Michael K. Woo (born October 8, 1951) is an American politician and academic who was the dean of the College of Environmental Design at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

[4] Woo went to Alhambra High School, and at the age of sixteen he attended summer classes at California State College at Los Angeles under a special program for gifted students.

He graduated with honors in 1973 and earned his master's degree in city planning two years later from the University of California, Berkeley, with a thesis on the origins of regional government in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Wilbur and his father, David Kitman Woo, began a produce business in a spot at the Ninth Street Market vacated by a Japanese man who was interned during the Second World War.

[4][7] As the only son in his family, Michael Woo said he was brought up "with the expectation that I would have a leadership role of my own"; he worked in summer 1970 as a volunteer in the office of Assemblyman David Roberti and later for Democratic Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin and in the presidential primary campaign of New York Mayor John V.

Her primary campaign sent out fliers which asked Republican voters if they wanted the candidate supported by the Mexican American Political Association and the Asian Democratic Caucus "or Councilwoman Peggy Stevenson".

Stevenson was supported by "some of the city's most prominent political fund-raisers" and the "real estate industry," while Woo's Republican banker father provided about half of the $437,000 raised for his campaign.

[17] The Los Angeles times credited the win to "family wealth, ethnic pride, younger voters and festering discontent with an incumbent officeholder".