CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / OAKLAND MAYOR : African American Political Dynasty Is Threatened : Chinese American challenger Ted Dang has incumbent Elihu Harris in a tight race. Many voters voice frustration over the slow pace of economic revitalization.

OAKLAND —  On a recent sun-drenched Saturday morning, mayoral contender Ted Dang, his 7-year-old son and a campaign volunteer hopped into the candidate’s Lexus and drove to a predominantly black neighborhood in one of this city’s poorer sections.

The Chinese American real estate developer knocked on doors and introduced himself as the election opponent of Mayor Elihu Harris, the African American incumbent who has alienated some voters with a personal style often described as abrasive and short-tempered.

“Do you have any concerns you would like me to address?” Dang asked the residents, who beheld him wonderingly from behind security screen doors.

The son of Chinese immigrants and a newcomer to politics, Dang has emerged as a surprisingly formidable challenger in a city that for nearly 18 years has elected African American mayors, a city of great wealth and extreme poverty that is still reeling from the shocks of a major earthquake in 1989 and a deadly fire in 1991.

Dang’s strong appeal is telling, a reflection of Oakland’s frustration over the slow pace of promised economic revitalization, the growing clout of the city’s Asian American community and lingering bitterness over the way Oakland responded to the fire that killed 25 people and destroyed nearly 3,000 homes.

For many, Dang represents desired change.

“Oakland is like L.A.,” said Edward Blakely, dean of USC’s school of urban and regional planning. “L.A. had its riots and earthquake, Oakland had its earthquake and its fire. The kind of spirit that was in Oakland was so shaken and then kind of crushed by those two events.”

The possibility that an Asian American could topple a black mayor in the state’s largest city with an African American plurality is viewed by some Oaklanders as a sign of just how multicultural their city has become.

Although Oakland is widely perceived as a black city, no racial group has a majority. No single census tract is made up entirely of one race. Blacks make up about 44% of the population, followed by whites (33%), Asians (15%) and other races. About 14% of the city’s population have Spanish surnames, some of whom may also be included in the black, white or other categories.

Dang’s inroads into the African American community, particularly its well-to-do segment, prompted former Mayor Lionel Wilson to warn that blacks would face an irreversible erosion of their hard-won political power should Dang win on Nov. 8. Wilson’s brother, attorney Warren Wilson, is co-chairman of Dang’s campaign.

“When I see black folks tell me they are going to vote for a Chinese man,” the city’s first black mayor was quoted as telling an NAACP gathering in August, “it makes me angry. . . . If Ted Dang wins, the white folks will be standing in line to take it (power) away from us.”

Dang, 43, and Harris, 47, are running neck and neck among voters most likely to go to the polls. Harris, however, holds a comfortable lead among all registered voters and remains the front-runner. Each is expected to spend $200,000, the ceiling for a general election campaign in Oakland.

Both Harris and Dang are Democrats, but Harris has the support of the party establishment. A former three-term assemblyman, he is known as a savvy, energetic mayor who brought federal money to Oakland, reached out to the neighborhoods and secured the promise of a state office building that will be named after him.

But the mayor also has offended many constituents with an impatient and at times condescending manner in public. A city councilwoman who is now supporting him once wore a sling on her arm after she claimed he twisted it at a council meeting.

Dang, who had almost no name recognition before the June primary, is a prosperous developer who has modeled his campaign after that of Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, passing out booklets containing his “action plan” for Oakland.

Slender and slightly hunched at the shoulders, the cleanshaven, clean-cut Dang is polite and articulate, but far from dynamic.

A former chamber of commerce leader, he was born in west Oakland, grew up in Chinatown and speaks with a trace of an accent. He bills himself as a businessman who will cure the city’s ills by trimming government, working with business and adding police.

Dang’s appeal, however, appears to stem less from any of his positions than from a general sense of frustration that Oakland has not taken off economically after two decades of promises of an economic revival.

At Jack London Square, one of the most scenic parts of the city, luxury boats are moored alongside restaurants, a new, super-sized bookstore is open for business and a jazz club is scheduled to open late next year.

But the aura of progress in this bay-front setting is deceiving. Dozens of shops built at the direction of the city’s port are empty, their window displays of fine clothing and glassware merely a sham. The doors are locked, the interiors unoccupied.

The proprietor of an ethnic clothing store, one of the few merchants open for business in the new retail section, lamented that she sees not a single customer on some days.

The story is similar in other parts of Oakland that have received government-initiated face-lifts: The exteriors are pretty, but prosperity has been elusive.

Even the city’s two sports teams may not be secure. The Oakland A’s are for sale and the Warriors have talked of relocating across the bay to San Francisco.

“Oakland has had a lot of bad luck. . . .” said USC’s Blakely, who lived here for 20 years and still owns a home in the city. “But in terms of all the cities in the state, Oakland is probably in the best position for economic recovery.”

He noted that the city’s port is strong and its airport one of the fastest growing in the country. Middle-class Asians and Latinos are moving here, he said, and the city has successfully attracted a lot of employers during the past 10 years. He predicted the stores at Jack London Square eventually will be filled.

In addition to the economy, many Oakland residents fret about their troubled schools and violent crime in some neighborhoods.

Shirley Gee, a Dang supporter, said she was horrified recently when her elderly mother explained why she took more money than necessary to the grocery store.

“She said, ‘You know, they won’t kick you so hard if you have something to give them,’ ” Gee said. “My mother carries mug money.”

The growing influence of the city’s Asian community, as well as the gloomy perceptions, have helped propel Dang from a political unknown into a serious candidate. The city’s Asian community has more than doubled over the past several years, primarily because of an influx of Southeast Asian immigrants.

Franklin Year Round School is a symbol of that growth. Once predominantly African American, its enrollment is now heavily Asian. The surrounding neighborhood, known as New Chinatown, is sprinkled with stores with signs in Chinese, Cambodian and Laotian, a less prosperous version of Oakland’s older, bustling Chinatown located closer to downtown.

Run-down, two-story wood-frame houses with chain-link fences surround the school, which in addition to earthquake and fire drills has crime drills: Five bells ring when a shooting is in progress nearby.

Two Chinese Americans have been elected to the school board, and Dang’s supporters are working hard to get out the Asian vote on Nov. 8.

“If we can’t be the majority,” said Gee, who complains of hearing gunshots at night in her middle-class China Hill neighborhood, “we can at least be the swing vote.”

Both Harris and Dang say the election will be determined by turnout. If Harris gets voters in the city’s poorer and predominantly African American flatlands to the polls, he probably will defeat Dang.

Dang’s primary strength lies in the wooded hills, where expensive homes and stunning regional parks are reached by winding mountain roads. That is where Harris lives, but many of his neighbors voted for Dang in the June primary out of anger over the city’s handling of the 1991 fire.

Harris had been in office less than a year when city firefighters left the scene of a still smoldering fire that later became an inferno in the hills. A troubled city communications system, since replaced, was blamed for some of the Fire Department’s problems in fighting the blaze.

Dang’s home was one of those that burned, and he tells audiences of sleeping with his family at his brother’s house with two paper bags containing all his possessions.

“Dang is a fire survivor and was head of a neighborhood group after the fire--before he ever decided to run for mayor,” said Robert Bruce, who started a newspaper for fire victims after his home burned. “And that counts for something.”