For other persons named David Wu, see David Wu (disambiguation).
David Wu (Traditional Chinese: �振�; Pinyin: Wú Zhènwěi; 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 Chinese 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 the Workforce, as well as the House Committee on Science. Wu also serves as the Ranking Minority Member of the Science Subcommittee on Environment Technology and Standards as well as the Space Subcommittee.
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) alleged in a front page article that Wu, during the summer of 1976, 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. Wu was not arrested and the woman declined to press charges.
The story broke in the midst of a contentious race for Congress. Wu's Republican challenger, Goli Ameri, injected the story into her campaign in its waning 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, an admitted fan of Star Trek, said he was making a sardonic reference to the title of James Mann's recent book Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (ISBN 0670032999). In the book, Mann writes that “Vulcans� is a nickname that President Bush's foreign policy advisory team in the 2000 campaign gave itself, 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.�
On January 16, 2007, comedian Jon Stewart dedicated a short segment of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to talk about this speech. He was joined in this discussion by Leonard Nimoy and George Takei, both of whom were actors on Star Trek (where they played Mr. Spock and Hikaru Sulu respectively).
