In Glendale city elections, Armenians are everywhere

Activists focus on raising turnout

Seek to avoid splitting the vote

by Vincent Lima

Published: Friday March 27, 2009

The offices of the Armenian National Committee of Glendale PAC are abuzz with volunteer activity, while other volunteers are out canvassing voters door to door.

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Glendale, Calif. - Voters in Glendale and other California communities will go to the polls on Tuesday, April 7, to elect municipal leaders, school board members, and other officials. Armenian-Americans are among the voters assessing the platforms and qualifications of the various candidates, including numerous Armenian-American incumbents and hopefuls.

For Elen Asatryan, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of Glendale Political Action Committee, a priority is to get out the vote. Ms. Asatryan notes that Glendale has some 200,000 residents, 40 percent of whom are of Armenian descent. Of these 80,000 Armenian-Americans, some 27,000 are registered to vote. Only 9,200 Armenian-Americans actually voted last time, she says. Her goal is to raise that number to 14,000 this year.

With the help of 200 volunteers, she is reaching out. "Take someone who registered in 1999, for example, voted once, and never voted again. They're eligible to vote, registered to vote, but they're not voting. A lot of the campaigns just go for people who are high-propensity voters. But we're making an effort to reach everyone who's eligible to vote," Ms. Asatryan says.

One focus of the volunteers, as they canvass and phone bank, is to make sure voters vote successfully. Some people sign an application for an absentee ballot and think they have already voted, Ms. Asatryan sighs. Others, in the past, have mailed in their sample ballots instead of a proper absentee ballot. Ms. Asatryan's team is working to reduce the number of such incidents among Armenian-American voters.

It is a familiar American story: an ethnic group with a high proportion of recent immigrants is becoming attuned to the U.S. electoral system.

"Rafi Manoukian was the reason I got involved," says Ms. Asatryan, looking back 10 years. Mr. Manoukian was a member of Glendale City Council for eight years and served as mayor. He is now running for city treasurer. "I was about 15-16 years old," recounts Ms. Asatryan, whose family is from Armenia. "He came to recruit people from the Armenian Club. I was Armenian Club president at Hoover High School. I started volunteering. Because I was volunteering, ANC made me ‘Youth Activist of the Year.' It gave me an award. So that's how I found out about ANC. Then I worked on several campaigns after that, not just on a volunteer basis."

City Council election

Twelve candidates, including seven Armenian-Americans, are running for three seats on Glendale City Council.

How are Armenian-Americans to choose? In the last election cycle, the large number of Armenian-American candidates split the Armenian-American vote, and the number of Armenian-Americans on the City Council actually declined.

The ANCG-PAC has endorsed Ara Najarian and Bob Yousefian, both Armenian-American incumbents. They "are the ones that are very likely to get elected," Ms. Asatryan says. For the third seat, the organization has not made an endorsement. If three candidates had been endorsed, people with a favorite unendorsed candidate would split their vote different ways, increasing the chance that no endorsed candidate would get elected.

The ANCG-PAC's choice of Mr. Najarian and Mr. Yousefian was not dictated by the relatively high likelihood that they would win reelection, Ms. Asatryan says. She describes the vetting process.

The organization submitted background information forms to all the candidates running for City Council and other offices. After studying the responses they met with all the candidates.

For City Council, "we talked about the city's budget, the current economic status, the absence of parks in South Glendale, affordable housing, staff diversity, cultural sensitivity within the staff, and community outreach, as well as issues within the Police Department and the Fire Department, and the lack of Armenians there," Ms. Asatryan says.

She notes, for example, that only two of 280 firefights are Armenian-Americans.

School Board

Among the candidates for three seats on the School Board are two Armenian-Americans. But the ANCG-PAC has endorsed one, Eric Sahakian (see profile), and Christine Walters. For the third seat, again, it has not endorsed anyone.

The other Armenian-American candidate, Greg Krikorian, a native of Hartford, Conn., has not won the support of the ANCG-PAC - notwithstanding a background of active participation in the Armenian Youth Federation. He told the Armenian Reporter that the burden is on the Armenian National Committee to explain why it chose a non-Armenian over him. He suggested that adversity between the school board and the teachers' union may be a factor in the ANC's choice.

Ms. Asatryan said Mr. Krikorian "has done a lot when it comes to the Armenian Genocide," and was not willing to criticize Mr. Krikorian directly. She preferred to focus instead on the reasons her organization threw its weight behind Mr. Sahakian and Ms. Walters.

In their interviews, Mr. Sahakian and Ms. Walters raised the very issues the ANCG-PAC was focused on for the Glendale schools: staff diversity and promotion; active outreach to immigrant parents in their native language to help their children succeed at school; and efforts to track the collective progress of Armenian-American students so that strengths and weaknesses can be identified and addressed.

Other offices

Four candidates are running for three seats on the Glendale Community College Board of Trustees. The ANCG-PAC has endorsed Armine Hacopian, Anita Quinonez Gabrielian, and Ann Ransford. An Armenian-American candidate, Vrej Agajanian, did not receive the committee's nod. Mr. Agajanian has run more than once for City Council, without success.