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At a Historic Moment for Asian-American Candidates, Andrew Yang Leans In

Andrew Yang, a former entrepreneur and tech executive, emerged as the surprise qualifier for a slimmed-down third Democratic debate.Credit...Elizabeth Frantz for The New York Times

They broke into cheers every time he referred to numbers or statistics. They chanted “PowerPoint! PowerPoint!” when he renewed a pledge to use the program to deliver the State of the Union.

And when the 2,500 rain-soaked supporters of Andrew Yang realized he was about to drop his biggest applause line, they screamed the words to help him finish his New York rally with a bang.

“The opposite of Donald Trump,” Mr. Yang yelled, pausing to let his fans join in, “is an Asian man who likes math!”

Though the scene at Washington Square Park last week might have seemed unusual to the uninitiated, it was emblematic of Mr. Yang’s long-shot campaign for the Democratic nomination for president. As the 44-year-old former tech executive has traveled across the country, running what he has called the “nerdiest presidential campaign in history,” he has unabashedly embraced his Taiwanese American background, as well as some of the stereotypes commonly associated with Asian-Americans.

“It’s heartwarming when people are excited to see me because they feel like I represent their community,” Mr. Yang said earlier this month in an interview at a bakery in Concord, N.H. “And I will admit that there are many Asian-Americans who are looking at me and my candidacy and want to make sure I reflect positively on the community, so I’m very aware.”

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Who Is Andrew Yang, the Internet’s Favorite Candidate?

Andrew Yang, a businessman from New York, is seeking the Democratic nomination for president. His focus on preventing mass unemployment caused by the automation of jobs has made him popular online, but will it be enough to propel him to the White House?

A former tech company executive who’s a political newcomer — “I am not a career politician, as most of you know. I’m an entrepreneur.” — with a devoted internet following. “Hello, I’m Andrew Yang.” And an army of memes. Andrew Yang is running for president. So, who is he? Yang is the son of Taiwanese immigrants and a lawyer by training. But he made his mark as an entrepreneur. He helped build a college test preparation business that was bought by a big company. And it made him a modest fortune. “Are you ready to build something?” After that, he started an organization that connects college graduates with startups. That job took him across the Midwest and eventually led him to politics. “We automated away four million manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and so I was like, why are we not talking about that? So, that’s where this all started.” So, what are his priorities? Well, he’s got a long list. But the one policy that’s turning heads: “Universal basic income —” “Universal basic income —” “He calls it the Freedom Dividend.” “Now if you’ve heard anything about me, you‘ve heard that there’s an Asian man running for president who wants to give everyone $1,000 a month. And all of those things are true.” Yang says this will ease the pain caused by the robot apocalypse, as more jobs become automated. His internet army, known as the Yang Gang — “Where’s the money? Where’s the money? We have the money.” — helped sell the policy with the #SecureTheBag hashtag. But opponents of the plan say its price tag makes it unrealistic. It could cost approximately $2 trillion, roughly half the current federal budget. Some of his other policy proposals? Medicare for all, gun safety and even free marriage counseling for all. The dilemma to Yang as an internet darling? Some of that support is coming from the internet’s far right, in places like 4chan, Gab and 8chan. Yang has spoken out against it. But there’s no doubt it’s helped him go viral. “You know, it’s been a point of confusion because I don’t look much like a white nationalist. So, I’ve completely disavowed any of that support.” What’s his relationship with President Trump? Well, Yang has positioned himself like this: “The opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian guy who likes math. And then there’s even an acronym we’re working with, which is Make America Think.” And he hasn’t held back. “As an entrepreneur, most entrepreneurs feel like Donald Trump gives us all a bad name and he’s more of a marketing charlatan than he is a real builder.” Yang doesn’t seem to be on Trump’s radar just yet. But Yang says he’s the candidate to beat Trump because he’s focused on the economy and boosting unemployment. He believes economic anxiety among some Americans is what got Trump into the White House. “We need to evolve to the next form of our economy in order for Americans to have a path forward.” So, what are his chances? Yang is still a fringe candidate by conventional standards and polling behind the leading Democratic contenders. “Yang Gang 2020. Yang Gang 2020.” But in an era where a so-called meme army helped President Trump win, being an online megastar could still count for something.

