AP/The Huffington Post   Posted: 02/16/2012 4:22 pm

Will having a sports superstar like Jeremy Lin help Asian Americans get more political respect?  U.S. Senate candidate (and AAA-Fund endorsee) William Tong thinks so (via AP/HuffPost):

HARTFORD, Conn. — As a U.S. Senate candidate from Connecticut, William Tong doesn’t have major, state-wide name recognition like his two main rivals for the Democratic nomination. But the son of Chinese immigrants has picked up supporters from across the country as the only Asian-American candidate for Senate this year in the continental U.S.

With only 3.8 percent of Connecticut’s population identified as Asian, it’s unclear how much the degree of celebrity Tong has developed within the Asian-American community will translate into a possible victory.

The 38-year-old state representative and self-proclaimed political underdog hopes his story of growing up in his family’s Chinese restaurant, working nights and weekends washing dishes, cooking and waiting tables before graduating from an Ivy League university and law school, will touch non-Asian voters as well because it is “a universal story” about living the American dream, he said.

“My story resonates with everybody,” Tong said. “Everybody owns a piece of the same story.”

Gautam Dutta, executive director of the Asian American Action Fund, a political action committee that contributed $1,000 to Tong’s campaign, said Tong is a particularly compelling candidate for Asian supporters because he has already been elected in a legislative district that does not have a large Asian population and has successfully connected with non-Asian voters.

Dutta said there is sometimes a perception in the Asian community and within other minority groups that a minority candidate doesn’t have a chance of winning without a large pool of minority voters supporting them at the polling booth.

“He’s reached out to everyone and they believe in him,” Dutta said of Tong.

“It’s not every day that you have a viable Asian candidate running for U.S. Senate,” Dutta added. “He’s definitely in the trail-blazer category.”

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Tong, who, if elected would be the first Chinese-American to hold a U.S. Senate seat, has not been shy about discussing his ethnicity on the campaign trail. On Thursday, Tong linked his message of being an underdog fighting for the American dream for everyday people to the Asian-American basketball phenomenon Jeremy Lin of the New York Knicks. In a fundraising e-mail to supporters, Tong points out how Lin, also the son of Chinese-American immigrants, was an underdog, with no one willing to give him a shot.

“When somebody finally gave him a chance, he took the NBA by storm. He’s arrived, but he got here with a decade of hard work and confidence against the odds. He’s the underdog who made it. He’s living the American Dream,” Tong wrote. “The dream I’ve lived, the dream Jeremy Lin is living, is the dream we can all live. But we have to fight for it.”

We’re proud of two leaders who have realized the American Dream.

– Gautam Dutta