David Oh, after years as a rare Republican in City Hall, will lead Asian American Chamber of Commerce

Councilman-at-large David Oh speaks during a 2019 news conference announcing a Music Industry Task Force to help grow the industry in Philadelphia. His new job will focus on finding businesses/employers for Philadelphia.

David Oh, the last Republican elected to an at-large seat on Philadelphia City Council and the party’s candidate against now-Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, starts Monday as president and CEO of the Asian American Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia.

Oh, 63, was an attorney in private practice, an Army lieutenant, a prosecutor, and politically active at the state and city level before he was elected to Council in 2011. At the chamber, he succeeds Khine Zaw Arthur, who recently located to Texas. It’s a full-time job, though Oh says he plans to also consult on the side.

The former Council member, whose unusual coalition of supporters included members of the many immigrant small-business groups he aided, agreed to answer questions about his role, past and future. His remarks have been edited for space and clarity.

Why the chamber job?

I ran for mayor. I lost. I have four kids, and I want to build a better future for my family. Now what do I do?

I haven’t been in the job market since I left the Army [in 1992]. The good news is, work has become a lot more flexible. It used to be you had to accommodate your life to the job. Now, there is a lot more work you can do from home or the office, long or short hours, so long as you get what you need done. That was always the way for salespeople and creative types. Now more of us can design our own way.

From before I was in office, I have tried to attract jobs and investment to the city, traveling to Korea and other countries and meeting with senior officials at companies like Hyundai, urging them to consider opening facilities and employing people here. But honestly, there isn’t much support for that in Philadelphia.

The Asian American Chamber provides an opportunity to help the city’s economy and to inform people here on what’s going on overseas that allows for a level of interfacing with immigrant communities, including companies that want to invest and employ people here. The chamber is really good for making those connections.

You and Helen Gym were the two Council members of East Asian descent. With you both off Council, who is taking up your causes?

As you know, we had different focuses. The good news for her constituents, there are still progressives on Council, dealing with the issues she championed.

Not a lot of politicians — Republican, Democrat, progressive, right-wing — seem to care about small-businesspeople or anyone outside their fold. Our system is focused on helping people you know will vote for you. Poor people — African American, Caucasian, Latino, Asian — the perception is they don’t vote.

But I saw that people who might not vote today will vote tomorrow. That’s how it was with the Irish and the Italians and the African Americans. And now there’s a lot of Southeast Asians, Central Asians, Central Americans, West Africans who don’t vote today, but they will vote tomorrow. They are focused on their neighborhoods, on public safety and public transportation and public education. In office, I reached out to these people. I don’t think anyone is now representing them.

When the Sixers unveiled downtown arena plans in 2022, and Comcast and some in Chinatown mobilized against it, you urged study and engagement. When you ran for mayor, you came out against it. What changed?

My first response was: “I don’t live in Chinatown. I don’t have a business there. I’m not in a [Chinese American] association. I think you who are should talk to the people directly involved.” And they did have meetings where they heard from both the Sixers and from Comcast Spectacor.

But, unfortunately, they got divided before they could really get a process going. Groups got courted by both sides. It became racial. The arena supporters promised African Americans jobs and contracts, then they started adding promises for Asians. And it became political: Chinatown was a rallying point [in the Democratic mayoral primary]. Groups that formed to support Helen Gym would say, ‘It’s racist to support an arena.’

But there were important questions: Would this bring in luxury housing? Would it price people out? Would there be traffic congestion? Would it affect the hospitals? Finally, I said, “It’s the responsibility of the people supporting it to show how it’s good for the city. Why are you announcing this before you have a detailed plan?”

And we need to evaluate Chinatown. Chinatowns don’t last forever. There was a division in the Asian community over the George Floyd protests, a portion of pro-Black Lives Matter Asians were going through the community saying things like ‘Asians have white privilege.’ I found that problematic. This is an immigrant-dominated group, people who work hard because it’s all they have. And then we had COVID and people who wanted to associate Chinese people with COVID.

Is the new Chinatown in Northeast Philly?

The Chinese people on Cottman Avenue and up in Mayfair predominantly didn’t come here directly from China. A lot of them came here from New York when they retired. They are selling their houses in Brooklyn and Queens for $800,000 and buying homes in the Northeast for $150,000, and they can save the rest to live. They have Chinese businesses right in their new neighborhoods without going to Chinatown, except maybe for a special event.

But Chinatown is still an economic engine. You need new immigrants to own and work in the restaurants. And you need tourists and visitors from outside the city. You need a continuous influx of people, or you end up like Little Italy in New York City, which has shrunk to one block, because the restaurant owners’ kids succeeded as doctors and lawyers and didn’t have to work in restaurants anymore.

We don’t have good conditions to keep this going right now. And I don’t see how the arena will help bring new immigrants in.

Before you were in Council, you worked with the city to get Korea-based Rotem to build a railcar plant in South Philly. But SEPTA decided later to buy railcars from a China-based company, so the Rotem plant closed. Why did the city let this big industrial employer go?

I was grateful we got [Council members including] Mark Squilla and Curtis Jones to say we have to retain our train manufacturer because of the economic impact on our city. It was not enough. Later I tried to get another Korean manufacturer, TSI, to go into that plant to make sliding doors for advertising, but SEPTA refused that, too.

We needed more political support. Too often colleagues would say a big employer “was never gonna leave.” If you take them for granted, if you don’t take their complaints seriously, we will keep losing industry. I don’t know why there are so many agendas we allow to get in the way of this obvious problem: our lack of good jobs and tax revenues.

©2024 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.