Shay: City's pols really really like Jason Yoo
Miya Shay's latest editorial for the West University Examiner provides some interesting insight into the city's network of movers and shakers:
On a steamy Thursday evening, half a dozen former, current and future elected officials were among a hundred or so people gathered in the Museum of Fine Arts. No, they weren’t looking at the latest postmodern exhibition. Rather, everyone showed up to honor Diane Yoo, the newly crowned Miss Asia USA.
Now, we all know politicians never celebrate random beauty queens. Miss Yoo is stunning, to be sure, but she just happens to be the daughter of Jason Yoo, the man holding a very lucrative contract for airport concessions at Bush Intercontinental.
He’s also a very prolific political donor, writing checks ranging from $250-5,000 to many on City Council. As a result, they like him — really, really like him.
There was former Mayor Lee Brown gushing with praise; City Council members Toni Lawrence, Jarvis Johnson and Jolanda Jones all clapping at the appropriate times. Even former Council Member Gordon Quan showed up for support.
The pretty Miss Yoo also worked under Quan and Johnson, but she now works for her dad and has become a pretty prolific political donor herself (these things run in the family.)
I’m not going to spend a whole column talking about campaign donations, as currying favor with money is nothing new in the political arena, and the Yoos are simply following the footsteps of so many before them.
True enough, but we rarely see this sort of interesting background reporting when, say, Mayor White is bending over backwards to reward Jason Yoo for substandard performance as the concessionaire in Terminal C (which is more of a dump than one would expect from the main terminal of the hometown airline).
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 08/05/08 11:10 PM | Print |
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