8 Asians

I’ve been meaning to write about Nate Shinagawa for a while. Now I have a better reason to. Shinagawa is currently a Tompkins County Legislature in upstate New York and just won the Democratic nomination for New York’s 23rd Congressional District Democratic nomination this past Tuesday:

“In returns from 589 of the sprawling district’s 596 precincts at about 11:45 p.m., Shinagawa had 55 percent of the vote. Leslie Danks Burke had 37 percent and Melissa Dobson 7 percent.Shinagawa will be the Democratic challenger to incumbent Republican Tom Reed of Corning in November.”

From what I can tell from the Ithaca Journal, Shinagawa was a strong opponent of “fracking” – hydraulic fracturing - a technique used to release natural gas from rock. This has been an issue of great concern with a lot of potential natural gas reserves being drilled. The environmental safety of fracking is a concern to many citizens of the Congressional district. Hyphen Magazine recently did an excellent piece on Shinagawa about his campaign and the issues he’s been fight for.

I had the honor of meeting  Shinagawa back in April 2006 at the first ever AAPI Democratic Party Leadership Summit held in downtown San Jose, California, back when he was barely a year out of college (I doubt he remembers me though). He happens to also be a fellow Cornell alum! He looked young back then and he still looks pretty young for someone who is 28. And if he wins in November, Shinagawa would be the youngest member of Congress! Best of luck to Shinagawa in November!