Word: fong
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...Asian Americans, it is one of several heartening political breakthroughs that began with the 1996 election of Washington's Gary Locke as the first Asian-American Governor in the continental U.S. Two other national candidacies have boosted Asian visibility this year: in California, Republican Senate candidate Matt Fong, the taciturn state treasurer, has pulled into a dead heat with Democrat Barbara Boxer; and in a hotly contested race for the House seat in Oregon's First Congressional District, Taiwanese-born lawyer David Wu holds a slight lead over Republican Molly Bordonaro. Nationally, the number of elected Asian or Pacific Americans...
...that kind of resistance is melting, and Fong's rise is proof. Early this year he looked like a long shot to get out of the Republican primary; now he is poised to become the Senate's first Chinese American from outside Hawaii. He can thank Boxer for that. Already a G.O.P. target for her strident partisanship, Boxer invited still more attacks for her belated criticism of President Bill Clinton's adultery. (Her daughter is married to the First Lady's brother.) In contrast to the vociferous Boxer, Fong, who is pro-choice-in-the-first-trimester, delivers speeches like...
Another advantage may be his race. Though Asian Americans make up only 6% of the state's registered voters, they could be a deciding factor in a close race with low turnout--if they vote as they did in June's open primary, when Fong took 3 out of 4 Asian voters, many of them "crossover" Democrats motivated more by ethnic pride than ideology. "Asian Americans can only think of themselves as a swing vote in a very close election," says Bruce Cain, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. "But this appears to be that kind...
...California Senator Barbara Boxer, a Democrat running for a second term, the predicament is particularly unpleasant: not only do polls show her locked in a tie with G.O.P. challenger Matt Fong, but also her daughter is married to one of Hillary Clinton's younger brothers. Boxer deemed the President's behavior "wrong" but urged everyone to "move on." That wasn't enough for Fong, who painted the Senator as a hypocrite who led the chorus of protest against Republicans Clarence Thomas and then Senator Bob Packwood when they were accused of sexual misconduct, but was now giving Clinton a virtual...
Republican leaders are trying everything from mea culpas to community breakfasts. For the job of state political director, the party has hired a 26-year-old Mexican-American operative named Mike Madrid, who wrote his college thesis on how the G.O.P. could win Latino votes. Senatorial candidates Issa and Fong are both running Spanish-language ads. And over the course of the year, the party will hold nine "Hispanic summits" in different parts of the state...