Grace Meng had just left a senior center in Forest Hills, Queens, on Wednesday, thanking the lunchtime crowd for contributing to her victory in the previous day’s Congressional primary, when she ran into two dozen boys from the Acheinu Day Camp.
“Who are you?” blurted one of the camp counselors, noticing a few reporters trailing Ms. Meng.
It is a question that more people are likely to ask of Ms. Meng, a little-known state legislator from Flushing who is poised to become the biggest political star from New York City’s fastest-growing demographic group.
On Tuesday, Assemblywoman Meng scored a resounding victory in a four-way primary to become the Democratic nominee to represent a House district that includes portions of eastern and central Queens. Much of the area is now represented by Representative Gary S. Ackerman, who is retiring from Congress.
“It’s an amazing opportunity,” Ms. Meng, 36, said. “I’ve loved being in legislative office on a state level, and I think on a federal level there are so many more opportunities. I’m so excited to accomplish more.”
Aided by the organizational muscle of the New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council and the Queens Democratic establishment, Ms. Meng collected 51 percent of the vote, according to unofficial results. She will face the Republican nominee, Councilman Daniel J. Halloran III, in November. There are many more Democrats than Republicans in the district, and if she prevails, she will become the city’s first Asian-American member of Congress.
(Nate Shinagawa, a Democrat from Ithaca, won a contested Congressional primary in southwestern New York on Tuesday; he faces an uphill battle against the Republican incumbent, Representative Tom Reed.)
Ms. Meng’s nomination is evidence of the growing political strength of the city’s Asian-Americans, who now number more than 1 million of New York’s 8 million residents.
Don T. Nakanishi, professor emeritus of the U.C.L.A. Asian-American Studies Center, said he was surprised that it had taken so long “for this tremendous demographic increase in New York City to begin to be translated into political representation,” especially when compared with California and Hawaii. “It just looked like Asian-Americans were having a hell of a time breaking through, for whatever reason, in that political club there,” Professor Nakanishi said.
“It will be significant if she does get to Congress,” he added, noting “the perspective that she can offer to so many major kinds of issues that are not only of interest to Asian-Americans but many others who share concerns over issues like immigration and jobs and health care.”
Ms. Meng’s victory comes as the city’s most prominent Asian-American elected official, John C. Liu, the city comptroller, is facing a federal investigation into his campaign fund-raising practices, so she could emerge as the national face of New York’s Asian-Americans.
Ms. Meng said she did not see herself as a symbol. Although her staff has urged her to display more fire in public, she tends to be cautious and guarded, offering earnest but generic language about civic responsibility rather than talking about herself.
“That’s the one thing I probably don’t like about politics — the focus on the individual,” she said. “To me, it’s more important to get it done, whether I get the credit for it or not.”
In many ways, Grace Meng does not fit the prototype of a breakthrough candidate in a sharp-elbowed profession crammed with big egos. A native of Queens, and the oldest of three children born to immigrants from Taiwan, she had intended to become a teacher, and was well liked but regarded as serious and low-key at Stuyvesant High School, said Councilwoman Jessica S. Lappin, a classmate.
Her family and her faith — she was in a Christian fellowship group in college, and attends a church in Whitestone, Queens — are important to her, said Marie C. Ting, a friend of Ms. Meng’s since their undergraduate days at the University of Michigan.
And while Ms. Meng never sought office in student groups, or talked of political aspirations, Ms. Ting recalled, she did have a strong sense of social justice.
“She talked a lot about her community and Flushing and she wanted to do something that was service-oriented,” Ms. Ting said.
After working as a lawyer and marrying her high-school sweetheart, Wayne Kye, a dentist and assistant professor at New York University, Ms. Meng began eying a career in politics. Her father, Jimmy K. Meng, was the state’s first Asian-American assemblyman, but he served only one term, in 2005 and 2006; his tenure was clouded when an aide pleaded guilty to falsifying voter registration forms, apparently without Mr. Meng’s knowledge.
In 2008, Ms. Meng won the seat her father had held, running against the county political machine. But she built up good will by focusing on constituent services, working with Democrats and Republicans on issues including language access and mortgage protection, and succeeding in an effort to eliminate vestigial uses of the word “Oriental” in government documents.
“Being the only Asian-American in the State Legislature, I’ve had no choice but to reach across the aisle,” she said.
She said that in Congress, her priorities would be improving transportation, creating jobs and drumming up tourism opportunities for Queens. She is critical of President Obama for focusing too late on the Buffett rule, which would limit the use of tax loopholes by high-income individuals, and for not pushing hard enough to provide more money for infrastructure projects.
“Queens is so often treated as a stepchild and labeled as an outer borough,” she said. “At the very least if I could help bring more attention to what we need, and what the federal government needs to do to improve the quality of life of people right here in Queens — any way that I can do that, I’m very happy to do that.”
Source from NYTimes! ‘)}
