1st Cambodian American mayor in U.S. takes office

BOSTON — A exile who survived the Khmer Rouge’s brutal regularisation has go the archetypal Cambodian American politician successful the United States.

Sokhary Chau, a metropolis councilor successful Lowell, Massachusetts, was unanimously picked by his assembly peers to presume the legislative body’s apical station connected Monday. He besides became the city’s archetypal Asian American mayor.

“God bless America, right? I was a refugee, present I’m politician of a large metropolis successful Massachusetts,” the 49-year-old, who works for the U.S. Social Security Administration, said aft being officially sworn in. “I don’t cognize if that could hap anyplace other successful the world. I’m inactive trying to sorb it.”

Chau, successful his inaugural remarks, reflected connected his family’s perilous flight from Cambodia and the erstwhile concern metropolis of Lowell’s heavy migrant roots.

Located connected the Merrimack River adjacent the New Hampshire authorities line, Lowell was an aboriginal halfway of America’s textile industry, drafting waves of European and Latin American immigrants implicit generations.

Today, the metropolis of much than 115,000 residents is astir 25% Asian and location to the nation’s second-largest Cambodian community.

“As a arrogant Cambodian American, I americium lasting connected the shoulders of galore immigrants who came earlier maine to physique this city,” Chau said Monday earlier a assemblage that included his woman and 2 teenage sons.

Chau recounted however his father, a skipper successful the Cambodian army, was executed by the communist Khmer Rouge successful 1975 during the country’s civilian war.

He said his mother, who died past year, managed to support her 7 children live for 4 years, surviving “landmines, jungles, hunger, sickness and uncertainty” to present them safely to the U.S.

Chau said America whitethorn not person “streets paved with gold” arsenic his household imagined portion surviving successful exile camps, but it’s a onshore wherever ideology is imaginable due to the fact that of “systems of checks and balances” and principles similar fairness, equality and transparency.

In an interrogation later, Chau said helium was astir 9 years aged erstwhile his household initially settled successful Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with the assistance of the Catholic Church — an acquisition that prompted the household to person to Christianity.

They made their mode to Lowell’s increasing Cambodian assemblage successful the mid-1980s, wherever immoderate of his older siblings instantly acceptable to enactment successful section factories.

Chau, however, continued his studies and yet earned a assistance to Phillips Academy, a exclusive boarding schoolhouse successful adjacent Andover. He went connected to Macalester College successful St. Paul, Minnesota, wherever helium studied economics and governmental science, besides connected a scholarship.

Before moving for office, Chau said helium worked mostly successful fiscal services, including moving a owe lending institution successful Lowell with his woman earlier the lodging marketplace crashed successful the aboriginal 2000s.

Chau’s predetermination follows the ascendance of caller Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan. She was sworn successful past November arsenic Boston’s archetypal pistillate and archetypal idiosyncratic of colour elected to the post.

Chau is besides among the increasing database of Cambodian American officeholders successful Massachusetts: astatine slightest 2 different metropolis councilors, a schoolhouse committee subordinate and 2 authorities lawmakers, each from Lowell, according to Vannak Theng, president of the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association of Greater Lowell.

But portion Cambodian Americans served connected section boards and authorities legislatures nationwide, nary were elected mayor, according to the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies, a Washington nonprofit that helps Asian Pacific Americans prosecute nationalist bureau and maintains a listing of existent officeholders.

In fact, Long Beach, California, location to the nation’s largest Cambodian community, lone elected its archetypal Cambodian American metropolis councilor successful 2020, the enactment noted.

Chau’s predetermination besides comes connected the heels of a national tribunal suit that argued Lowell’s predetermination process violated the voting rights of number residents, who comprise astir 50% of its population.

A caller colony successful the lawsuit prompted the metropolis to alteration its predetermination process, starting with the 2021 elections. The effect was the city’s astir divers people of officeholders, said Oren Sellstrom, litigation manager astatine Lawyers for Civil Rights, a Boston radical that brought the 2017 suit.

“Just 4 years ago, the city’s elected officials were each achromatic and mostly unresponsive to the needs of the city’s communities of color,” Sellstrom said. “This historical alteration successful the city’s powerfulness operation would ne'er person been imaginable nether the aged electoral system.”

To beryllium sure, the mayoral bureau successful Lowell is mostly ceremonial.

The city, astir 30 miles (50 kilometers) northbound of Boston, is tally by a metropolis manager picked by the council. The politician is efficaciously the assembly president, starring its meetings and besides serving arsenic seat of the city’s schoolhouse committee.

Still, Chau acknowledged his election’s value to the wider Cambodian diaspora, calling connected others to measurement up successful their communities.

“We tin nary longer beryllium conscionable victims,” helium said arsenic helium closed his inaugural remarks. “It is our clip present to beryllium leaders and to succeed.”