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In a brief but rousing speech to the Republican National Convention last June, Kim played up both his business experience and his up-the-ladder immigrant story. Though he is likely to become the nation's first Korean- American Congressman, he has no specific agenda for the Korean community. But he hopes to be a role model for all Asian Americans. "They can look at me and say, 'He made it as an immigrant with a strong accent. Why can't I?' "
FLORIDA / Carrie Meek
The daughter of a black sharecropper, Carrie Meek grew up in the shadow of the Florida capitol building in Tallahassee. In the '50s, she went back there to demonstrate for civil rights -- and got teargassed. But Meek got her revenge. In 1979 she bested a field of 12 to win a seat in the Florida legislature from Miami. Three years later, she became the first black woman ever elected to the state senate. In an open primary in September, she beat two black male opponents, taking 83% of the vote and winning every precinct in a mostly black district that runs through Miami and the hurricane-ravaged south Dade County. She faces no Republican opposition in November, guaranteeing her the honor of becoming the first African American to represent Florida in Congress since Reconstruction.
It was a remarkable victory for a woman born 66 years ago in the Tallahassee ghetto called Black Bottom, where her father grew vegetables and her mother took in laundry. After earning a master's degree in physical education and public health from the University of Michigan, she began teaching at Miami- Dade Community College in 1961 -- at a time when the campus was still segregated. "I have experienced extreme, rigid and very painful segregation and racism from childhood," she recalls. "I don't see myself as a victim -- Carrie Meek is a fighter."
As a legislator, Meek led efforts to establish an affordable-housing program in Dade County and helped establish a program that assisted businesses owned by women and minorities in getting state contracts. "I'm not afraid of going to Washington," she says. "I've always been strong on women's and minority rights, so I've been bumped around pretty hard on those issues in the Florida senate." Her victory assured, Meek has started fighting early by traveling to Washington two weeks after the primary to lobby for committee assignments.