News has been pretty slow during the holiday season, but here's an article from the Boston Globe on newly-elected Cambridge City Councilman Leland Cheung. Our APAP volunteers in Boston have been in contact with Cheung about organizing a meet-and-greet in the coming new year. Stay tuned for more details on how you can meet this up-and-coming politician.

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,’’ Gutta 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.’’

 

Sam Yoon, whose historic victory as an Asian-American city councilor shook up Boston politics in 2005, said he sees similarities between his election and Cheung’s.

 

“I think in Boston, I generated . . . some attention just for running as an Asian-American,’’ said Yoon, a Korean-American who recently lost his bid for mayor. “There was a challenge on [Cheung’s] part to be thought of as something more than just an Asian-American candidate.’’

 

Though Cheung has lived in Cambridge for only the past four years, his family roots run deep here. In 1969, his father emigrated from Hong Kong to Harvard Square to attend Boston University. Cheung’s father traveled frequently to Montreal to court Cheung’s mother. The pair eventually married and lived in various cities throughout the country, chasing their American dream.

 

Cheung, who is single, recalls some difficult early years when his parents barely had enough money to take care of their young family. But they taught him the value of hard work and doing his part to help others, Cheung said.

A businessman, Cheung spent four years as the chief information officer of Space Adventures in Virginia, a start-up that spearheaded the private spaceflight industry in 2001 with the flight of the world’s first space tourist. He left the company four years later to work at a venture capital firm in Cambridge before entering the dual degree program at MIT and Harvard more than a year ago.

 

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.’’