Candidate for
County Clerk-Recorder; County of San Luis Obispo

Tommy Gong has the education and experience to continue the legacy of the highly-regarded County Clerk-Recorder's office.

Tommy Gong was born in Modesto, California and raised in the small town of Riverbank where his family ran a grocery store. Growing up in the family business, Tommy learned the importance of hard work and education from his parents while stocking the shelves and bagging groceries. After earning his Bachelor's at the University of California, Berkeley and a Master's of Business Administration at San Francisco State University, Tommy returned to the Central Valley to help run the family grocery business.

Tommy met his wife, Sherry, while attending church in San Francisco. Tommy attended the English-speaking service while Sherry (who is multi-lingual: English, Cantonese, Mandarin, and some Portuguese) attended the Chinese service. They settled in Patterson where the grocery business was now based and started a family.

In 2003, Tommy was hired as Stanislaus County's Elections Manager to back-up the Assistant Registrar of Voters. As the new hire Tommy was expected to apprentice under the Assistant Registrar and to bolster the management of elections.  Tommy conducted his first election, the 2004 Presidential General Election after only a year without the Assistant Registrar who was out on medical leave.

In 2005, his passion for elections led Tommy to San Luis Obispo, where he began serving as Assistant County Clerk-Recorder under longtime and well respected Clerk-Recorder Julie Rodewald. Tommy was among the first graduates in 2005 of the California Professional Election Administration Certification credential. This program has been sponsored by the CACEO (California Association of Clerks and Election Officials), the statewide association of Clerk-Recorders.

In 2007 Tommy was accepted into the highly-regarded Leadership San Luis Obispo program, sponsored by the San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce as part of Class 16. This program is designed to foster the next generation of local community leaders by educating them about the region, the community's needs and concerns, and encouraging them to take the leap in serving the community.

Amongst Tommy's major hobbies is the practicing and teaching of martial arts for over 30 years. His instructor was a student of the late Bruce Lee, the superstar of martial arts films who tragically died at a young age in the early 1970's. Tommy's dedication to Lee's martial art has led him to working with Lee's widow and daughter over the past 18 years, serving as a board of director for the Bruce Lee Foundation, the non-profit organization they founded to preserve and perpetuate Lee's teachings and its mission to build the Bruce Lee Action Museum in Seattle, Washington. Tommy's latest accomplishment for the foundation was donating all the proceeds of his book to the BLF. Bruce Lee + The Evolution of a Martial Artist was the culmination of a five year project that chronicles Lee's development in the martial arts.

Last fall Tommy served as a Guardian to the Northern California Honor Flight to help escort 32 WWII veterans to Washington DC to visit their recently completed national memorial. Tommy traveled with a longtime friend who is a WWII veteran and is over 90 years old.

Tommy lives in Atascadero with his wife Sherry (local PTA president and Chinese-language teacher at the Laureate School in San Luis Obispo) with their two boys, Derek (12) and Darin (9) who both attend local public schools.