certainly” had never visited one of the city’s public housing developments. He has struggled to navigate any number of policy questions, from details about police disciplinary records to queries about the subway system.And he has in many ways branded himself as a political outsider who can think outside the constraints of a byzantine city bureaucracy.Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou of Manhattan said that it was legitimate and vital to question a candidate’s experience, but that there are ways to do so without raising questions of “belonging.”“I know what my experience brings to the table when I’m talking about different policies — that, to me, is important,” said Ms. Niou, who had previously supported Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, but withdrew that endorsement and has not backed anyone else. “You can talk about inexperience, you can talk about someone who has very little background knowledge about a particular policy issue. To say somebody is not belonging here is a whole other thing.”Art Chang, the only other Asian American seeking the Democratic mayoral nomination, said that he shared Mr. Yang’s criticism of the cartoon — but he was skeptical of Mr. Yang’s approach to addressing it, suggesting that other issues, like pandemic recovery, were more urgent..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“It’s fine to make a comment about a particular cartoon, but does it deserve more than a tweet? I’m not sure,” said Mr. Chang, a long-shot candidate. “If it had the word ‘Chang’ on the front, I would not have reacted the same way.”During his Tuesday appearance, Mr. Yang appeared reluctant to name names when asked which of his opponents were, in his view, casting doubt on his ties to the city — though he left the unmistakable impression that some contenders were doing just that.“Saying something like, ‘Welcome to New York,’ I just chalked it up to politics,” Mr. Yang said. “But if you have a pattern, particularly in an era when Asians are being cast as foreign and even being victimized on the basis of their race, then it becomes impossible to ignore.”Chris Coffey, his co-campaign manager, indicated on Thursday that the remarks referenced Mr. Stringer and Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, who has surpassed Mr. Yang in some recent polls. Both men have sharply questioned Mr. Yang’s qualifications to lead the city — and certainly, he has a mixed record of success in the business and nonprofit worlds.They have also jabbed him over the time he spent outside of New York City during the pandemic with his family (“Can you imagine trying to have two kids on virtual school in a two-bedroom apartment?” Mr. Yang asked), with Tyrone Stevens, a Stringer spokesman, remarking at the time, “We welcome Andrew Yang to the mayor’s race — and to New York City.”Mr. Yang’s comments were “a rebuke of any candidate who has tried to make Andrew an ‘other,’ and the two people that come to mind, for me at least, are Scott and Eric,” Mr. Coffey said. “I should also point out, Maya Wiley has been the opposite of that.”Both the Adams and Stringer camps fired back on Thursday with vigorous criticism of Mr. Yang’s ability to navigate the city’s political landscape, without otherwise touching on his identity.“Andrew Yang never voted in a local election then fled the city at its darkest hour,” said Evan Thies, an Adams spokesman, accusing Mr. Yang of returning to run for mayor. “That’s what Eric and so many New Yorkers think disqualifies him in this election.”Mr. Stevens said Mr. Yang has shown “ignorance of basic facts and issues.”“There has been a legitimate question from Day 1 of Mr. Yang’s candidacy, whether someone who’s never demonstrated any connection to the city’s civic life should be elected as its mayor,” he said. “To suggest my statement spoke to anything else is beyond disingenuous.”Mr. Liu, the state senator, said that there is “tremendous support” for Mr. Yang among Asian American voters — but he questioned the idea that voters felt particularly protective of him following the cartoon incident.“I don’t think voters tend to be defensive of candidates,” he said. Still, he went on, “The message we’ve all tried to project is, speak out, don’t be silent. It would have been, frankly, terrible if he didn’t speak out.” More