SACRAMENTO, California—Shielded from the cold by a long coat, Kevin Johnson was waving to motorists and greeting the lunchtime crowd on L Street astride the Capitol last Monday.
Smiling his Colgate smile, he was shaking the hands of passersby and requesting everyone who cared to stop to “stand up for Sacramento tomorrow, please vote.”
As I held his hand in a firm grip, I mentioned Filipino boxing champion Manny Pacquiao, who I explained was a sports demigod in the Philippines and an aspiring politician like him.
“What will you tell Manny, who has a lot of Filipino American followers in Sacramento about running for public office?” I asked.
Either my question stumped him momentarily or he did not realize who Manny was.
“Shoot me an e-mail, will you?” he replied and handed me a business card with his electronic address.
My e-mail to Kevin@kevinjohnsonformayor.com has been left unanswered.
But I can forgive Johnson for not responding. He has a full plate ahead of him.
Blessed by basketball royalty and backed by voters of his hometown, Johnson the former Phoenix Suns All Star guard and possible Hall of Famer won convincingly as Sacramento’s first African-American mayor last Tuesday.
During a victory speech watched on TV by yours truly and other political junkies late Tuesday, Kevin likened himself to Barack Obama, saying that both campaigned on a platform of change.
“No more business as usual,” he told his supporters.
After the city’s most expensive mayoral race ever, the 42-year-old Johnson, who was born and raised in Sacramento’s tough Oak Park, neighborhood defeated two-term incumbent Heather Fargo.
He carried 57 percent of the vote and Fargo had nearly 42 percent.
Johnson broached to voters the idea of turning Sacramento, the capital of the eighth largest economy in the world, into a major tourist destination.
He is dying to make his hometown spoken in the same breath as Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Fargo, like defeated Republican presidential candidate John McCain emphasized to voters that Kevin was naïve and inexperienced.
But in the end, after a campaign that saw the likes of cage icons Magic Johnson, Shaquile O’Neal and Charles Barkley punctuating his campaign, Johnson prevented Fargo from pulling another Darlene Antonino Custodio.
In case you have been hiding under a rock, Darlene is the diminutive but strong-willed Cotabato woman who knocked out Pacquiao the first time he entered the political arena not too long ago.
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Another former basketball player, Mufi Hannemann was re-elected mayor of Filipino-vote rich Honolulu, Hawaii.
Barkley, a former teammate of Johnson’s is planning to run for governor in his home state of Alabama in 2010.
Meanwhile, a boxer like Pacquiao had a tough time, politically in New York.
Joe Mesi failed in his political debut, losing a bid for a legislative seat in New York. Mesi who as a heavyweight had a 36-0 record lost in his attempt to win a state Senate seat to Republican Michael Ranzenhofer.
