Mei-Hua Ru is the architect of the Asian American fundraising drive of New York City Comptroller John C. Liu, according to an article in Thursday’s New York Times. She is credited with guiding his rise from city councilman to a leading candidate for the mayor’s post.
The 43-year-old former real estate broker is fluent in Mandarin, Taiwanese and Cantonese, allowing her to serve as the conduit between Liu and the Chinese community business people who have become the backbone of his highly successful fundraising efforts.
Ru receives an annual salary of $125,000 from the city in her official post as one of Liu’s two aides, but her primary role as scheduler and gatekeeper extends beyond normal office hours. Despite being the single mother of three girls, she spends many of her evenings attending the countless banquets at which Liu appears in exchange for pledges of campaign contributions. At such events Ru is known to keep out Liu’s critics as well as arrange face time with key supporters.
Her central role in Liu’s campaign fundraising has made her a target of the federal probe into Liu’s fundraising practices. In particular, his campaign is suspected of having used fictitious donors to cover up donations that exceed city contribution limits. Last month Xing Wu Pan, a fund-raiser for Mr. Liu, was indicted for helping an F.B.I. agent posing as a businessman circumvent campaign contribution limits by arranging for straw donors. A New York Times probe also recently raised suspicions that some of Liu’s donors had received reimbursement for their contributions — another illegal practice.
So far Ru has not been charged with any improprieties. But she recently recruited Jenny Hou, the 24-year-old daughter of a Liu supporter to serve as his new campaign treasurer though Ru remains the primary conduit to Liu.
“The simple fact that she’s had to deal with me while raising three wonderful kids shows how incredibly effective an individual she is, without whom I would not be where I am today,” Liu said recently in a statement to the Times.
“Mei was the heart and soul of the ’09 campaign,” Liu had told the Times in October before it published the piece on his campaign’s fundraising irregularities. “Now Jenny is the heart of the ’13 campaign. Mei volunteers her time. Many people who are used to dealing with Mei — they don’t like to be shifted to somebody else. But Jenny is taking hold, and she’ll soon be loved as much as Mei is.”
Ru grew up in Taiwan, eventually settled in Queens, and worked as an insurance sales agent for MetLife. Her involvement in politics began when she volunteered for one of Liu’s early City Council races. While raising her three daughters, the oldest of whom is now in college, Ru rose quickly to become political director of Liu’s campaign team. In the Asian community she has taken on the role of Liu’s “white glove”, according to sources quoted by the Times, suggesting that she does the dirty work with which Liu doesn’t want to dirty his hands.
The federal investigation into Liu’s campaign fundraising hasn’t dampened Ru’s enthusiasm for Liu’s mayoral campaign. She remains convinced that neither she nor Liu did anything wrong.
