election day 2009

All right, friends, it's Election Day. While it doesn't quite match the excitement and anticipation of last year's historic presidential election (and we all know how that turned out), there are some key races wiht high-profile Asian American candidates happening all over the country. We'll see how it shakes down at the end of the day. I'm not going to tell you who to vote for -- I'm just going to encourage you to cast your vote, do your part, and make a difference. This your time.

UPDATE: By the way, here's a list of a few Asian American candidates running in key races, provided by APIA Vote:

Margaret Chin (NY) could become the first Chinese-American representative on City Council in First District which includes NYC's Chinatown.

Yen Chou (NY) beat out Isaac Sasson, S.J. Jung, John Choe and James Wu to win the Democratic primary for City Councilman John Liu's seat in Distrct 20 and will face Peter Koo in the general election.

Raj Goyle (KS), currently State Representative, is running for Kansas' 4th Congressional Disctrict.

Mark Keam (VA) is a candidate for Virginia House of Delegates, 35th District.

Kevin Kim (NY) emerged as the Democratic nominee City Council in the 19th District.

John Liu (NY), NY City Council member, won the primary for Comptroller and will face Joe Mendola in the general election. If he wins, he will be the first Asian-American to serve as a top city official.

Sam Yoon (MA), is currently an at-large member of Boston's City Council. He recently made a run for Mayor of Boston but lost to Michael Flaherty in the primary. Since then Yoon has teamed up with Flaherty to run as his Deputy Mayor. The Flaherty-Yoon ticket faces incumbent Thomas Menino in the general election.

For a more complete listing of AAPIs running for local and state office this year, go to the APIA Vote website here.