APIAVote News Bulletin
President-Elect Barack Obama Nominates General Eric Shinseki to Lead Veterans Affairs
After serving as the 34th Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 1999 to 2003, General Eric Shinseki was nominated yesterday by President-Elect Obama to serve as the 7th United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs. General Shinseki, who was born and raised in Hawaii, is a graduate of West Point Academy and served two combat tours in Vietnam, where he was awarded two Purple Hearts and three Bronze Stars.
General Shinseki is the first Asian- American to become a four-star general in the U.S. Army and the first to serve as Army Chief of Staff. General Shinseki retired in June 2003 after 38 years in the Army. He has a distinguished career as a military leader who is a "soldier's soldier" and is remembered for his candid assessment in 2003 securing where he stated that Iraq would require several hundred thousand soldiers - a fact disputed then by senior Department of Defense officials. General Shinseki has been active as the spokesman for the Go For Broke Foundation and remains active in the Japanese American Veterans Association (JAVA). APIAVote applauds his nomination and has full confidence in his ability to serve the men and women who have defended our great nation.
President Elect Obama has also named three Asian Americans to top White House Postions
Peter Rouse, White House Senior Adviser to the President
Peter M. Rouse, Chief of Staff to Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), served as chief of staff to members of the United States Congress for more than thirty years. Before joining Senator Obama in December 2004, he was chief of staff to former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD). He also served a s chief of staff to Rep. Dick Durbin (1984/85) and Lt. Governor Terry Miller of Alaska (1979-83).
Mr. Rouse, as Sen. Obama's chief of staff, was part of a small group of advisors who helped Sen. Obama through the process that led to his decision to run for president in 2008. Mr. Rouse received a BA from Colby College, a MA from the London School of Economics, and a MPA from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Chris Lu, White House Cabinet Secretary
Chris Lu is the Cabinet Secretary-designate for President-elect Barack Obama's White House staff. Lu served as Barack Obama's legislative director in his Senate office during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign. He is now the executive director of the Obama-Biden Transition Project. As cabinet secretary, he will serve as the liaison between the White House and the heads of executive departments.
Lu is the son of Eileen and Chien-Yang Lu, both of whom were undergraduate students in the U.S. from Taiwan during the 1960's. He was born in New Jersey and raised in Maryland. Lu graduated from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University in 1988, where he was the senior news editor of the Daily Princetonian, and later attended Harvard Law School, where he was one of Obama's classmates. He began his career as a clerk for the Honorable Robert E. Cowen of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (1991-1992), and then worked as a litigation attorney at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C. (1992-1997). He then served as deputy counsel to Rep. Henry A. Waxman on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of the House of Representatives and was an adviser to Senator John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign before being hired by Obama.
Christina Tchen, White House Office of Public Liaison
Christina M. Tchen is a litigator and the White House Director-designate of Public Liaison chosen by Barack Obama. Tchen also serves several boards for organization involved in public legal and social policy: the Chicago Bar Foundation; Board of Field Foundation of Illinois(chair), Chicago Public Library (trustee) and the Chinese American Service League.
Tchen has served on the Judicial Nominations Commission for the Northern District of Illinois and has served in several leadership positions with the American Bar Association Section of Litigation.
Tchen has broad litigation experience at all levels of the state and federal courts. She has represented companies, officers and directors in shareholder class and derivative actions, and she has also handled a wide range of commercial, intellectual property, and employment-related litigation. Tchen also has represented public agencies in state and federal class actions, including the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, the Illinois Department of Public Aid and the Chicago Housing Authority.
First Vietnamese American to Congress
Anh "Joseph" Quang Cao is a New Orleans lawyer and the new Republican U.S. Representative-elect from Louisiana's 2nd congressional district. On Saturday, December 6, 2008, Cao defeated nine-term Democratic U.S. Representative William Jefferson with 49.6 percent of the vote to Jefferson's 46.8 percent. Cao will be the first Vietnamese-American to serve in Congress and won as a Republican in a district that usually votes 75 percent to 80 percent Democratic.
Cao previously ran as an independent candidate for District 103 of the Louisiana House of Representatives. He was a delegate to the 2008 Republican National Convention. He is a member of the Orleans Parish Board of Election Supervisors. A devout Roman Catholic, Cao is a board member for Mary Queen of Vietnam Catholic Church's Community Development Corporation which assists Vietnamese-Americans with hurricane relief; Cao is a member of the National Advisory Council of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
After some time with Waltzer & Associates he opened his own law practice, where he specializes in immigration law. His attention shifted to politics when he saw ineffective government response to Hurricane Katrina, and he soon became involved in leading New Orleans East residents in successfully opposing a landfill. APIAVote congratulates Congressman Cao on his victory and serving as the first Vietnamese American to the House of Representatives.