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Andrew Yang, a businessman from New York, is seeking the Democratic nomination for president. His focus on preventing mass unemployment caused by the automation of jobs has made him popular online, but will it be enough to propel him to the White House?CreditCredit...Christopher Lee for The New York Times

For the first time, there are three Asian-American and Pacific Islanders seeking a major party’s nomination for president: Mr. Yang, Senator Kamala Harris of California and Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. As groundbreaking as that is, Mr. Yang in particular has embraced the largely untested strategy of using his Asian ethnicity and identity to appeal to voters nationwide.

Mr. Yang said he was proud of his background and that he hoped his blunt acknowledgment of his race — and his bold political ideas — would help him stand out, particularly in the early stages of a primary contest where the nearly two dozen Democratic hopefuls can blur together for many voters.

“When people hear from me, they say, ‘You don’t sound like any other politician,’” he said. “In a very crowded field, the person who sounds different is going to keep getting stronger and stronger.”

More than a year after he kicked off his bid for the presidency from a position of almost total obscurity, Mr. Yang’s approach to campaigning and pledge to provide a universal basic income to every American have netted him more than 100,000 donors and helped him qualify for the first Democratic debate. Though he remains something of a fringe candidate, he routinely draws thousands of people to his big-city rallies, and he has garnered support from a range of voters, including parts of the Democratic-leaning Asian-American community.

Scholars and community leaders who study Asian-American history say Mr. Yang’s emergence onto the national political scene is no accident. After decades of immigrant exclusion, second-generation Asian-Americans have come of age and grown up steeped in American politics. The 2018 midterms saw a record number of Asian-Americans run for Congress at a time when the racial group continues to expand at a faster rate than any other in the United States.

“This is absolutely a moment of importance,” John C. Yang, the president of the Washington-based arm of the nonprofit advocacy organization Asian Americans Advancing Justice, said of the three presidential candidates. “It says something about how far we have come.”

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Mr. Yang, whose campaign sells merchandise emblazoned with the word “MATH,” said he is “very aware of the model minority myth” that Asian-Americans are stereotyped with and that he is simply trying to be “true to myself.”Credit...Christopher Lee for The New York Times

Before Bobby Jindal, the former governor of Louisiana who ran for president as a Republican during the 2016 cycle, the last viable Asian-American candidate for president was Representative Patsy Mink of Hawaii, who briefly ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972.

More than four decades later, the candidates in the 2020 field have addressed their background in varying ways.

Ms. Harris, whose mother was Tamil Indian and whose father is Jamaican, attended Howard University, one of the most prominent historically black schools, and was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the oldest black sorority. She has bristled at the suggestion that she has downplayed her Indian heritage, pointing to her memoir, in which she writes about the influence her mother and grandparents had on her. But Ms. Harris has also sometimes deflected questions about her identity, choosing to describe herself simply as “a proud American.”

Ms. Gabbard, the first American Samoan and first Hindu elected to Congress, has formed deep ties with Indian Americans over the course of her career. As recently as January, she wrote an Op-Ed for Religion News Service decrying the “religious bigotry” and “anti-Hindu sentiment” she said was directed at her after she announced her run for president. But on the trail, Ms. Gabbard, who served two combat tours in the Middle East, has chosen to focus mostly on her foreign policy credentials.

Mr. Yang focuses on policy as well, issuing dire warnings about job losses and arguing that $12,000 a year will help blunt the impact of automation. But on a recent swing through New Hampshire, he told those who came to see him that it was O.K. if all they knew about him was that there was “an Asian man running for president who wants to give everyone $1,000 a month.”

“My Asian-ness is kind of obvious in a way that might not be true of Kamala or even Tulsi,” Mr. Yang said in Concord. “That’s not a choice. It’s just a fairly evident reality.”

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Lily Jin, a 21-year-old senior at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., who went to see Mr. Yang speak there this month, said she thinks the concerns around Mr. Yang’s strategy are valid, but that she believes he’s “addressing his identity head-on.”Credit...Elizabeth Frantz for The New York Times

The way Mr. Yang has chosen to lean into stereotypes about Asian-Americans, though, has led to tension among members of the community.

