In the packed Plum Restaurant in the Bayside neighborhood of Queens, Assemblywoman Grace Meng entered the room to the Black Eye Peas’ “Let’s get it started in here” (Let’s get into it! Yeah! Get stupid! Come on!) just after ten o’clock and was simply a rock star. Ms. Meng is beloved in Queens Democratic circles and those circles certainly turned out for her clamorous and joyous victory party. Declaring her congressional campaign’s success before the Associated Press did, she spent most of her speech thanking all of her volunteers, family members, supporters, opponents, and probably a few others tossed in there as well.
“It has been about we, certainly not me,” Ms. Meng said to begin her speech. “We. We, in this room. We in the neighborhoods won this important race. We won this victory together.”
And win the race she did, surprising expectations and securing an outright majority of the vote, a tough act considering her multiple credible primary opponents with strong labor support and electoral bases. And while Ms. Meng received very strong support in her own base in Flushing’s sizable Asian community, supporters and elected officials also constantly pointed to her impressively strong performance in other areas as well, a tribute to the forces that mobilized behind her candidacy.
Read More
