For four years, Doug Mah, 42, played drums for the Olympia-based blues band, "The Blues Torpedoes," until 2000. Starting January of 2008, he will begin another four-year term, as the city's newly elected mayor. With 70 percent of the vote from last month's general election, Mah, 42, takes over the reigns from retiring mayor, Mark Foutch, and becomes Olympia's first Asian American mayor in 134 years.
He becomes the new longest-serving member of the city council in his second term -- a total of six years since November 2001. Mah also works full-time as a policy manager at the Washington State Department of Information Services. He is married to Cathy and has a 12-year-old daughter, Heather.
Having both parents born in the U.S., Mah is a third-generation Chinese American born in Spokane. "I do not speak Chinese," he admitted. "My parents spoke different dialects at home so they never spoke to each other in Chinese." (Source: James Tabafunda, Northwest Asian Weekly, Dec 22, 2007).