DAVID WU Biography - Polititians

 
 

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DAVID WU

Name: David Wu                                                                       
Born: 8 April 1955 Hsinchu, Taiwan                                                   
                                                                                     
David Wu (born April 8, 1955) is a                                                   
Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives for Oregon,           
representing the state's First Congressional District, which includes a small         
section of western Multnomah County and all of Yamhill, Columbia, Clatsop and         
Washington Counties. As an ethnic Han from Taiwan, Wu is the first Chinese           
American and the first Taiwanese American member of the House of Representatives.     
                                                                                     
Wu was born in Hsinchu, Taiwan to mainland Chinese parents who had settled in         
Taiwan due to the Chinese Civil War and moved to the United States with his           
family in 1961. He spent his first two years in the U.S. in Latham, New York         
where his family were the only Asian Americans in town.                               
                                                                                     
Wu received a bachelor of science degree from Stanford University in 1977, and       
attended Harvard Medical School, but dropped out. Instead, Wu received a Juris       
Doctor degree from Yale Law School in 1982. He is married to Michelle Wu, and         
has one son, Matthew, and a daughter, Sarah.                                         
                                                                                     
Prior to being elected a U.S. Representative, Wu served as a clerk for a federal     
judge and co-founded a law firm, Cohen & Wu, which primarily served the high         
tech sector in Oregon's "Silicon Forest."                                             
                                                                                     
Wu was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1998, replacing fellow         
Democrat Elizabeth Furse, and began serving in 1999 with the 106th Congress. He       
is currently serving on the House Committee on Education and Labor, the House         
Committee on Science, and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Wu also serves     
as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation, and is a member of     
the Subcommittee on Space, the Subcommittee on Higher Education, and the             
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and trade.                               
                                                                                     
He currently is a member of the Executive Board for the Congressional Asian           
Pacific American Caucus and served as Chair from January 2001 to January 2004.       
Congressman Wu is also a member of the New Democrat Coalition (NDC), a group of       
moderate Democrats in the House.                                                     
                                                                                     
In the 2006 election, Wu won re-election to a fifth term, defeating Republican       
state Representative Derrick Kitts of Hillsboro and two minor party candidates.       
                                                                                     
In October 2004, The Oregonian (a statewide newspaper) brought up an incident         
from 1976, in which no arrest or charges had been made, alleging in a front page     
article that Wu had attempted to force an ex-girlfriend to have sex with him. Wu     
had just completed his junior year at Stanford University at the time. According     
to the article, Wu, then 21, was questioned by Police Capt. Raoul K. Niemeyer         
after the incident. Niemeyer reported that Wu had scratches on his face and neck,     
and wore a stretched T-shirt. The story broke in the midst of a contentious           
race for Congress. Wu's Republican challenger, Goli Ameri, then injected the         
story into her campaign in its last days, but Wu won the election with 58% of         
the vote to Ameri's 38% in spite of the story.                                       
                                                                                     
On January 10, 2007, Wu made a speech on the House floor referring to people in       
the White House as Klingons with regard to the Iraq War. Wu, a fan of Star Trek,     
said he was making a reference to a book by James Mann. Mann wrote that the           
foreign policy advisory team of George W. Bush's 2000 campaign gave itself the       
nickname “Vulcans”, originating from the large statue of the Roman god in Bush   
advisor Condoleezza Rice's hometown of Birmingham, Alabama.                           
                                                                                     
Wu said that unlike “the Vulcans of Star Trek”, who “make decisions based on   
logic and fact”, Rice and her cadre behave more like the warlike Klingons,         
saying, “there are Klingons in the White House”. Wu continued that unlike “real 
Klingons”, who are also known for their courage and code of honor, those in the     
White House “have never fought a battle of their own”. He concludes, “don't let 
faux Klingons send real Americans to war.”