Election of Muslims a start to changing GOP's
image
04-17-05 15:04
JOHN BIEMER
DuPage party aims for more diversity
No one would mistake a gathering of DuPage County
Republicans for the United Nations, but the party took a significant
step last week toward shaking its image as a party dominated by "old
white-haired men" when Moin Moon Khan and Esin Busche were elected
township trustees.
Party officials say as far as they can
tell, Khan, an Indian-born longtime Chicago-area activist who works
as a computer network administrator, and Busche, a Turkish-born
chemist, are the first Muslim Republicans elected to public office
anywhere in the state--and a symbol of the party's new outreach
effort in a rapidly diversifying county.
"This is a small
office, and for me it may be a very small individual achievement,"
said Khan. "However, I think it's a giant milestone for the minority
communities in general and the Muslim American community in
particular."
Rasheed Ahmed, coordinator of the Illinois
Muslim Political Coordinating Council, also called their elections
"an important milestone," but noted that there are hundreds of
thousands of Muslims in Illinois--and an estimated 6 million to 8
million across the United States.
"It's only natural," he
said. "I'm not surprised. One could say perhaps that it's even
late."
Khan, who lives in Lombard, won a York Township
trustee seat last week with 12.6 percent of the vote. He finished
last out of the four Republicans elected trustee, beating out Bob
Wagner, who came closest of four Democratic trustee candidates with
11.8 percent of the vote.
Busche, who lives in Naperville,
was elected Naperville Township trustee last week with 17.9 percent
of the vote--also last among four Republicans elected to that
office, but five points ahead of the closest Democrat.
Republicans won every one of the 72 township offices on the
DuPage ballot in last week's municipal election, so having the
support of such a well-entrenched political organization didn't
hurt. Both Khan and Busche served as GOP committeemen for a handful
of years before making their runs.
Muslims don't tend to
naturally gravitate to either party, Ahmed said, because there are
parts of both the Democratic and Republican positions that appeal to
them.
But Khan pledged as a candidate to reach out to a
variety of immigrants that he says make up a sizable chunk of the
tax base in his district, although they are underrepresented in
government. That message resonated beyond the Muslim community--but
so did Khan's decades of work for such organizations as the DuPage
Minority Caucus, the Asian American Institute and the Council of
Islamic Organizations in Illinois.
"I've seen him as a
person who's concerned with the welfare of people and such," said
Shanker Pillai, president of the Hindu Chinmaya Mission in Hinsdale.
"And in this time of religious and social animosities developing,
he's stood beyond those barriers."
Asian populations in
DuPage County have skyrocketed in recent years--growing by 80
percent from 1990 to 2000. As of 2000, Asians made up 7.9 percent of
the suburban county, according to the U.S. Census, almost as much as
the even faster growing Hispanic community--another group wooed by
both political parties.
DuPage Democratic Party Chairwoman
Gayl Ferraro said her party also has tried to tap into the
intensifying political activity of Asian immigrants in recent years.
She points to Chodri Khokhar, chair of the Bloomingdale Township
Democrats--a Muslim Pakistani immigrant.
"We always welcome
everybody into our party; we're very diverse," Ferraro said. "I'm
kind of colorblind when it comes to all that stuff."
Republican officials concede that the GOP did not do a great
job in the past of reaching out to new communities. But Paul Hinds,
chairman of the York Township Republican Party, said the time has
come for the party to better reflect the constituency.
"We
get pegged too much as 70-year-old white-haired men. That's a
stereotype we always have to work against," he said. "That's not
what we are."
Still, there were risks involved. Khan
acknowledges that Hinds may have displeased some party loyalists
when he pushed Khan to run for the post.
And party leaders
questioned how voters would receive the candidates--noting that
their vote counts did lag behind other Republican office-seekers.
"I'm not going to kid anyone," said state Sen. Kirk Dillard
(R-Hinsdale), chairman of the DuPage County GOP. "I was worried that
someone named Moon Khan would lose to someone named Susan O'Brien or
Robert Wagner. But if Barack Obama could win, Moon Khan should
clearly win, and he did."
"I know my name was quite
different from other people," Busche said in agreement. "But I tried
to introduce myself to people in my community. I guess people, once
they get to know you, the name doesn't play any part."
|
