San Francisco's Chinatown is a ghost town at night. After the bustling produce and poultry markets close, you can walk from Columbus Avenue all the way to Union Square without seeing a soul.
The eerie solitude is good for reflection but bad for business. In Hong Kong, merchant trade goes on after sundown at "night markets" — pop-up affairs reminiscent of farmers markets, but with clothing and consumer goods instead of bok choy and kale.
At the turn of the millennium, well-connected Chinatown merchant leaders — including former Port Commissioner Pius Lee, one of Willie Brown's conduits to the Cantonese-speaking community — brought Hong Kong-style night markets to Portsmouth Square. By some accounts, the Chinatown Neighborhood Association night markets didn't offer much: "bargain knickknacks," as the organizers put it, along with bootlegged Andy Lau DVDs and knockoff Louis Vuitton bags.
But it was enough to draw the attention of Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow. In 2009, when Shrimp Boy was still attempting to paint himself as a reformed ex-con — rather than a gangster still deep in the criminal game, as prosecutors in his ongoing federal case now allege — his Ghee Kung Tong group, also known as the "Chinese Freeemasons," attempted to take over the market. City officials, including then-Supervisor David Chiu (whose physical health and safety Chow later threatened, leading to police protection for the politician) balked at handing over the market to a shady character like Chow.
But Shrimp Boy had an associate who did take over the market — a Chinatown advocate and union organizer named Leon Chow.
With help from Steve Kawa, Mayor Ed Lee's chief of staff, Leon Chow secured a permit for the night market in 2010 on behalf of his union, Service Employees International Union – United Healthcare Workers West (why home healthcare workers were interested is still unclear, but the union accepted a $5,000 check from Pius Lee to do it).
His tenure with the market was brief: the night market ran for a full season in 2010 but for only two Saturdays in 2011 before closing. Chow, too, would soon drop off the scene. He mounted a brief campaign for city supervisor in 2012, running against incumbent progressive John Avalos in the Excelsior District. That effort ended after it was revealed that Chow lived in Walnut Creek, not the Excelsior; having committed the same offense that landed disgraced former Supervisor Ed Jew in federal prison (lying about his residence on a voter registration form) it seemed Chow's political career was over.
But this summer, Chow has reappeared on San Francisco's political scene. He's back in Chinatown, working to help elect Julie Christensen, Mayor Lee's appointee to Chiu's old seat on the Board of Supervisors.
Chow isn't involved with Christensen's official campaign. Instead, he's attending rallies and events put on by one of the independent expenditure committees organized in support of Christensen. Chow spoke at a neighborhood cleanup on Columbus Avenue, and he was present when two busloads of Chinese seniors arrived at the offices of Chinese-language newspaper World Journal to protest a story by veteran reporter Portia Li's that was critical of Christensen.
Similar to the Super PACs in presidential campaigns funded by activist billionaires such as the Koch brothers, these campaign committees — known as IEs — are not restricted by contribution limits. Thus, they are repositories for soft money, and lots of it. An IE funded by tech magnates, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, helped bury Chiu's opponent, David Campos, in a deluge of negative campaign mailers during last year's Assembly race.
Chow, who served as a $100,000-plus earner on his union's executive committee until late 2014, could not be reached for comment. Union officials declined to comment on the nature of his exit. But despite his questionable ethics and embarrassing exit in 2012, he still has clout.
"He's a great organizer," said Christian Garcia of Tramutola, the consulting firm retained by the Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth, a building trades union-backed IE that supports moderate political candidates. Chow, a former co-chair of the Alliance, is there strictly on a volunteer basis, Garcia said, but is proving valuable.
Chow comes in handy "whenever we need precinct walkers or phone bankers who speak the language," Garcia said. "It's very difficult to find good quality people who can do this kind of work."
But even now, Chow isn't exactly playing by the rules. At the protest of the World Journal, elderly Chinese speakers toted signs supporting Christensen. That makes it a political event, and the buses that ferried the seniors south to the World Journal's Peninsula offices a political expense. Thus far, nothing accounting for this spending has been filed with the city's Ethics Commission. (Then again, the Alliance has not yet reported its spending; delaying filings helps Christensen and hurts her opponent, Aaron Peskin, who can receive more public financing as more spending against him is reported).
Christensen can't be held accountable for Leon Chow's past or current actions any more than Chow can be held responsible for Shrimp Boy's misdeeds, such as the still-unsolved 2006 shooting death of Chinatown businessman Allen Leung, who Shrimp Boy succeeded as "dragonhead" of the Ghee Kung Tong. (The FBI "has never missed an opportunity to try to paint Chow guilty for the murder," according to a court filing by Shrimp Boy's lawyers).
Even so, one is judged by one's company. And Chow's involvement with Christensen begs a question: if she wins, what will he want in return?
UPDATE: After press deadline, SEIU-UHW officials informed SF Weekly that Chow, listed as an executive with the union according to the most recent public records available, exited his leadership position sometime in the last year. When asked for details, union officials did not specify the nature of Chow's exit.
Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that Chow is still a $100,000-plus earner on his union's executive committee; however, that was true only until late 2014.
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