This morning, the Boston Globe published an insightful piece on Leland Cheung, who recently became the first Asian American to be elected to the Cambridge City Council.
Our kudos to Globe reporter Meghan Irons for reaching out to us when researching the story, which features quotes from both this blogger and 2009 AAA-Fund endorsee Sam Yoon:
CAMBRIDGE – Leland Cheung is a fast talker, with a blistering schedule and an unforgiving iPhone.
Between sips of coffee and bites of a honey bun one recent morning, he lined up appointments for the next day while weaving a story about his recent historic foray into local politics.
Cheung, who is pursuing dual advanced degrees from MIT and Harvard, is a man on the move.
And when he takes a seat inside City Council chambers next month, he will have secured a spot as the first student and the first Asian-American elected to serve on the panel.
“I’m not totally surprised there hasn’t been an Asian-American in office,’’ said Cheung, whose father is Chinese and mother is French-Canadian. “But it gives me great hope that people did elect one.’’
Cheung, 31, jumped into the race hoping to fill an ethnic void on the council and boost the growing pool of Asian-Americans who hold public office. Historically underrepresented in government, more Asian-Americans are running for federal, state, and local offices – and winning, said Gautam Dutta, executive director of the Asian American Action Fund, a national Democratic political action committee.
“What’s amazing about this is that he beat out an incumbent,’’ said Dutta, referring to Cheung’s ousting of Larry Ward, who is African-American. “That’s not easy to do. It’s a big deal. Everybody gave him the thumbs up.’’
In Cambridge, Asian-Americans make up roughly 12 percent of the city’s population of more than 100,000. Under Cambridge’s proportional representation elections, Cheung needed a little more than 10 percent of about 16,000 ballots cast to win a two-year term on the nine-member City Council.
Cheung – who is working on a business degree at MIT and a policy degree at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government – jumped into the campaign. Using social networking websites and old-fashioned campaigning, he successfully rallied students, the Asian community, and anyone who would listen around his campaign themes of job creation and bridging the gap between students and residents.
It worked.
“There’s a substantial Asian-American population in Cambridge, without regard to students,’’ said former mayor Frank Duehay, who served 14 terms on the council. “He figured out how to bring his campaign to students and the Asian-Americans who live in Cambridge. He obviously was effective.’’
Dutta said that, partly because of the Obama campaign, many Asians are now seeing political office as fertile ground. And their message is resonating with non-Asian voters.
“You have to win in areas where Asian-Americans are not clearly in the majority,’’ Dutta said. “It takes time to build these relationships, and a lot of hard work and political savvy. The good news is that people like Leland Cheung are stepping up to the plate.’’
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Now that he has run and won his council seat, Cheung is an inspiration to many Asian-Americans, Yoon said.
“I’m very proud of what he’s accomplished,’’ said Yoon. “I was inspired that he was running. It said to me that for him clearly being Asian-American, he wasn’t seeing that as an obstacle or a reason not to run.’’
We wish Leland and Sam all the best for 2010.
– Gautam Dutta
One of our quotes about Councilor-Elect Cheung just got picked up by today’s MIT media homepage:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/
“What’s amazing about this is that he beat out an incumbent. That’s not easy to do. It’s a big deal. Everybody gave him the thumbs up.”
Gautam Dutta, executive director of the Asian American Action Fund, on MIT’s Leland Cheung, the first Asian-American and first student elected to the Cambridge City Council.
The Boston Globe
December 28, 2009
By gautam on December 28th, 2009