John C. Yang treaded carefully when asked about the candidate’s embrace of those tropes, calling it “a very complex, difficult area.”

“We want to celebrate our successes,” he said, “but not feed into the model minority stereotype.”

That stereotype, which overgeneralizes Asians as diligent and high-achieving, traces back to a broader culture of anti-black racism in America that “helped to justify a kind of racial order,” said Ellen Wu, an associate history professor at Indiana University. In more contemporary times, she said, the stereotype is problematic because it flattens a massive group of people into a monolith.

“People who are math nerds — you can be proud of that,” Ms. Wu said. “But in some ways, leaning in on those kinds of caricatures of Asian-Americans, we run the risk of reproducing the narrow characterizations that Asian-Americans encounter in mainstream culture.”

For his part, Mr. Yang said he was “very aware of the model minority myth” and that he was simply trying to be “true to myself.”

“It would be unfortunate if you say, ‘I’m an Asian guy who likes math, thus, all Asian guys like math,’” he said. “Hopefully, people will see our community is very diverse.”

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Mr. Yang has qualified for the first Democratic debate in June, but he remains something of a fringe candidate.Credit...Christopher Lee for The New York Times

Karthick Ramakrishnan, a professor of political science at the University of California, Riverside, who went to college with Mr. Yang, said he believed the candidate was drawing on his background in part because he was “comfortable in his own skin.”

“He is trying to play up to these positive stereotypes of being capable and good with numbers, but he also has this very extroverted quality about him,” Mr. Ramakrishnan said. “He’s trying to be memorable.”

Lily Jin, a 21-year-old senior at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., who went to see Mr. Yang speak there earlier this month, said she’s well aware of the stereotypes Asian-Americans encounter and thinks the concerns around Mr. Yang’s strategy are valid.

But to Ms. Jin, Mr. Yang is “addressing his identity head-on,” and also breaking the mold, by helping show young Asian-Americans that they can pursue something other than what she called the “preplanned paths” of medical or law school.

“Growing up in a household that never encouraged me to go into politics or really even vote, an important piece of this is encouraging more Asian-Americans to get involved,” she said.

Interest in Mr. Yang’s candidacy has been particularly high among younger, second-generation Asian-Americans, especially Chinese Americans like Ms. Jin. Many of his most fervent supporters are involved in the technology industry and actively promote him on social media. Some have even become enthusiastic members of the “Yang Gang,” the name given to Mr. Yang’s most devoted supporters.

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Mr. Yang routinely draws thousands of people to his big-city rallies, like his event in Washington Square Park in Manhattan last week.Credit...Christopher Lee for The New York Times

Norman Qian, 20, of Flushing, Queens, said he had first become aware of Mr. Yang’s candidacy because of friends in his predominantly Asian-American neighborhood. When he looked harder at Mr. Yang’s website, he said, he found he appreciated that Mr. Yang appeared data-driven and policy-oriented.

“I really believe in his analysis of automation and how that’s going to take away jobs,” Mr. Qian said. “I also love the fact that Asian-Americans have been seeing more representation in our government, and I think Andrew Yang is at the forefront of all that.”

Research has shown that having Asian-American candidates in a campaign increases voter turnout by and donations from members of the racial group. Asian turnout increased nationwide from 27 percent in 2014 to 41 percent in 2018, a year when dozens of Asian-American or Pacific Islander candidates ran for Congress, according to one analysis.

But while Asian-Americans are steadily gaining more political power, they have not reached the point where they can propel candidates to victory on their own. Only one congressional district in the mainland United States, in Northern California, is majority Asian-American. Any viable candidate for president will, of course, need to build broad coalitions across demographic groups, experts said.

Shekar Narasimhan, the chairman of AAPI Victory Fund, a super PAC focused on mobilizing voters, projected that the continued anti-immigration rhetoric by President Trump and Republicans in Congress could help drive 1 million new Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders to vote next November.

“I don’t know if an AAPI candidate is going to win the presidency in 2020, but we are playing a long game,” Mr. Narasimhan said. “Do I think Andrew Yang will have an influence on the race and will make a difference? I absolutely do.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 16 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Nerdiest Presidential Campaign in History’. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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